Reagan in the State House

Sacramento. There are those who say that there are no significant differences in the commonweal now that Ronald Reagan, a hard conservative, is governor and Pat Brown, a hard liberal, is out of office. They have a point, though not the point they would stress: in government things don’t change that drastically within a matter of months. Harry Truman, in his last days in office, confided to a talkative confidant that if he wanted to, he knew how to put a full nelson on _ President-elect Dwight Eisenhower. All he had to do, Truman explained, was to place a few strategic monkey wrenches in the fiscal gear and it would be a couple of years before Ike could set his own course. Governor Brown didn’t miss any opportunity: in fiscal matters Ronald Reagan was not only left with the burden of an enormous budget, but also with the burden of an enormous deficit built into that budget. Mr. Brown’s patrimony was binding in all respects. He managed, as a lameduck governor, to appoint something on the order of eighty state judges. “I am,” Mr. Reagan delightedly observed to a visitor, “probably the only governor in the United States who can’t fix a parking ticket.” The State of California is divided between pro-Reagan and anti-Reagan people. The antis say: Reagan has introduced the highest budget in California’s history. Considering that he ran on a program of economy, it follows either a) that he was ignorant of the requirements of government even while running for office and should therefore at the very least apologize to his predecessor Democrats; or b) that having become governor, he is shaping up just the way any ambitious politician will, and he will become the freespendingmost gcvernor in California’s history. The defense, in accents to be sure a little less positive than those used during the campaign, says: a) Reagan’s budget is almost totally at the merey of his predecessor’s commitments. That, plus the ineluctable growth in © California’s population, plus the ditto rise in inflation, absolutely require the historically large budget. But, b) wait a moment, wait a year or two, and the economies of the Reagan Administration will begin to tell. Those economies are major (the proposed tuition charge for the state universities) and minor (“I was able just yesterday,’ the governor told his visitor, “to save $4 million when I found out that there was plenty of room outside the proposed new state building to handle all of the work of a particular government agency’). What is more, there are a dozen task forces of men on leave of absence roaming about California in search of extravagance; and in due course they will empty their bags of recommendations on Sacramento, and all the people will benefit. Governor Reagan has going for him not only his reputation for husbandry, -but his highly communicable vision of the general virtues of governmental risk. He is not, certainly not yet at any rate, leaving the kind of misanthropic impression that Joseph Mitchell left as city manager of Newburgh, N.Y. or J. Bracken Lee as governor of Utah, or, for that matter, Calvin Coolidge searching for his rubber in the White House. Having come to his job as governor after a decade’s criticism of national as opposed to merely local extravagances, he is seen to be adopting measures in California of paradigmatic significance: thus also— his analysis and rhetoric invite the voters to believe—should the governors be doing in New York and Minnesota and Florida: thus also in Washington, D.C. So that he is free of the parochialization that might otherwise have marked him as a small-timer, absorbed by triviality. One of the reasons why a lot of Californians are especially excited by Reagan’s performance here is that they think of him as liberating California, yes; but also as instructing the other states of the Union. A people who take pride in the universally useful achievements of their scientists at Berkeley should be permitted to take pride in the universal applicability of developments in the science of government. There is of course the matter of the legislature. In the Assembly the Democrats rule supreme, or rather Speaker Jesse Unruh, a man enormously competent and shrewd, rules supreme. In the Senate, the Democrats are in control—by the margin of a single vote, and there is a special election coming up this month. If the Republicans win it, Republican Lieutenant Governor Robert Fitch will be chained to his rostrum to break tie votes, and help to flush out the Reagan program. And at some point Unruh and Reagan will have to come to terms. Unruh is a politician. But he has a high sense of public duty, and he is not going to paralyze California merely to make brownie points with Americans for Democratic Action. Ronald Reagan, with months’ experience behind him, is supremely confident, as though he had read the script and knew full well that in the future, as in all those other futures, there is a happy ending.