Life Without Bill May Be No Different

For eight glorious years, California has been the Clinton administration’s favored child--showered with federal gifts, tended to by special White House staff and, most of all, flattered and charmed by the personal ministrations of a president whose heart will never belong to Chappaqua, N.Y., where the Clintons bought a home, the way it has to West Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

All that changes next month, no matter who is in the White House. But, clearly, a transition from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush would be a lot more jarring for the state’s lopsided Democratic political establishment than the switch from Clinton to Al Gore. So, do ordinary Californians hunker down for possibly four years of federal famine and the presidential cold shoulder? Hardly.

For starters, no White House occupant ignores a cache of 54 electoral votes (at least 55, possibly 56 by the time the next presidential election rolls around), and no politician, regardless of home state or party affiliation, ignores a state that offers some of the most lucrative fund-raising venues in the country. According to figures compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Republicans raised $114.1 million in California this election cycle, more than in any other state except the District of Columbia.

At the most basic level, that kind of political math creates its own full-service imperative. It means that come fire, flood, earthquake or other natural disaster, the wheels of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will turn fast and efficiently. George W. need only look to the final year of his father’s administration to learn what happens when a president is perceived to be too slow or too tightfisted with disaster relief.

Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida in 1992, leaving hundreds of thousands without shelter. While national television flashed scenes that looked like Dresden after the Allied bombing campaign in World War II, local officials railed about federal ineptitude and red tape so horrendous that National Guard troops were delivering food to the area but not distributing it because no one had ordered them to. The entire affair was a public-relations disaster for President George Bush, who eventually dispatched his transportation secretary, Andrew H. Card Jr., to help straighten things out on the ground. George W. has named Card as his prospective chief of staff.

Clinton demonstrated precisely the opposite approach in California, where an unusual string of natural disasters in the early 1990s punctuated the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In retrospect, perhaps it only seems that he set a new dollar standard of federal largess in binding up the state’s wounds. Maybe it was just the presidential-empathy factor having a significant multiplier effect.

Even if Californians have to accept that no politician will ever match Clinton’s ability to feel our pain, it is worth remembering George W.’s remarks, during the first presidential debate, about visiting flood victims in Southeast Texas with FEMA chief James Lee Witt in late 1998. Bush, like Clinton, is a hugger! That augurs well for California.

Nothing about having a Texas Republican occupy the White House alters California’s position as the ATM of national politics, but the mix and the venues for collecting that cash would probably change in a Bush administration. The Texas governor already has strong ties to Silicon Valley’s top executives, notably John Chambers of Cisco Systems and Jim Barksdale of the Barksdale Group. If anything, his ability to satisfy the high-tech community’s policy agenda promises to be greater than Clinton’s, because he wouldn’t be facing the cross pressures Clinton did from important Democratic donor groups like trial lawyers and organized labor.

In the entertainment industry, corporate Hollywood has always been more supportive of Republicans than Democrats. It’s the industry’s creative side that favors Democrats, and nobody since John F. Kennedy has had a greater affinity with Hollywood celebrities than Clinton. Look for less, maybe even none of that kind of hobnobbing from Bush and safely assume that the likes of Barbara Streisand and David Geffen and Steven Spielberg would not be getting invitations to spend the night at a Bush White House.

Clinton had a California mafia, a coterie of personal friends and professional acquaintances who ended up with high-profile jobs in his first administration, which strengthened the perception that the president was connected in some special way to California. Realistically, Clinton didn’t need California advisors to explain the state to him. He understood what he needed to know before he got to the White House. And, realistically, it’s hard to argue that foreign policy was different than what it would otherwise have been because Warren Christopher was secretary of State or that the federal budget was somehow tilted in California’s favor because Leon E. Panetta headed the Office of Management and Budget.

But it is probably fair to say that key advisors like Mickey Kantor at the U.S. Trade Representatives Office, Laura D’Andrea Tyson at the Council of Economic Advisors and eventually Panetta as White House chief of staff were important conduits for California constituencies and interest groups who wanted the president’s ear.

