EDITORIAL BAD EDUCATION DEMS TEACH ARNOLD AND RIORDAN TOUGH LESSONS ABOUT SACRAMENTO'S WAYS.

RICHARD Riordan is no political novice. As a former two-term Los Angeles mayor, he knows how to play the game to get things done.

But the entrenched political power structure in Sacramento was frustrating enough that Riordan quit this week. After a year and a half, he had concluded he could do more to improve the state's schools on a volunteer basis in Los Angeles than as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's education secretary in the state's capital.

Riordan shouldn't feel too bad. His boss - the rich and powerful governor who is perhaps one of the most famous men alive - has had a similar experience. Every one of his recent reform ideas has taken a beating by the Legislature and its bosses, the public-employee unions, who have offered no solutions of their own to the state's serious problems.

Schwarzenegger's opponents, who are responsible for causing most of the state's serious problems, have launched a massive ad campaign attacking the governor. Combined with several strategic mistakes of his own, Schwarzenegger's once-strong public support has been badly eroded. The once-confident would-be reformer has publicly retreated from some of the core issues of his campaign, including reforming the pension plan and redistricting the state's legislative map by mid-decade.

Why did Riordan and Schwarzenegger run into this brick wall? Because they had the temerity, the gall, the nerve to think they could reform anything that wasn't pre-approved by the powers that be.

You could say Riordan and Schwarzenegger have received quite an education about how things work in Sacramento - a bad education.

Schwarzenegger and Riordan are the most Democrat-friendly Republicans around, fiscally conservative but socially liberal. The governor is the guy who married into the Kennedy clan, after all, and has appointed every political flavor to state posts. Yet even they couldn't seem to work with Democrats and the entrenched powers in Sacramento.

It's not like Democrats are coming up with their own ideas for reform or counterproposals. All they offer is the same old tax-and-spend policies that have failed California in the past.

Their only goal is to attack for the sake of keeping this upstart governor in his place. A clear example was the killing Wednesday of Schwarzenegger's deal with pharmaceutical companies that would have guaranteed lower prices for low-income Californians. The measure was derailed in a Democrat-controlled Senate committee at the behest of the public employee unions.

What does it say that legislators were willing to sell out 5 million Californians for the sake of one potshot at the governor?

Clearly, it says we have a destructive political system that's not working in the service of the people but in the service of its own survival. And that's a lesson every Californian is sure to learn before too long.