As Goes California . . .: Still the leader-ominously so - importance of California in national politics

National Review, Sept 25, 2000 by John O'Sullivan

When Fred Barnes published his article "Why California Doesn't Matter" in the July 31 Weekly Standard, he seemed to be arguing a straightforward thesis: that California was no longer a significant influence on American politics because it was no longer a leading indicator of the political future. In the past California had decided presidential elections, as when its votes gave Richard Nixon his squeaker victory in 1968, and pioneered voter rebellions, as when Proposition 13 sparked the tax revolt of the late 1970s. But that was all over now. The Golden State had become too eccentric politically, too remote from national trends, even too Democratic, to be a reliable weathervane in politics. It was the wave of the past.

Barnes's article attracted a great deal of attention. It received a liberal rejoinder, contesting both halves of its thesis, from Peter Schrag, who pointed out in the Sacramento Bee that the state containing both Hollywood and Silicon Valley could hardly be called politically irrelevant. It provoked skeptical responses in The Weekly Standard's correspondence section from, among others, Ward Connerly, who defended his Proposition 209-which prohibited race and gender preferences-against Barnes, who had dismissed its national impact. And because Barnes is both a firm conservative and a fair-minded professional journalist, the article aroused particular interest on the right. Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley millionaire who funded Proposition 227 (the measure that overturned bilingual education in California), and human-biodiversity guru Steve Sailer both made essentially the same criticism: that, in Unz's words, Barnes's article had put "a positive spin on the near-complete collapse of the California Republican party."

For the most part, these reactions were provoked by the sheer novelty of Barnes's thesis; we are so used to hearing California discussed as the lodestar of American politics that it was refreshing to hear it roundly dismissed as unimportant. The article was therefore taken with a certain anti-California schadenfreude by many readers. But there was more to it than that. The more one read it, the more it seemed to be written in a sort of code. Though Barnes is usually a writer of exemplary directness, he seemed here to be saying both less and more than he meant. Signs pointed readers in one direction, but when they followed them, they ended up at the other end of town. It was almost as if Barnes were planting forbidden thoughts in the heads of his readers by the subtle device of not mentioning them.

This roundabout odyssey began with the arguments employed to prove that California was no longer a significant political influence on the rest of America. Almost every one of them was either a transparent irrelevancy or plainly false. Thus, Barnes pointed out that the last time California's votes had decided a presidential election was in 1968. True enough-but what of it? The reason-namely, that all recent elections have been won by margins too large for any single state to make a difference-tells us nothing at all about California. Similarly, he suggests that California by itself is unlikely to hand over the House of Representatives to the Democrats in November. But the reason he adduces is that California will likely split its votes, or that Democratic victories there will be offset by losses elsewhere. Again, so what? The same could be said of any state; but California is the only state we can now imagine swinging the House to the Democrats by virtue of its votes alone. And, third, he maintains that California's referenda are no longer genuine populist initiatives that inspire national trends. But the reasons he gives are that Proposition 209 has not persuaded George W. Bush to end race and gender preferences (when, surely, the more important evidence is that it sparked a similar victory in Washington State and was kept off the ballot in Florida only by the courts) and that Proposition 187 has been vetoed by the courts (when the vetoing by courts of legislation is itself the single biggest trend in American politics).

Of course, none of these arguments addresses the basic facts of California's political life. As Peter Schrag pointed out, California has 12 percent of America's population and one-fifth of the electoral votes needed to become president; by the 2002 election, it will likely have 54 House seats as a result of a redistricting controlled by Democrats. Such a state would be politically significant even if all its inhabitants were to vote for the rump Reform party's John Hagelin in the hope of being taught how to fly (a contingency that cannot be completely ruled out).

Now, Barnes is not a stupid man. He must be as aware as his readers that his arguments about California prove nothing more than that he possesses a greater verbal agility than the average political commentator. So it is of some interest when he passes from notably failing to demonstrate that California is no longer important to proving conclusively that it is atypical. He writes: "By the late 1990s . . . California was more Democratic, more pro-President Clinton, and more pro-abortion than the rest of America. Its population was more Hispanic and Asian. Its business community was more culturally liberal." His explanation of these changes is also persuasive-indeed, undeniable. They are produced by dramatic demographic changes-"notably the doubling of the Latino electorate . . . The new Latino voters tend to be younger, less likely to speak English, and monolithically Democratic." The result of the new ethnic composition of the electorate is that only one statewide office is at present held by a Republican.