There’s Still Time to Work Out Winning Deal

The Capitol crowd -- from the governor down -- should take a deep breath. Stop hyperventilating.

The governor and his aides especially should stop blustering about a barrage of ballot initiatives that they’re dreaming up for next November.

Nobody has lost out in the Capitol yet -- just because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature couldn’t agree on a spending cap and massive borrowing scheme by Friday’s arbitrary deadline.

Not even Schwarzenegger was a loser, despite his best efforts. Even if he is a man of “action, action, action, action,” and was stopped cold by Democrats. This, after telling reporters last Monday that “failure is no option. It just doesn’t exist....

“I never went into a competition in weightlifting ... or bodybuilding [wondering], ‘What if I cannot lift this weight?’ ... ‘What if this movie tanks in the box office?’ .... Your chances of making it [improve] by saying there’s no safety net, failure is no option. That means it has to happen.”

Fine, but in governing it’s about brains, not brawn. It’s about real give-and-take, not movie scripts. And you’d better have a safety net for the circus.

Schwarzenegger has a colossal safety net: solid public support and total access to a friendly media, including a chain of doting cheerleaders on talk radio. He’s replacing the most unpopular governor in modern history -- who, at that, was more popular than the Legislature. And he doesn’t face reelection for three years, if indeed he runs.

The guy has been governor only three weeks, let’s remember.

Last week’s exercise -- trying to place a tight spending cap and a record bond issue on the March ballot -- may have been Schwarzenegger’s first major test, but it was a test without political consequences for flunking. If the public’s going to fix blame, where will its finger point -- the action hero or the disreputable Legislature?

Let Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City) answer that. “If there was another question on the ballot that said, ‘Do you want to recall the Senate and Assembly?’ ” he told colleagues during Friday night’s floor debate. “Guess what? We’d be selling shirts out of the trunks of our cars right now.”

If anything, Schwarzenegger gained because the public’s ugly image of the Legislature was revived.

But Democrats didn’t lose either. They would have lost by rolling over and cowering as the governor tried to bully them, threatening “severe casualties” in next year’s elections. They’d have looked unprincipled by giving in to his amateur-hour forays to Democrats’ hometowns.

Schwarzenegger spent much of the week doing what he loves: entertaining crowds, hearing their cheers, being lobbed softballs by radio hosts and beating up on Sacramento.

But he should have been in Sacramento more, negotiating with Democrats and Republicans. Republicans must give, as well as Democrats.

Schwarzenegger always has claimed he wants to “listen.” But all he wants to listen to, it seems, is Democrats saying “yes.”

There isn’t much acknowledgment, at least in his public statements, that spending caps come in different shapes and his isn’t the only version that would fit California’s budget.

(Conservatives might be alarmed to learn that Schwarzenegger’s cap would allow a governor to raise taxes during a downturn. To block him would require a two-thirds legislative vote. If Gray Davis had possessed that power, we probably wouldn’t be in this fiscal mess.)

Wesson articulated the Democrats’ philosophical opposition to the Schwarzenegger-GOP spending limit:

“We refuse to impose a cap that will take funding away from developmentally disabled individuals, the programs they need to survive.... We refuse to take $2 billion away from our schoolchildren because we know that the only great equalizer in this life is education, and I’ll be damned if we in the Democratic Party are going to turn our backs on children.”

By his history -- if not his recent politics -- Schwarzenegger would seem to agree with those sentiments.

Democrats have sent the governor a message: They can work together -- can agree on a spending cap -- but he needs to negotiate seriously and also force Republicans to bend.

It’s still possible to compromise on a spending cap and a $15-billion deficit bond this week and get it on the March ballot.

But does Schwarzenegger really want to? Or is he being lured by the roar of the crowd and prodded by his outside political consultants -- some looking for a big payday -- into pitching several ballot initiatives next November?

Schwarzenegger could achieve much in the Legislature -- negotiating bipartisan solutions that don’t require him to hit up special interests for tens of millions to finance contested initiatives.

If he’s truly an action-governor, he’ll mute the hostile, partisan rhetoric that has been bellowing from his office and resume bargaining with legislative leaders.

Nobody has failed yet. It’s early. The Capitol needs calm-headed action, from Democrats and Republicans -- and leadership from the governor.