SAN DIEGO -- From this metropolis to the rural stretches near the Oregon border, California's contentment with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is palpable. And measurable: at 65 percent, his job approval after eight months in office is five points higher than ever achieved by his hero, Gov. Reagan. Schwarzenegger's success -- a happy audience is an entertainer's sovereign measure of success -- involves substantive and atmospheric achievements.
Bismarck, a cynic, supposedly said about dealing with political opponents that you can do anything with children if you will play with them. Schwarzenegger, no cynic, is a genuinely ebullient and friendly fellow whose report card says he plays well with others.
By bestowing on them such kindnesses as invitations to join him for cigars in his smoking tent on the Capitol lawn, he has done in Sacramento what George Bush vowed to do but has failed to do in Washington -- produce an ambiance of bipartisanship. But in Sacramento, as elsewhere, bipartisanship often is the elevation of the shared interests of the political class over the public interest.
In Washington, last November's passage by Congress of the prescription drug entitlement was made possible by the bipartisan pretense that its 10-year cost would be only $400 billion. That perishable fiction -- a few weeks later it was adjusted sharply upward, not for the last time -- enabled Republicans and Democrats to feign fiscal responsibility while currying favor with a huge constituency, the elderly.
In Sacramento, bipartisanship has produced what probably will be a very perishable solution to the state's fiscal crisis. Schwarzenegger, who was made governor by a plebiscitary process -- the recall of Gov. Gray Davis -- promptly used California's plebiscitary political culture, and the initiative process, to pass Proposition 57, authorizing the state to borrow $15 billion.
State Sen. Tom McClintock, the conservative who had the temerity -- lese-majeste, it seemed -- to run against Schwarzenegger in the recall scramble, says that although Proposition 57 was sold to voters as borrowing merely to cover past expenditures, at least $2 billion of it will be used to paper over subsequent spending decisions. He says that in the 14 months from May 1 through next June 30, there will be a 54 percent increase -- from $33 billion to $50.7 billion -- in debt backed by general fund revenues.