California Political Forest 2008

Ladies and gentlemen, we face important issues that should unite us.I believe we have the opportunity to move past partisanship, to move past bipartisanship, to move to post partisanship.Postpartisanship is not simply Republicans and Democrats each bringing their proposals to the table and then working out differences.No. Postpartisanship is Republicans and Democrats actively giving birth to new ideas together.I believe it would promote a new centrism and a new trust in our political system.And I believe we have a window to do it right now.Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Second inaugural speech, Jan. 5, 2007The window of postpartisanship in California didn't stay open long.After a political rebound in 2006 that saw Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger sign the first ontime budget since 2000, his reelection in a landslide, and voter approval of a bipartisan $40 billion infrastructure bond package, it looked for a moment as if fate were again smiling on the golden state and its golden governor.Schwarzenegger's second inaugural in January brimmed with talk of post partisanship and ambitious goals on health care, water, education, prisons, and the environment.But what a difference six months can make.Partisanship returned like a cyborg from the future.The 2007 budget was 56 days late, the third latest in 40 years.It was held up until Labor Day in the state Senate by the Republican bloc, until the governor agreed to use the line item veto to cut $700 million in spending.The Republican leadership also turned its back on the governor's health care plan.And as partisanship is always exacerbated by budget woes, in October, the Legislative Analyst delivered the bad news that an $8$10 billion deficit looms because of decreasing state revenues and increased spending, including interest on the $40 billion in infrastructure bonds.Anticipated initiatives for health care reform and water projects may be headed from the legislature to the February and June ballots, but their support will be weakened by partisan differences, and vulnerable to relentless ad campaigns by deeppocketed opponents."On the governmental mess that he inherited from his predecessors," wrote Peter Schrag in the Sacramento Bee, "Schwarzenegger's first fouryear 'term' ends pretty much where it began, stuck with an ongoing gap between revenues and spending."It's a gap that Schwarzenegger helped perpetuate with the $4 billion cut in the vehicle license fee that was virtually his first act in office and with the borrowing and deferrals that were always the chief accomplishments of California's latterday bipartisanship." 1 And with the housing slump, higher gas prices, fires to the south, and oil spills to the north, Californians are gloomy again, which isn't going to help in the voting booth.A statewide