COMMENTARY: Moderation is Nice But No Cure-All
By Dan WaltersSacramento Bee
Arnold Schwarzenegger's landslide re-election last week proved for the umpteenth time that the path to political success in California is to be found in the middle of the ideological road.
Every California governor elected in the last generation has been perceived by voters -- accurately or not -- as being the more centrist of the contenders. One has to go back to the Watergate-tinged election of 1974 to find an instance where the more ideologically polarizing figure -- Jerry Brown -- emerged with a win, and it was a very narrow one at that.
It may displease blood-red conservatives and true-blue liberals, but the simple fact is that if a candidate doesn't appeal strongly to independents and moderates, he or she will lose in any bid for high office in California, especially the governorship.
There is, however, an ironic caveat: centrism and bipartisanship may be the keys to winning elections, but they don't necessarily guarantee success once in office. And that is the pithiest uncertainty surrounding Schwarzenegger's historic governorship as he heads into his second term. By forging compromises with the Legislature's Democrats on infrastructure bonds, global warming legislation and raising the minimum wage this year, Schwarzenegger revived his political career and won re-election. Moderates and independents, by their nature, like the notions of bipartisanship and compromise.
Notably, however, Schwarzenegger and the Democrats did business largely on Democratic policy issues without Republican legislators. So the "bipartisanship" he's still touting as an effective approach to governance was really just one Republican -- himself -- and a bunch of Democrats, although he was careful not to unduly alienate the state's business community.
What happens now that Schwarzenegger is re-elected? Can he continue to rack up deals with Democrats on the myriad issues that either he wants to pursue or that are forced onto his plate? Or will he settle for picking more low-hanging fruit that will add heft to his gubernatorial resume and skip over the most intractable -- and most important -- issues?
The perennially optimistic Schwarzenegger foresees more bipartisan deals on health care, educational accountability, infrastructure improvement, prison reform and taking legislative and congressional redistricting out of the hands of self-interested politicians.
"These are just some of the issues we will be working on," he declared Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2006 to a post-election issues conference staged by the policy institute named for the late Gov. Pat Brown. "I'm filled with hope and optimism," he added. "People are yearning for politicians to stop bickering."
Yearning though they may be, it doesn't necessarily follow that the more difficult issues such as health care and prison reform lend themselves to political compromise. They involve massive amounts of money and powerful interest groups that are oblivious to the larger public interest and have the capacity to block enactment of anything not to their liking.
The limits to Schwarzenegger-style compromise are indicated in what happened after he and the Legislature fashioned a high-concept global warming bill whose serious provisions wouldn't take effect until his governorship is in the history books. After he had basked in the glow of extremely elaborate bill-signing ceremonies, Schwarzenegger's administration issued implementing procedures clearly aimed at placating a skeptical business community -- but they immediately drew fire from Democrats and environmentalists as undoing the deal they had made.
It's one thing to enact some sort of symbolic, feel-good, save-the-world measure, but when its provisions involve real money and bottom lines, other forces come into play.
Reach Dan Walters at (916) 321-1195 or dwalters@sacbee.com. Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, www.shns.com.