DAVIS' GRANDSTANDING HELPED NO ONE BUT HIM.

Byline: RICHARD NEMEC Local View

FOR some reason, I still can't support the recall, even though I find little about Gov. Gray Davis I can support. But I categorically dislike his penchant for trying to ride the coattails of anything remotely positive that happens as being the result of his stewardship of the nation's most populous (and once most prosperous) state.

His prepared statement issued within a couple of hours of the Eastern electricity blackout is a case in point. Its screaming headline: ``Gov. Davis Announces the Power Outages on the East Coast Pose No Threat to the California Power Grid.''

Whew!

Anyone remotely aware of how electricity is produced and distributed in this world knows how lame that statement is.

There is no isolated California power grid. There is the Eastern half of the nation as one large interconnected grid, minus Texas, and the Western half as another interconnected grid. Texas serves as a third, separate grid unto itself.

California, its power supply and its governor were mere bystanders to this ``cascading'' phenomenon.

But Davis is not alone in grandstanding.

Out of Washington, D.C., where press releases tumble out faster than campaign contributions, the Consumer Energy Council of America wasted no time in issuing a we-told-you-so reaction to the blackout, observing that Eastern consumers had been ``caused grievous harm'' by the cascading power outage, which undeniably demonstrated what the group has long been warning about - a ``fragile'' electrical infrastructure!

If the situation were not so serious, it would prompt more laughter.

You cannot operate grids with 20,000 to 50,000 megawatts flowing over them and not have breakdowns. You hope to isolate and limit the extensiveness of the problems, but problems occur, and more often than the general public knows.

If the balance of power on the wires and demand at homes and business are thrown grossly out of whack, the system is designed for generation plants to ``trip off'' to save them and the transmission grid from sustaining millions of dollars of damage.

Nevertheless, within six hours of the blackout news spreading westward, Davis' press secretary was offering ``reflections on the New York blackout,'' comparing what an act of God did to the entire Eastern region with what an ``act of Enron'' did to California, which suffered only controlled, rolling blackouts in 2000-01.

Citing record peak electric demand three weeks ago here and as recently as this week for Southern California Edison, Davis' press guy said, ``No one blinked an eye. That's because of the governor's aggressive efforts in approving new power plants and a continued commitment to conservation and alternative energy.'' He let everyone know that Davis would be on ``Larry King Live'' to discuss ``how California has avoided blackouts this year.''

If this were a catastrophe closer to home involving a heavy death toll, you get the idea that Davis and his press people would step over the bodies to announce that no one had died in California because the Davis team was in charge.

Whatever happened to the time when the leaders of cities, states and nations operated above day-to-day administrative and political activity? That was a time when coolness and grace under pressure were valued, and even recognition-hungry politicians waited until all the facts were in before issuing press releases.

There also was a time when leaders waited for the media, historians, constituents and other so-called third parties to assess the job they were doing.

Now the tendency is to start patting oneself on the back before the crisis has even passed, and to say something about anything to try to make yourself look good. Can anyone any longer take our governor seriously when he stoops to such cheap, transparent attempts to raise his pitifully low popularity ratings?

How do we respect a career politician who has lost any sense of dignity and restraint? The lights are on in California, governor, but you can't seem to see the forest for the trees.