California politics: October 2009 Archives

Jonathan asks whether we want a political hack who has sold him or herself over a long political career or a self-financing egomaniac.

Diversity is the in-thing in a progressive state such as California. And if you ask me, we need a diversity of political hacks and self-financing egomaniacs in state elections.

But what we really need are people who will moderate a grown-up discussion about what we can reasonably expect of ourselves as a state. Why do we keep making the same mistakes as voters? Why can't we spot leaders who are truly committed to fiscal sanity? Is it because we're not committed to it? Are we willing to make hard trade-offs?

Californians have always tended to be pioneers. But pioneers tend to lack the civic spirit found in other great regions. Indeed, studies show that areas that are strong in civic spirit and volunteerism are busts in economic innovation -- and vice versa. Californians aren't interested in civic investment or social cohesion to the extent other world regions are.

And yet the progressive side of the California spirit also creates some costly burdens, and some naive ones, that erode our greatest asset -- our famed competitiveness. Elected officials, hacks or self-financed egomaniacs alike, are powerless to cure this. Maybe we need a Teacher-in-Chief to help us grow up. That's not far from the role that I hoped Obama would play for the nation as a whole after our latest economic binge resulted in The Great Hangover.