I finally finished reading Michael Lewis’s long piece in Vanity Fair. It’s good writing, with fascinating information, and quite a bit of style. It’s definitely worth the half-hour it takes to read. I learned, among other things, that the two most common causes of death for firefighters are heart attacks and truck crashes. I thought it would have been collapsing buildings or smoke inhalation or burns. Here’s another interesting bit. The author conducted at least part of his interview with former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger while riding bikes at breakneck speed around Venice Beach.
If there had not been a popular movement to remove sitting governor Gray Davis and the chance to run for governor without having to endure a party primary, he never would have bothered. “The recall happens and people are asking me, ‘What are you going to do?’ ” he says, dodging vagrants and joggers along the beach bike path. “I thought about it but decided I wasn’t going to do it. I told Maria I wasn’t running. I told everyone I wasn’t running. I wasn’t running.” Then, in the middle of the recall madness, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines opened. As the movie’s leading machine, he was expected to appear on The Tonight Show to promote it. En route he experienced a familiar impulse—the impulse to do something out of the ordinary. “I just thought, This will freak everyone out,” he says. “It’ll be so funny. I’ll announce that I am running. I told Leno I was running. And two months later I was governor.” He looks over at me, pedaling as fast as I can to keep up with him, and laughs. “What the fuck is that? ”
Yes. What the fuck is that? What kind of country are we living in where this is how the biggest state in the union selects its governor?
I have one more part I want to share because it pertains to the current governor of California and to our president.
A compelling book called California Crackup describes this problem more generally. It was written by a pair of journalists and nonpartisan think-tank scholars, Joe Mathews and Mark Paul, and they explain, among other things, why Arnold Schwarzenegger’s experience as governor was going to be unlike any other experience in his career: he was never going to win. California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the initiative process. Throw in term limits—no elected official now serves in California government long enough to fully understand it—and you have a recipe for generating maximum contempt for elected officials. Politicians are elected to get things done and are prevented by the system from doing it, leading the people to grow even more disgusted with them. “The vicious cycle of contempt,” as Mark Paul calls it. California state government was designed mainly to maximize the likelihood that voters will continue to despise the people they elect.
Again, absent the term limits and initiative problems, and with the two-thirds problem replaced by the filibuster, doesn’t this sound like what’s happening to the federal government?
If you are interested in California government – and frankly, you should be as much of what happens there later happens to the rest of the nation — check out this long-running progressive group blog:
http://www.calitics.com/
No, I am not a contributor.
I’ve been following that site for some time now but there seems to be low reader participation. I find that kinda odd for a CA-focused blog.
I remember during the recall I was living in Fremont, in the Bay Area, and I was in line at the grocery store when a 70+ year old man was chatting with the clerk. He was talking about how happy he was to get rid of Grey Davis and put Schwarzenegger in office. I told him Schwarzenegger was totally unqualified. The guy said, “He’s more qualified than Davis!” and stormed off.
That was the mentality — experience doesn’t matter, knowing anything at all doesn’t matter, just “throw the bums out” and everything will magically fix itself. That man, who lived most of his life in a California with better funding for almost everything, is probably gone by now, if he lived an average lifespan. He really didn’t care.
These people I think are a minority. But they are drastically more likely to vote, because voting is a convenient way for them to pretend that they care, like waving a flag.
Anti-intellectualism has a long sorry history in this country. As for California, I lived in various parts of the state while many of the propositions that turned the state into a monstrosity were passed. The term limits were especially awful. Expertise, as I am certain you are aware, takes years to gain. For most endeavors, one needs at least a decade’s experience in order to have any hope of becoming an expert. California lost many expert legislators under the ruse of sweeping out corrupt deadwood. People like John Vasconcellos could have and should been able to stay in office for as long as they were willing to run. The replacements have often been a shadow of those whom they replaced, but not necessarily from a lack of raw talent, but merely the lack of time to truly understand what they were doing. And they are more at the mercy of whatever lobbyists happen to be sniffing around their doors. California was never paradise, but until about three decades ago, it generally functioned okay.
term limits are one of those policies the rubes love and it’s also a good example of how democracy can strangle itself. I also recall people screaming bloody murder that california legislators made about 80k a year, less than someone can get working as a programmer or even a mid-level white collar job in the Silicon Valley. Not sure if that’s still true, but when someone has to maintain a home in LA and Sacramento, it didn’t seem like enough.
It’s the same attitude we see toward teachers – treat ’em like crap, fire them periodically for no reason, and that’ll fix everything! Same solutions, different set of employees.
It’s not just the rubes who love term limits. The fascination with politics-without-politicians is bi-partisan.
From the linked article, a succinct reply:
Gray Davis was a corrupt vindictive slug. Schwarzenegger at least tried.
Dwight Eisenhower had no (formal) political experience either, but in retrospect he was a pretty good President and surprisingly Progressive.
I’ll concede that anyone that could keep people like Churchill, DeGaulle , Patton, et cetera in line had practical political experience.
Any facts to back up this statement?
>>Gray Davis was a corrupt vindictive slug.
ahnold did NOT “try”, he insulted the legislature, couldn’t deliver any Republican votes, talked loud and achieved nothing.
You have presented the best analysis of why something like the #occupywallstreet movement exists and why it is not the same old usual protest types (although those are who the corporate media focus on). Take a look at the You Tubes of the general assemblies for Occupy Tulsa and Occupy Charlotte. There is a general frustration with the way the system has been rigged. There is a frustration that good people go into government and are completely shut down.
The only way you can deal with that sort of structural gridlock is to go outside the system and demand that the system change. Either the system responds to that petition, or it loses legitimacy. What the debt ceiling crisis said to many people is that we are in that serious a political crisis. One approaching a crisis of legitimacy. So go to the streets and holler at them and see if they will shape up. See if they will any longer respond to the will of the people. See if they can respond as human beings instead of being locked into the media manipulating messaging of politicians. See if the parties can do something for the benefit of the country instead of just for the benefit of their own power. (A popular movement could undo most of the damage in California through initiatives.) Actually use primary elections again to select candidates instead of purging parties.
Remember it was the progressive movement of the 20th century that got primaries, direct election of officials, nonpartisan technocratic boards, and initiatives.
OWS is looking pretty promising from here – I’m pretty far away and not much coverage. Saw a great sign on the brief news coverage: “I lost a job and found an occupation”. that that constituency is involved very promising as far as I’m concerned.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I’m having trouble deciding whether Perry’s flameout more resembles Rudy Giuliani’s or Fred Thompson’s. It really is starting to look like Romney may carry the nomination, insofar as he’s the only one that’s been polling with any real consistency. I still just can’t believe the “party of Jesus” would ever really vote for a Mormon; it’d be like actually carrying through with nominating a black man.
All of which is of course seriously off-topic.
I’m glad to see you add term limits to the set of problems. Too many people see it as a panacea. In my opinion, if someone truly needs to be thrown out, you should be able to convince 50+% of the voters of that.
That goes along with the public disdain with “professional politicians”. Don’t they want professional lawyers, professional doctors, professional plumbers and carpenters? Why do they want amateur politicians? Do they really think the job is that easy? They should sit through a C-SPAN session without going to sleep or try explaining the arcane process of sending a bill through Congress.
Paul B. Farrell: A new Lost Decade is leading to revolution
Read the rest of it.
Excellent – thanks for the link.
Great article. He spells it all out.