It’s a few days late, but I am a California resident and thus feel I have some obligation to comment on the recall election.
The fundamental problem in California is much, much larger than Grey Davis. The entire political culture in the state is deeply sick. Huge swathes of the political class seem to have lost all sense of responsibility and accountability. Davis himself is a life-long member of the political class, but he didn’t cause the problem. On the other hand, he wasn’t going to do anything to fix it either. Some people have asked me why I wanted to recall Davis when the problems weren’t his fault. I would recall the entire government of California if that were possible — but that wasn’t the question on the ballot. I voted to recall Davis not because he personally ruined the state’s fiscal stability (he didn’t), but because he was the only member of the political class that caused the problem that I could recall. My (admittedly slim) hope is that watching one of their leading members get smacked down will cause others to rethink their behavior.
So that’s why I wound up voting to recall Davis. Why’d I vote for Arnold to replace him?
- My goal for the recall was to shock the political class into changing its behavior. A vote for Bustamente would have been a vote for the status quo ante — appropriate if Davis personally was the problem, but not something that would create the broader shockwaves necessary to drive real change.
- McClintock seemed to have the best credentials and plan for restoring California’s financial stability. If the election had been for economic dictator I might have voted for him. But no matter how good McClintock’s policies would have been, he would never have been able to get them enacted by a hostile legislature controlled by the Democrats. McClintock would not have had the base of popular support or the personal charisma to get the public to pressure the legislature into making the necessary reforms.
- This leaves us with Arnold. Although I’m less confident about his policies, they’re at least a move in the right direction. More importantly, he’s a charismatic and popular outsider. Being an outsider means he might be able to shake the political class back into some semblance of actually governing. And being charismatic and popular means he can go directly to the people to get support for his inevitable clashes with the opposition in the legislature and elsewhere.
Summing up, I voted for Arnold because unlike the other candidates he offers hope. I can see a chance for him to fix some of the serious problems bedeviling the state. Neither of the other major candidates offered that. I guess you could call it Hobson’s Choice.
