How Pete Will Turn It Around

Pete Wilson reminds me of a dentist who has mucked around too long inside too many decayed mouths. He comes across as a burnt-out case, besieged by enemies both real and imagined. His outlook is bleak, his rhetoric that of a leader who’s lost faith in California. The only time he seems happy is when he’s putting the political drill to the Legislature.

The governor met for lunch Monday with a small number of Times people. He turned down his fish. “I only drink,” he told the startled waiter, a bit of gallows humor that provided a rare laugh. From that point forward, it was all fairly grim, and all too familiar.

Wilson spoke of drawers of letters from businesses that have fled California’s onerous regulations for Yuma, Las Vegas and Ogden. He railed against crooked lawyers and doctors who have made worker stress claims an art form. He warned that the state could collapse under the weight of its welfare caseload, and he complained darkly about legislators who conspire to “take out Pete Wilson.”

Toward the end I felt compelled to ask the governor if California would survive. “I am an optimist,” he replied in a flat voice, and then he drifted into one long, last harangue about the state’s repressive business climate, and its “militant” teachers union, and Willie Brown, and . . .

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Before lunch, I had reread Wilson’s inaugural address, delivered less than two years ago. The contrast was remarkable. Californians, Wilson had said then, “want and deserve an end of government in gridlock, and to the annual trench warfare that passes for a budget process.” He was upbeat, with plans for a better California. He spoke of blazing “a path to California’s future. Neither drought nor freeze will stop us. Not war, not recession. We will triumph in the end. . . . We will not suffer the future. We will shape it.”

That rain forced the inaugural ceremony indoors might now be regarded as omen, for Wilson’s vision quickly faced some severe tests--fires in Oakland, riots in Los Angeles, earthquakes, budget deficits, a job-killing recession. Wilson could not control the national economy or the San Andreas Fault, and in that sense he became a victim. What he could control was his response to the crises, and here he chose to become something less than the centrist visionary who delighted Sacramento that rainy day in January.

Wilson, for example, might have taken on the responsibility of reassuring Californians that, no matter how tough the going, the state retains remarkable economic strength and will survive--instead, that message was seized by Treasurer Kathleen Brown. He might have become an advocate for Oakland fire victims fighting insurance companies--instead, John Garamendi grabbed the role. He might have placed his own imprint on rebuilding the state’s most important city--that one was left to Peter Ueberroth.

Wilson worked the edges. He blamed economic strife on welfare and workers’ comp, partisan issues that have little to do with the real problem: recession. He spent a summer going hand-to-hand with the Legislature, a bloody battle that could only enhance the chances for Prop. 165--his ballot initiative that, for all practical purposes, will give him trump power in the budget process. Not that he necessarily was wrong on individual issues--welfare and workers’ comp could stand some reform. It was a question of tone, timing and tactics. In short, Wilson performed like a politician out to make hay of hard times. So far, it hasn’t worked too well. Wilson’s approval ratings are down around 20%. But just wait.

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Prediction: Pete Wilson, California naysayer, before long will become California’s biggest booster since the railroad barons. After writing off California for so long as a loser, “a bad product,” he will spend the next two years gradually promoting the notion that he has turned things around. It won’t matter really if the recession has not ended. Reality was not an overriding factor when he painted the state black, so why should it be when he chooses a rosier hue? Besides, the case for a tempered optimism always was there.

This Gov. Wilson won’t share dismal bleatings from businesses that escaped to Yuma; he’ll talk about the 25 California companies on Fortune’s list of the 100 fastest-growing businesses in America. He’ll make sure budgets are delivered on time and target. And when the economy comes around, there’ll be plenty of dough for schools and welfare kids and all the rest. The dentist puts away his drill, and passes out lollipops.

Finding political bottom in order to push back toward the surface is not, of course, a novel approach, and it probably is Wilson’s only shot at reelection. The governor, though, has a long swim, and it might not work. If it fails, he at least will have a good shot at a workers’ comp stress claim.