The Drudgery of Do-It-Yourself Democracy

Opened the mail the other day. Got a pair of campaign potholders from a candidate’s wife. Hubby was running for Assembly and evidently she assumed hot pads were the key to the gender gap. Personally, I’m rarely moved by items that remind me of housework, but I got a kick out of them anyway.

Fact is, there have been precious few kicks in this election. This despite the fact that almost everyone running for governor has been assiduously telling me what they think I want to hear. It’s distracting, but they mean well, just like the authors of all those initiatives, who evidently believe I want a political system that appeals to both my base instincts and my inner micro-manager.

But am I grateful? Nooo. In fact, as tomorrow’s election approaches, I find myself more annoyed than usual. Why do these candidates keep channeling their pollsters? Don’t they trust their base instincts? What gave anyone the idea I wanted to manage state engineering contracts and public schools? Isn’t that what God made political cronies and assistant principals for?

Oh, California. Good citizenship in this state gets more like housework with every campaign. I’ve lived in other parts of the country and, trust me, governance doesn’t need to be this hard. Take these initiatives. Please. I’m told Hiram Johnson’s great populist notion of citizen empowerment turns 90 this year. At that age, you’d think it might slow down.

It has been said that statewide elections are a turnoff in California because the ballot, from top to bottom, is just a money game. The only candidates who get any air time are millionaires or people who are speaking from millionaires’ hip pockets. The initiatives have been subverted by rich political operatives and interest groups, who use them to cadge dough or rally partisans.

And it’s been said that elections are just a turnoff right now, at this happy, normal, complacent point in time--low crime, no recession. Nothing to fire up the masses. Just a lot of sound and fury as we tweak the margins, which is a turnoff because it doesn’t count.

Here’s what I say, as I sit here at my kitchen window, campaign mailers peeping from the usual mailbox full of Sav-On coupons and Land’s End catalogs: California elections are a turnoff because voters have tricked themselves into a position where they’re making every decision, big and small. We’re like the controlling housewife who won’t let anyone else load the dishwasher or fold the laundry, but then complains about having to do everything herself.

And some problems are too complex for do-it-yourself democracy. Let me offer an example. A friend has a little girl. The little girl was born in Los Angeles. Until she was 8, she went to L.A. public schools. Because her mom’s first language was Spanish, they put her in the bilingual program. When she was in third grade, the family moved to our suburb.

The bilingual program in her new school was all but nonexistent. It was English immersion, with occasional help from a part-time bilingual aide. The teacher had 35 kids. When the report cards came out, the little girl came home with straight Fs. Well, the teacher said, the kid can’t read, she’s disruptive and I don’t like her attitude.

Later, the mother asked me to talk to the teacher in her behalf. “You know how it is with these people,” the teacher sighed. Well, no, but I now know how it is with incompetent bigots. The mother sent the little girl to a tutor, got her help with her homework. The school aide moonlighted for a summer as the child’s mentor. The grades rose some, but they’re still much lower than they ought to be.

Now. How to get at this problem, which is both narrow and broad? Is the root in the fact that the little girl was taught to read in Spanish at an urban school? Is it with a teachers union that protects both the best and brightest and the jerks? Is it in class size? The parent? The child’s character? The superintendent of public instruction? The balance between the cost of administration and teacher salaries?

And, more to the point, where’s the easy, do-it-yourself answer? Because I don’t see it in any candidate’s voter guide. And yet my ballot has numerous blunt instruments aimed at the delicate chemistry of this child’s classroom, and the classrooms of your kids and mine.

Up or down? Si o no? Here’s a meat mallet; now go fix that Swiss watch. Can true-false answers and focus group leaders really be the best way to make intelligent public policy? Can’t we find a few good public servants to whom we can delegate the finer points of this no-win job? Oh, California. No wonder the mood of the electorate is cranky as we rummage for our Official Sample Ballots in that heap of junk mail by the door. Ah, here they are. Right under this pile of campaign potholders. Pass the meat mallet. Let’s get to work.

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Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.