Arnold's Wild State: For California and for conservatives, populism has its ups and downs.

Eastern elites thought California had gone around the bend when it sent ex- actor Ronald Reagan to the governor's mansion in 1966. The New York Times, in a rare editorial endorsement for a California election, attacked Reagan and implored voters to "understand where reality ends and fantasy begins."

Imagine what the Times will think if the Terminator is elected.

Keepers of the conventional wisdom need to get over the notion that the California recall and Arnold Schwarzenegger's prospective governorship are just another expression of Californian flakiness. Just as Reagan's 1966 election marked a major turning point in American politics, the California recall may be the herald of a new turn in politics across the country. The pundits who have suggested in recent years that California is no longer a political trendsetter-as The Weekly Standard did in "California Doesn't Matter," a 2000 cover story-are wrong.

The Gray Davis recall represents a new chapter in the politics of populism, which began on the left but has become a phenomenon of the right ever since Reagan's promise to "ignite a prairie fire that sweeps the land." Both recalls and California's legendary initiative process were originally products of Progressivism, and were meant to serve liberal ends. Indeed, both procedures-for recalls and initiatives-were designed specifically to enable the people to break the grip of special interests on government. The modern initiative process is so costly, however, that in practice, only moneyed interests can successfully sponsor initiatives.

The most successful state initiatives have been launched from the right, starting with Proposition 13, in 1978, and continuing on through term limits, three-strikes criminal sentencing, immigration reform, bans on racial quotas, the Defense of Marriage Act, and tax-limitation measures. Meanwhile, liberal initiatives on the environment, gun control, health care, taxation, and so on-with a few notable exceptions, such as California's Prop. 65 toxic-labeling law-have gone down in flames. This is one reason liberal interest groups prefer to go to the courts rather than to the people to achieve their policy objectives. Even conservatives who harbor principled misgivings about the initiative process can't help but feel: "Thank God for the initiative!"

Yet one of the paradoxes of the last decade is that conservative ballot initiatives continued to flourish even as California went through a long, slow slide to the left. As recently as 1996, Republicans had a narrow majority in the state assembly. (This was after recalling two Republican legislators who had defected to support Speaker Willie Brown; the present recall is not entirely without precedent.) Republicans were running close in the state senate, and held the governorship and about half the statewide offices. Today they are badly outnumbered in both houses of the legislature, and do not hold a single statewide office.

The initiative process itself may partly account for the GOP's slide. With most of the big issues coming directly to voters, the initiative process has effectively become a political safety valve, diluting partisan political accountability. Accordingly, Democrats have been able to dodge voter sentiment on a wide range of issues. And money and energy that might have gone into winning offices were channeled into sponsoring initiatives instead.

Of course, all this is merely a realistic concession to a troublesome political fact of life in California: It's far easier to promote an idea, through an initiative, than it is to promote a person for office. California is so big that it is exceedingly difficult for an aspiring politician to become well known statewide. One reason Rep. Darrell Issa dropped out of the race to replace Gov. Davis is that he has almost no name recogition outside his own congressional district. The state's 53 members of Congress, who spend most of their time in Washington, are similarly unknown to most voters.

State legislators have the same problem because Sacramento-though the capital of the world's fifth-largest economy-is a news-media backwater. Not one television station in Los Angeles, San Francisco, or San Diego keeps a reporter or camera crew in Sacramento, so there is little TV coverage of state politics. And since California's media markets are so large, it simply costs too much to run televised advertisements for most state and national races. All of which helps to explain why there is a real premium on celebrity in California politics, and why, despite a determined campaign that energized much of the conservative base, Bill Simon was ultimately unable to break through against Davis. Celebrity offers a degree of insulation from the kind of personal attacks and campaign mistakes that would hobble a relative unknown such as Simon. Had Schwarzenegger run last year, chances are he would have thrashed Davis.

Of course, it is possible to climb slowly through the ranks of state politics-that's how Davis established himself, and it's why state senator Tom McClintock, who has lost two narrow races for state controller, is now running third in the early polls behind Schwarzenegger and Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante, the lone Democrat in the field. With a revived campaign, Simon could still split the conservative vote with McClintock. While most conservatives would prefer Simon or McClintock over Schwarzenegger or late entry Peter Ueberroth, either Simon or McClintock is certain to face all- out war from Democrats and their constituent groups, many of whom have embraced the notion that the entire recall is a pet project of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Conservatives' hesitation over Schwarzenegger centers not so much on his social liberalism; rather, their concern is that he will bring the same elements to the job that made Jesse Ventura so feckless in Minnesota. Precisely because of his enormous celebrity, Schwarzenegger is the one person who might be able to intimidate the state legislature into making significant reforms-and California's legislature needs cleaning out even more than the governor's office. Schwarzenegger is right to attack special interests in Sacramento; the legislature today is a wholly owned subsidiary of liberal interest groups, especially the public-employee unions and the trial lawyers. After 16 years of Republican governors, the liberal interests and their toadies in the legislature went wild when Davis came into office, passing union- and trial-lawyer-friendly bills by the bushel. During his first term, Gov. Davis actually vetoed or fended off a lot of liberal legislation, though in recent months he has caved completely in a bid to buy votes. Meanwhile, both the number of public employees and their salaries have soared.

The big question is whether Schwarzenegger is serious about breaking this stranglehold; if he isn't, he shouldn't have bothered to run. To succeed, he would have to name names and campaign against Democratic legislators next year. I would guess the odds are no better than one in three that he will bring a genuine "Terminator" mentality to Sacramento. He might offer other political strengths if he makes party-building a priority.

In the meantime, conservatives need to spend a little time pondering the law of unintended consequences. If the Davis recall succeeds, liberal interest groups in California will have the means to return the favor some day, and probably won't hesitate to take it if they get a chance. A successful recall could lead to the de facto transformation of California into something like a parliamentary democracy-with a populist/Progressive version of a "no-confidence" vote, followed immediately by the elevation of a new prime minister. In a state that is likely to remain dominated by Democrats, this recall might easily come back to haunt Republicans.

In addition, like other California innovations, the recall could spread, and the resulting dynamic could be very different in other states. Might the recall set off a new national wave of hair-trigger populism? Eighteen states now have provisions for the recall of their governors. Still, it is heartening to note the number of liberal thinkers suddenly rediscovering the old republican case against too much "direct democracy." It looks like they're betting that recalls are likely to continue to be much more successful for the populist Right than for the unpopular Left. It also looks like Gray Davis could well go down in history as the one Democrat even less popular than Al Gore.