Initiatives as Group Therapy

California initiatives can be tough to love. There are too many of them. They often cut deep to the emotional bone, forcing the state into painful conflicts over the trickiest of social issues. Designed nearly 90 years ago as a populist device, they have been subverted by political operatives and interest groups into a tool for raising funds and rallying constituencies. They also tend to make for lousy legislation, prone to overturn by the courts.

To the rest of the country, the process must seem like one more bit of sun-induced looniness, the political equivalent of fish tacos: California, where The People, when not digging out from earthquakes, shove aside the elected Legislature and make their own laws on everything from property taxes to medicinal pot. Whee.

David Broder, the Washington Post’s extraordinary political columnist, not long ago labeled the process “Californocracy,” which he described as a “really weird” departure from “the traditional notions of a republic that filled the heads of the Founders in Philadelphia. But what the heck!” Broder went on. “No one wears powdered wigs to the beach either.”

This is not an altogether novel view, of course, and a federal court decision last week tossing out term limits has called into question once again California’s reliance on such a wobbly apparatus. Why initiatives? the nation wonders. The question might as well be why do Californians build houses in canyons, or commute on hopelessly jammed freeways? Because they are Californians. Because initiatives have become a California icon, part of the golden mystique. Because, what the heck!

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Misconceptions cloud the initiative discussion. Perhaps the most blatant is the notion that propositions are to be judged by the letter of the laws they propose. In truth, they have more to do with emotion than legislation. They are communication devices, crudely drafted, perhaps, but also crudely effective.

To say that Proposition 140 simply was intended to limit legislators to a certain number of terms misses the larger message. The point was to tell Sacramento that the days of career politicians who would do anything to keep their statehouse seat were finished: And no more Ayatollahs of the Assembly, either. Termed-out legislators would do well to ponder this point before running to rejoin the old gang back in the statehouse.

Similarly, Proposition 187 was less about cutting back services for illegal immigrants than it was a broader complaint about the speed with which California demographics are shifting. Slow down, was the message. Another recent example: Voters who approved the medicinal marijuana proposition arguably were sending a signal, not about the wisdom of treating cancer with pot, but about the larger, societal cancers caused by the war on drugs--overcrowded prisons, corrupted narc squads, ghetto shooting galleries.

Nonetheless, the legalities must be cleaned up by the courts. A common strategy for opponents of a popular initiative is to hold fire, let the thing pass and then undo it in court. It’s a tactic employed by all sides. Still, that so many of these propositions fail to pass immediate constitutional muster causes great distress among supporters. They invoke “the will of the people,” they bemoan “activist judges.”

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The tune changes, predictably, when the proposition in question is one they opposed. Then the will of the people becomes the “tyrannical majority,” the activist bench part of a noble system of checks and balances. Listen to how the state GOP chairman earlier this year defended a lawsuit to overturn a campaign reform proposition: “We have never had a system in the country where the will of the majority can override rights of the individual. It is fundamental. . . .” Unless, one is tempted to add, the issue is immigration, or affirmative action, or. . . .

Tears shed by politicians over court-rejected propositions often seem to be of the crocodile variety. When the state Supreme Court undercut the three-strikes law, it’s not difficult to imagine Gov. Pete Wilson’s private relief. He knew how many prisons the law, if left intact, would have required. For that matter, does anybody believe that if Proposition 187 truly was capable of stopping illegal immigration--and all that cheap labor--Wilson would have been its champion?

Legal machinations and political manipulations aside, the initiatives enliven political discussion in California in a way no candidate ever could. They trigger debates about ideas and policy issues, rather than the typical electoral showdown over which candidate is the most darling. The most emotional of these debates, while often hurtful, reveal to the state its deepest fears and biases. They become, in effect, statewide encounter sessions, and what could be more Californian than that?