One of the side effects of the extraordinary postelection battle over who will actually get to the White House is that less attention than usual has been devoted to examining Bush’s political and personal California associates and speculating about who among them might end up in important administration jobs. Brad Freeman, an investment banker who helped raise money for Bush in California during the campaign, is frequently cited as an important tie here, but that is as far as the discussion goes. In Washington, the three California GOP congressional incumbents who lost their seats on Nov. 7--James E. Rogan, Steven T. Kuykendall and Brian P. Bilbray--figure in various Cabinet and sub-Cabinet scenarios, as does Democratic Rep. Gary A. Condit, a conservative from the Central Valley.

The Bush campaign relied heavily on Stanford University’s Hoover Institute for economic and foreign-policy advice, and the governor, of course, has already indicated that former Stanford University administrator Condoleezza Rice will be his national-security advisor should he win.

How a president connects to a state or region has a lot to do with his own cultural sensibilities and his personal circumstances. Clinton’s intense focus on California may have been born of political necessity in 1992, but the fact that he vacationed here in the early years of his administration also had something to do with having no family home in Arkansas. In more recent years, his daughter Chelsea’s attendance at Stanford University has been a reason to keep coming back.

By contrast, should Bush end up at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the Western White House will be in Texas, not California. Where Clinton quickly acquired a California sensibility, Bush may not need or care to. He already has a Western sensibility, which is close, but not the same thing. It could mean he responds and gives special attention to the “other” California: to water and agriculture concerns in the Central Valley, which is certainly the heart of his political base here.

California’s Republican politicians say a Bush presence here would be critical to resuscitating the moribound state party. Almost on faith, they argue that the Bush campaign’s allocation of precious time and relatively serious amounts of advertising money to California at the end of the campaign is proof that a President Bush would devote Clintonesque attention to the state’s needs. Maybe.

In a state where Democrats dominate and have grown comfortable with a Democratic White House, the real impact of dealing with the other party comes at the second- and third-tier Cabinet levels. Major pork-barrel goodies come by formula. It’s the small favors, the waivers, the stuff around the edges that gets harder to come by--and not just for Gov. Gray Davis.

Harder does not mean impossible. It does mean that Democrats have to reroute their political traffic. The road to a Bush White House would go through Rep. David Dreier’s office or perhaps Rep. Jerry Lewis’. Lewis is chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee and Dreier heads the powerful Rules Committee. That’s not much different from Republicans taking their concerns to Sen. Dianne Feinstein or Sen. Barbara Boxer when they want help or attention from the White House.

What changes for California, as a whole, if Bush makes it to the White House is the possibility of rivalry with Texas--for the gravy from defense projects (although California’s defense industry is pretty well gone), for money to offset certain immigration costs, perhaps even money for government high-technology contracts. On the other hand, Bush already owns Texas. For political purposes, his ability to direct or nudge federal money and projects is probably better applied in California.

Recent political history may provide the best clue to what life would be like in California under a Bush administration. Put aside ideological and policy differences between Bush and Gore. Consider instead the extraordinary similarities between the situation former Gov. Pete Wilson and Clinton found themselves and the situation that potentially exists for Davis and Bush: sitting first-term governor with national visibility and presidential ambitions confronts new president of opposite party who must figure California into his political strategy for the next election.

There is much to suggest that California only profits from this sort of rivalry. Recall that the more Wilson sought to raise his own profile by highlighting policy differences with the White House, the more goodies the White House lavished on California. Recall the lightning speed with which the earthquake-damaged Santa Monica Freeway was repaired and reopened. It was largely federal money that paid for that work, but it was Wilson who stood in front of the cameras and cut the ribbon.

It may be tough on the bureaucrats, but for the average Californian, life here promises to look a lot like it did under the benevolent patronage of Clinton, regardless of who makes it to the White House. *