As Goes California …

WHEN Fred Barnes published his article “Why California Doesn’t Matter” in the July 31 Weekly Standard, he seemed to be arguing a straightforward thesis: that California was no longer a significant influence on American politics because it was no longer a leading indicator of the political future. In the past California had decided presidential elections, as when its votes gave Richard Nixon his squeaker victory in 1968, and pioneered voter rebellions, as when Proposition 13 sparked the tax revolt of the late 1970s. But that was all over now. The Golden State had become too eccentric politically, too remote from national trends, even too Democratic, to be a reliable weathervane in politics. It was the wave of the past.

Barnes’s article attracted a great deal of attention. It received a liberal rejoinder, contesting both halves of its thesis, from Peter Schrag, who pointed out in the Sacramento Bee that the state containing both Hollywood and Silicon Valley could hardly be called politically irrelevant. It provoked skeptical responses in The Weekly Standard’s correspondence section from, among others, Ward Connerly, who defended his Proposition 209-which prohibited race and gender preferences-against Barnes, who had dismissed its national impact. And because Barnes is both a firm conservative and a fair-minded professional journalist, the article aroused particular interest on the right. Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley millionaire who funded Proposition 227 (the measure that overturned bilingual education in California), and human-biodiversity guru Steve Sailer both made essentially the same criticism: that, in Unz’s words, Barnes’s article had put “a positive spin on the near-complete collapse of the California Republican party.”

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

Featured Tags

Presidential Election

George W. Bush

Richard Nixon

WHEN Fred Barnes published his article “Why California Doesn’t Matter” in the July 31 Weekly Standard, he seemed to be arguing a straightforward thesis: that California was no longer a significant influence on American politics because it was no longer a leading indicator of the political future. In the past California had decided presidential elections, as when its votes gave Richard Nixon his squeaker victory in 1968, and pioneered voter rebellions, as when Proposition 13 sparked the tax revolt of the late 1970s. But that was all over now. The Golden State had become too eccentric politically, too remote from national trends, even too Democratic, to be a reliable weathervane in politics. It was the wave of the past.

Barnes’s article attracted a great deal of attention. It received a liberal rejoinder, contesting both halves of its thesis, from Peter Schrag, who pointed out in the Sacramento Bee that the state containing both Hollywood and Silicon Valley could hardly be called politically irrelevant. It provoked skeptical responses in The Weekly Standard’s correspondence section from, among others, Ward Connerly, who defended his Proposition 209-which prohibited race and gender preferences-against Barnes, who had dismissed its national impact. And because Barnes is both a firm conservative and a fair-minded professional journalist, the article aroused particular interest on the right. Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley millionaire who funded Proposition 227 (the measure that overturned bilingual education in California), and human-biodiversity guru Steve Sailer both made essentially the same criticism: that, in Unz’s words, Barnes’s article had put “a positive spin on the near-complete collapse of the California Republican party.”