October 8, 2007

Understanding post-partisanship

This op-ed by Tony Quinn is a good summary of Schwarzenegger's policy victories and failures over the past year or so, but I think it perpetuates a common misunderstanding of what the governor is trying to do. Under the headline, "Post-partisanship fails," Quinn says Schwarzenegger has failed because the Republicans in the Legislature don't like his policies. The only way for the governor accomplishes anything, then, is to give the Democrats what they want.

I have a slightly different take, which forms the basis for my book, "Party of One," to be published in January.

The central theme of my book is that to assess Schwarzenegger's performance, you have to go beyond the views of the 63 Republicans who serve in the Legislature, and a few hundred or thousand who work for the party behind the scenes. Unlike those folks, millions of Republican voters actually seem to agree with Schwarzenegger's policies, on everything from the environment to health care, infrastructure, crime, education, even social issues like gay rights. They give him high marks for his performance and voted for him in greater numbers than they did for the last two, very conservative Republican nominees for governor.

Sure, Schwarzenegger would love to get Republican votes in the Legislature for his proposals. And on things like the budget and the infrastructure bonds, when he absolutely needed their votes, he got them. But he also knows that since his views are closer to the mainstream than theirs, he can work with the Democrats to craft compromises that he can live with and which he thinks the voters will support.

That is what he is doing right now on health care, for example, pushing for an individual mandate that Democratic lawmakers oppose and a plan with a more modest burden on employers than the Democrats have proposed. Republican lawmakers hate the whole thing. That is their perogative. But there are signs that Republican voters might actually like it. Why should Schwarzenegger limit his policy options to what the Legislature will approve if he thinks there is a chance of getting something better some other way? If he gets something on the ballot and the voters reject it, that would be a failure. But Republicans support in the Legislature is not necessarily a good predictor of which way the state's voters will go.

On the environment, Republican lawmakers hated AB 32, but Schwarzenegger crafted a middle ground that had ambitious goals for limiting greenhouse gases while preserving a role for market forces. That's a provision that Democratic lawmakers have been bitterly complaining about almost since the day they claimed that they had hosed the governor in the negotations.

On prisons, Schwarzenegger fought for new cells (a Republican position), even though Democrats said they didn't want to build any more. The result was a compromise that included new beds and a new commitment to rehabilitation and parole reform.

On gay rights, while a Democrat would have signed a gay marraige bill by now, Schwarzenegger has consistently said that he respects the will of the voters in banning it, and the only way to change that is for a court to strike down the ban or for the voters to reverse themselves. Yet he has signed almost every bill sent to his desk to expand the rights of gay couples in domestic partnerships. Again, pretty consistent with the mainstream of the California electorate, and probably even the Republican Party. Go ask 10 Republicans on the street if the state should legalize gay marriage and six or seven might say no. But ask those same 10 if they think gay couples in civil unions should have the same rights as heterosexuals, and the numbers will be the complete reverse.

Next year, when education policy rises again to the top of the agenda, expect Schwarzenegger to focus on accountability and closing the achievement gap, local control and flexibility, rather than simply pouring more money into the system.

All of this is pretty consistent with where regular Republican voters are, even if it almost always fails to satisfy the handful of Republicans who serve in the Legislature.

Schwarzenegger has made plenty of mistakes, and he has some failures on his record. But post-partisanship should be judged by the final policy results, however achieved, not by the number of Republican votes in the Legislature for a particular proposal.

Posted by dweintraub on October 8, 2007 11:17 AM