Obama dredges Sacramento’s mire for SOTU
California’s left-leaning political chattering classes were tweeting with enthusiasm last night as President Barack Obama delivered his sixth State of the Union address. To their delight, the president embraced some of the more significant of California’s latest policy stumbles.
The President wants paid sick leave? As goes California, so goes the country. Than you @JerryBrownGov for signing our CA Paid Sick Days Law!
— Lorena Gonzalez (@LorenaSGonzalez) January 21, 2015
So it was that, while much of the rest of the nation no doubt groaned, Sacramento’s elites reveled in apparent vindication as the chief executive endorsed high-speed rail, paid sick leave, a higher minimum wage, etc.
Obama’s #SOTU2015 is describing a country that looks more like California — bullet train, paid sick leave, higher minimum wage — Chris Megerian (@ChrisMegerian) January 21, 2015
In fact, as Gov. Jerry Brown’s press office would have us recall, virtually all of the president’s policy prescriptions are remains scrapped up from Sacramento battlegrounds.
✓Raise the Minimum Wage ✓Paid Sick Leave ✓Health Coverage ✓Wind Power ✓Solar Power ✓Faster Trains ✓Jobs of the Future #GoldenState #SOTU
— Gov. Brown Press Ofc (@GovPressOffice) January 21, 2015
What must have escaped the notice of that California crowd (and also, of the president) was that the largest Republican congressional majority since the 1920s was seated on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Stone-faced, incredulous and numbed, the dark-suited and red-blazered Republican bloc simply stared at him. They were the personifications of an utter repudiation of his new-found Golden State agenda.
That a loudly quacking lame-duck President is willing to throw populist haymakers at his political opposition as a means of revitalizing his base should in no way be mistaken for a realistic endorsement of California’s direction. In fact, it is precisely because the president was willing to embrace these ideas in the context of his final two years in office that California liberals should be alarmed. His agenda is going nowhere in Washington.
Still, Californians who identify with the right must grapple with explaining why, in spite of the adoption of statist policies that nobody else in the country wants anything to do with, California continues to prosper. There are two ways to address this claim, one more compelling than the other.
The first is to take a clear-eyed look at California’s success. It is not inaccurate to point out that the state maintains a “wall of debt” and can only hope to address its pension liabilities by mid-century. As the argument goes, with success like this, who needs failure?
But that argument diminishes the facial truths of this California moment. Silicon Valley is the envy of the world and the state’s economy is prosperous in spite of government. While it is plain that economic success is not the only measure of quality, both conservatives and libertarians must recognize such success. Incredibly, California seems to be working.
Because of this, the second argument about why California succeeds, in spite of itself, is more attractive. California is the twin beneficiary of America’s federal system and fortuitous geo-political development. Using the language of the left: the state is a creature of its circumstances.
Because states are able to act as laboratories in which policy experiments are carried out, California is able to insulate itself from the sort of widespread policy implementation that would otherwise doom its nascent collectivist impulses. It is easier for California to offer generous programs for the more than 38 million people residing within its border than it is for the federal government to do the same for the more than 300 million Americans because of California’s relative wealth.
This fact often escapes Sacramento’s professionally generous left-wing political class. It certainly did during the State of the Union. The most obvious reason California can sustain problematic policy is that, of all of the laboratories of democracy, California’s is as nicely outfitted as they come.
The state has every conceivable natural advantage, from resources to climate. It has been the repeated beneficiary of capital migration from back East, from the days of the Gold Rush through the Cold War military build-up. The rest of the nation generously sustained California’s adolescence and California now reaps the rewards.
Which brings us back to President Obama’s California-inspired State of the Union. California is a special case. It is a statist policy aberration that proves the free-market rule. The Golden State is succeeding in spite of itself and not even the most dedicated efforts of redistributionists have been able to kill it…yet.
Still, if the complexion of the chamber during the State of the Union is any evidence, California isn’t leading the way, so much as it is running in the wrong direction.
