Does America need a recall?

Yet, the measures David Broder deplores are the very safety valves of democracy. They are needed now more than ever. For there is a seething hostility in America toward an elite that refuses to deal with the twin crises of the country and California: the massive invasion of poor immigrants, legal and illegal, that is bankrupting states, and the hemorrhaging of jobs to Latin America, Asia and China because of trade deals negotiated by Bush I & II and Bill Clinton.

Americans have said in every way possible they want the invasion halted and the export of manufacturing jobs ended. Americans never voted for open borders, NAFTA or GATT.

Californians are to be commended, not condemned, for signing petitions in the millions to hold an election to fire Davis. But there is a serious question whether any governor, no matter how courageous, can resolve the crisis California confronts.

For no governor can halt the export of jobs when the cost of manufacturing in China is one-tenth what it is in the Golden State. Only a president can do that. No governor can stop the invasion of California by poor immigrants whose consumption of tax dollars is bankrupting the state. Only the Feds can do that by enforcing laws they refuse to enforce. And no governor can halt the exodus of taxpayers from Mexifornia to Nevada, Idaho, Arizona and Colorado.

Having faced a $38 billion deficit in 2003, California may face a $20 billion deficit in 2004. And as Arnold is committed to repealing the tripling of the car tax under Davis, this will cost the state treasury another $4 billion.

Absent a revival in the national economy that would help fill California's coffers with new tax revenue, there are only two ways this deficit can be closed: tax hikes, which the governor-elect has pledged to oppose, and deeper cuts in state spending. Yet, those cuts are likely to accelerate the exodus.

As for the recall, let us hope the idea spreads eastward and imperils every governor who behaves as Gray Davis did. For, as Jefferson wrote to Madison only six years after the guns fell silent in the Revolution, "I hold it that a little rebellion, now and again, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."