It's Friday, the day of the week when I pass along a quotation intended to be uplifting or enlightening. Today's comes from the artist formerly known (and still sometimes known) as Kanye West.
Our story has its roots in the results of a recall election that took place 19 years ago today. On that Tuesday, California voters went to the polls to face a question few chief executives would want decided by an up-or-down vote during an economic downturn. It didn't end well for the incumbent governor.
Gray Davis was certainly prepared for the job he'd won in 1998. Raised in a Republican family in Southern California, he graduated from Stanford University, where he was on the golf team, before going to law school at Columbia. He also served as a U.S. Army captain in Vietnam, an experience that helped him become a Democrat. Handsome and suave, Davis even had a Hollywood connection: As a young man he had a romantic interlude in Hawaii with future star Cybill Shepherd, who years later would pronounce him "a good kisser."
As his political career progressed, Davis earned a reputation as a thoughtful policy wonk who served as chief of staff for Jerry Brown in Sacramento -- during Brown's first two-term stint as governor -- a capable assemblyman in the legislature, state controller, and lieutenant governor. Not particularly warm and fuzzy, Davis was nonetheless dedicated to public service and keeping the Democratic Party from becoming too kooky. None of it was enough.
When California voters went to the polls on Oct. 7, 2003, they faced a bifurcated ballot. The first question was whether to recall Gov. Gray Davis. The second was to choose his potential replacement from among 135 gubernatorial wannabes who had secured the requisite number of signatures to have their name placed on the ballot.
The long roster of candidates was led by Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, film star Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican state Sen. (and now U.S. Congressman) Tom McClintock, and Green Party leader Peter Camejo. Those contenders were joined by a colorful collection of personalities and pols that included Arianna Huffington, Peter Ueberroth, Larry Flynt, Gary Coleman, Bill Simon, and a Native American artist with the evocative name David Laughing Horse Robinson -- none of whom received even 1% of the vote.
At the time, California's economy was reeling in the wake of the dot-com bubble burst and the state's budget was a mess. Davis had exacerbated the problems with spending that proved unsustainable. Voters also faulted the governor for his handling of an electricity crisis earlier in the decade, and for his own fundraising practices during his 2002 reelection campaign.
The governor knew that his fellow Californians were restive. He also realized that his reserved personality made him made an easy foil for voters' frustration. As he faced the recall, Davis told me that people didn't need "to do backflips of joy into the voting booth" -- they just had to walk in there and pull the lever next to his name.
Some 4 million citizens did exactly that, but another 4,976,274 voted thumbs-down, and Davis' governorship was over. For his replacement, Schwarzenegger won, of course, garnering nearly as many votes as the other 134 candidates combined.
The "Governator" left office at the beginning of 2011 amid a bursting housing bubble, steep unemployment in California, and yet another budget crisis in Sacramento. His job approval ratings upon his departure were around 23%. The budget shortfall he left to once-and-future Gov. Jerry Brown was close to $28 billion.
Democrats who had opposed him felt vindicated, but they had not distinguished themselves over the way they characterized him. They never quite knew what to make of a Hollywood icon who was not a liberal and who unabashedly loved America. They were left attacking a successful immigrant over, among other things, his accent. Hypocrisy is too mild a word.
For their part, Republicans misunderstood the moral of the 2003 recall saga. They tried to recall the state's current governor, Gavin Newsom, during a time of statewide prosperity. It was odd, and it failed, and only made Newsom politically stronger. It also reminded me that in the 1960s my own grandmother circulated petitions seeking signatures to have Ronald Reagan recalled. I've never asked my father about this, but it must have been a bit awkward because Dad was covering Reagan for the San Jose Mercury News at the time.
In any event, as another immigrant who settled in California once sang, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. Despite his unpopularity, Arnold Schwarzenegger (another foreigner who immigrated to the Golden State) left behind a legacy of environmental and political reforms that made it easier for future lawmakers and governors to get a handle on the state's problems. These good-government reforms ranged from changing the way redistricting is handled to passing a $40 billion bond measure to help restore the state's aging infrastructure.
"For the next decade or two," former California GOP legislator James Brulte predicted, "politicians of both parties will be going to ribbon-cuttings and groundbreakings, taking credit for themselves for initiatives that began under Arnold Schwarzenegger."
I take Brulte's point, but nearly two decades later, we've definitely moved on. At a ceremonial event yesterday, Newsom -- flanked by the governors of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia -- signed a non-binding commitment to reduce global warming. Did Newsom give Schwarzenegger credit for signing California's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006? Did he thank Arnold for supporting the Million Solar Roofs Initiative the same year or working with the Obama administration to show the federal government how fuel emission standards could be raised without hurting the automotive industry or the economy? No, no, and no. What Newsom said was, "Eat your heart out, Fox News."
I'm not kidding. Newsom was speaking at the Presidio, where I was born – there was once an Army hospital there -- with the scenic San Francisco Bay as a backdrop. The governor apparently has taken umbrage at Fox News' various segments on homelessness and excessive liberalism in our mutual hometown. "That's San Francisco ‘crackup'? For real? Tucker Carlson?" Newsom added. "These guys double down on stupidity every night trying to make the case for subsidizing the very problem we are all trying to solve."
The same day, Tucker Carlson was hosting polymath artist Kanye West, who likes to go by the name "Ye" these days. Kanye's previous expressions of affections for Donald Trump blew up his career, his marriage, and his reputation, but he still has something to say. He said it most recently in the form of a "White Lives Matter" shirt unveiled during Paris Fashion Week. Wikipedia, in lockstep with the establishment media, promptly labeled the sentiment as "white supremacy." The artist in question called it something else. He said it was an "obvious" point to make because "they do matter."
It's an eclectic interview, which you can view for yourself, but one line of West's lines struck me. "The realest people," he said, "are going to make you feel uncomfortable at first."
And that is our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.
