The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

It's the day before the California recall election and I want to take this opportunity to lambaste the whole enterprise.

I preface my criticism with my thoughts on Gray Davis: Davis rarely misses an opportunity to disappoint me. He has a lot of milquetoasty policies, and I was seriously disappointed with the comments he made after the "under God" part of the pledge was correctly ruled an unconstitutional government imposition on religious freedom. (I forget exactly what he said, but he suddenly showed signs of being a typical Republican demagogue which is not something I want from my political officials nor expect from a Democrat.)

But my opinion of Davis was improved when I watched a Frontline special on the California energy crisis. True, Davis made some bad deals. But at the time, I'm not sure he had much choice and had Enron not collapsed, they might have seemed like good deals on hindsight. California was being held over a barrel in no way due to Davis, and he did what he could to extricate it from a situation that came up only due to legacy policies from a previous administration.

The bigger problem is that he's a man with absolutely no political preservation instincts. This generally wouldn't bother me and I might be inclined to construe it as an asset, in that he'd seem to be free to govern as he thinks best one issue at a time. On the other hand, his middleground reasonableness has become a liability as he's been perceived as a weak leader. The perception eventually becomes the truth and he has difficulty in leading his own party's platform despite controlling both the governor's office and the legislature.

This is probably why Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to have appeal. If there's one thing he should be good at it's charismatic leadership. Unfortunately that appear to be the ONLY thing he's good at and as such he is attrociously unqualified to lead, as Orrin Hatch reminded the National Press Club today, the fifth largest economy in the world. When the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals initially enjoined the election, Schwarzenegger's ignorant comments on the matter showed absolutely no understanding of the legal system, nor any intellectual curiosity to explore whether there was any merit in anything he didn't understand.

The most egregious aspect about the whole nonsense, though, is that it stinks of an undemocratic power grab. The Republicans had their chance to win the governorship quite recently. But instead of nominating Richard Riordan, a moderate who would have appealed to many of Davis's disenchanted masses, they put forth Bill Simon, a demagogue unpalatable to most reasonable people. Now the Republicans want a second bite at the apple and the wrangling of the financially powerful has allowed them to get it. Recall elections have their purpose, but such purpose would be to derail a criminally irresponsible, inept, or corrupted public official from wreaking actual damage. To use it as a power grab would be the antithetical embodiment of any good such a measure might be able to bring.