Dancing the Sacramento Shuffle for 1986

As a predictive event or trend-setter, the annual State of the State address usually ranks alongside Groundhog Day. The governor pops up to let us know whether the sun is shining on California. But this rarely has much effect on anything that happens in the months that follow.

This year we were treated to three--or maybe it was five--versions of this ritual of prognostication. In addition to the governor’s speech, the Speaker of the Assembly gave one of his own, the Assembly Republican leader answered it, and the president pro tem of the Senate scrambled all week to catch as much of the media limelight as was left over.

The things that they all had to say reflected the different institutional settings in which each has to work.

Speaker Willie Brown’s speech, like everything else in the Assembly, sounded as if it was written by a committee. And it was addressed not so much to the public at large as to the community of interests that make up the legislative process.

On the unquestionably important issue of municipal casualty insurance, for example, the Speaker droned on about the problems of underwriting at a level of detail that was doubtlessly mystifying to most people but vitally important to the lobbyists who will be fighting over these questions all year.

The Speaker’s power, however, consists of his control over such minutiae in legislation. And he meant this speech to be taken seriously. You could tell that because Brown was droppin’ all his g’s. He is quite capable of speaking perfect English, with greater force than most of us will ever muster. He used to drop his g’s only when he got mad. It was something to watch out for, like the sweat on Richard Nixon’s upper lip. Now he does it for emphasis, as a way of letting the spear carriers in his party know that they’d better sit up and pay attention. But again, for a general audience, the device probably made him sound either untutored or affected.

If Brown was speaking to the cognoscenti, Assembly Republican leader Patrick Nolan was shouting into the wind. But that’s his job. No one expects the minority leader to be thoughtful or effective, just rude and partisan. Nolan duly dusted off all 1985 political complaints and sought to persuade people that the biggest challenge for the state in 1986 is putting a prison in Tom Bradley’s town.

As president pro tem of the Senate, David A. Roberti doesn’t exercise nearly the authority of the Speaker, nor can he descend to Nolan’s strident partisanship if he hopes to hold onto his job for long. Moreover, Roberti made the mistake of presenting his own agenda before he realized how completely the Assembly leadership would upstage him with its media events.

Reduced to preparing a tag-along response for the governor’s address when it was rebroadcast late at night, Roberti knew better than to follow George Deukmejian’s relentlessly upbeat message with a variation on the hackneyed “California in Trouble” theme that Brown had used the day before. Instead, he tried to make the case that Democrats are nice guys, too. The result was a genuinely comic impression of what Mister Rogers would be like if he ran for public office.

If Brown and Roberti dealt too long on bills, Deukmejian, as he has throughout his Administration, expressed little interest in substantive issues and focused instead on the budget.

Financially speaking, the governor has a lot to worry about these days. The budget surplus that he made such a big deal of last year has turned out to be an accountant’s trick of smoke and mirrors. The agricultural interests that contributed so heavily to his last election and dictated his policies ever since have fallen on hard times themselves, just when he needs to tap into their checkbooks again for the next campaign. And if the President and Congress actually go through with the Gramm-Rudman cuts in the federal budget, Deukmejian may end this term in the same way he began, with California facing a profound financial crisis.

Moreover, if the controversy over toxic wastes hasn’t yet derailed his reelection campaign, it has certainly taken the luster off all those efforts to tout Deukmejian as an example of effective New Republican leadership and a potential vice presidential nominee. As a result, simple reelection won’t serve the governor’s ambition; he needs a big victory.

What we saw in Deukmejian’s address, therefore, was the formal unveiling of his basic campaign speech for the coming year. It was a thoroughly professional blend of specifics and rhetorical flourishes in which the governor took credit for every advance over the last three years that he has supported, and quite a few that he has opposed.

But what does a week’s worth of speechifying really signify? Only one conclusion is safe: It’s a good thing that Brown and Roberti aren’t running against Deukmejian themselves. They clearly don’t have the speech writers for it. And if this election could be won by words alone, Deukmejian would be very tough to beat.