California to Gray Davis, “You’re fired!” So we should hope. There are times when the incapable need to be removed. Trimming-of-the-fat can make an office stronger by pushing out those who weren’t really suited for the job in the first place.
Such should be said of the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento, where Gray Davis will spend his final days as chief executive in the Golden State. Opinionists around the country decry the recall effort in California as upsetting of a political establishment headlock that has gripped America for decades. Oh contrar, you minions of tyranny, “good riddance” says California if it becomes the first state in too long that will truly “throw the bum out”. Gray Davis has perfect hair, and he is a perfectly awful governor.
Let loose the dogs of petition gathering, and let Californians line up around the block to be among the last couple-hundred thousand to put their name on the line. Prune pickers and Silicon Valley geeks have an opportunity to make history. The ground on America’s golden coast may shake from time to time, but we are better if politicians shake more often. Yes, better that those who govern fear the people than if those who are governed fear the government.
The old saying, “as California goes, so goes the country” finally lays cheer in hearts on the East Coast. For too long, politicians have let us down and wallowed behind a “what are you going to do about it?” fat officialdom. If this message from the West Coast reverberates over mountains, valleys, prairies, to the Atlantic Ocean, a new intolerance for corrupt power-hungry elites will rewrite the contract between government and the people. You work for us, and if you let arrogance transform you into the unacceptable, you’re fired.
Can booting Davis be anything other than healthy? Apart from a social metamorphosis that is signaled by the California recall, there is yet another not-so-small problem with Governor Davis. When he took office in 1998, life in California was immensely better than it is after five years under the Davis administration. Three decades of innovation from San Diego to Vallejo had brought Americans benefits of technology, and laid the foundation for an information revolution. Thanks, Governor Davis, for blowing it.
Within his first four years as Governor of California, our prosperous high-tech gold rush had become a bust. A state that has hosted some of our most brilliant advancements in computers, rocketry, physics, chemistry… the list goes on, could no longer keep the electricity on all day and all night. The exodus of people leaving that state is, for the first time in its 150-year history, greater than the number of Americans who are moving to CA. Western cities such as Phoenix, Denver, and Las Vegas are now the fastest growing in America. People are eastbound trying to escape Gray Davis’ regime of debacle.
The rest of America finds it too easy to ignore our countrymen in California. Let them eat apricots, we may say. They’ve got better weather than anywhere else, their coastline is absolutely stunning, and the arrogant cadre of “beautiful people” inspire little more than contempt among hard-working people. Too many leftists in too many harebrained movements have sprouted in California. So why should America care if the left coast suffers for its own socialist constituency? They have what they deserve in Sacramento.
Nevertheless, California is not California’s California. It is, after all, America’s California. The state boasts (and boy do they boast) the sixth largest economy in the world. If you speak to Californians regularly, you’ll get sick of hearing about that. That is, until you remind them the only reason their economy is so large is because of the rest of our country. America supports both military bases and Hollywood. We provide the market for wine and technology coming out of the great valleys in their state.
Without 49 other United States, California is nothing. And California suffering Gray Davis means America is less than its best. Her flag may call it a republic, but the Golden State is only one part of the world’s greatest republic. God help them, and let them rid themselves of Mr. Davis.
We should hope Gray Davis finds his own “better fit” doing something else, instead of disrupting our nation’s most populous state. America will be stronger without Governor Davis in Sacramento. And for the first time in far too long, we’ll have something else for which we can say “thanks” to California.