University of Maryland political scientist Gar Alperovitz, author of America Beyond Capitalism, has had it with this one-nation thing. Why should we have to live in George W. Bush’s America? Can’t we just have our own country — or countries? In an op-ed in the New York Times today, Alperovitz admires Arnold Schwarzenegger’s big-state proposals for California to take its own initiative on universal health care and global warming:

California’s governor has also put his finger on a little discussed flaw in America’s constitutional formula. The United States is almost certainly too big to be a meaningful democracy. What does “participatory democracy” mean in a continent? Sooner or later, a profound, probably regional, decentralization of the federal system may be all but inevitable.

Alperovitz calls it “regional devolution,” but it looks a lot like secession. And if California secedes:

One response might be for an area like New England, which already has many regional interstate arrangements, to follow California’s initiative — as it already has on some environmental measures. And if one or two large regions began to take action, other state groupings in the Northwest, Southwest and elsewhere would be likely to follow.

And if the United States were to break up — leaving only the Southeast and Midwest, apparently — we could finally have what we’ve always needed: media and campaign finance reform!

Scale also determines who has privileged access to the country’s news media and who can shape its political discourse. In very large nations, television and other forms of political communication are extremely costly. President Bush alone spent $345 million in his 2004 election campaign. This gives added leverage to elites, who have better corporate connections and greater resources than non-elites. The priorities of those elites often differ from state and regional priorities.

Yeah — that’s the ticket.