The gubernatorial recall election demonstrates a truth about modern California: We have lost patience amid many crises, and any proposal that doesn’t lead to a fix is reason to mobilize.
California has always been on a fast track to the future. Let other Western states slowly come into focus, the 31st arrived fully formed on the merits of gold and the thousands of immigrants who pursued it.
“Californians,” said historian H.W. Brands with the University of Texas at Austin, “have learned to be impatient with patience. The idea of sticking to an unsatisfactory status quo doesn’t stick.”Taking risks was the quickest path to success and evidence of failure was reason to move on and try again, an impulse that has cut a deep channel in the California psyche. Evidence can be found in today’s recall election, said Brands, author of a history of the Gold Rush.
Little does it matter that the odds for the recall are long — of past attempts only one has succeeded — or that problems festering for decades often take longer to fix. Hopelessness and resignation challenge the notion of California’s exceptionalism and another aged trope.“Not many states have the word ‘dream’ associated with them,” said Mark Baldassare, president and chief executive of the Public Policy Institute of California.
The petition specifically charges the governor with endorsing laws that “favor foreign nationals, in our country illegally, over that of our own citizens”; imposing “sanctuary state status” on California; and failing to enforce immigration laws. In 1994, when faced with a lingering recession and reelection, Gov. Pete Wilson ran ads of people running through the San Ysidro border crossing with a voiceover,
“When you have a place that has become as ethically, racially, linguistically and culturally diverse as California,” Waldie said, “you will find people who regard all of that as a risk to their expectations of whom they can become or a risk to what their children can become.”Rapid change has left the electorate not so politically divided — the state is still solidly blue — as it is conflicted over what being blue means.
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