So why, you ask, am I bothering to write this?
I'm a political historian, not a professional politician. I have no brilliant game plan that would allow Lockyer to bypass the first and worst of a trilogy of personal ordeals. He's not a wealthy man (much to his credit) and I can't begin to imagine how he could raise the $50 million Primary entrance fee that might entitle him to face a billionaire Republican in the General Election a year from now.
Notwithstanding this political naivete, I care about what happens to this still-golden State where both Lockyer and I were born in days before super-highways and mega-malls and budgetary nightmares. And I firmly believe that, while it may not be so good for him, Lockyer would be good for California.
And I think he believes it too. At least he did four years ago, when he declared his candidacy for Governor "only to change his mind four months later.
That hard decision of retreat came from disappointment.
He'd carefully laid the groundwork for a high-minded campaign, highlighting his extraordinary credentials as a Bill Clinton-type "policy wonk who had not only mastered the issues, but also knew how to manipulate the political system to get things done.
Lockyer started with the premise that California, as much a nation as a State, had long been governed like a "Banana Republic , with short-sighted partisanship preventing long-range planning and bi-partisan agreement to meet rapidly-mounting problems of revenue and finance, education and transportation and social welfare and criminal justice and environmental responsibility.
With a large chunk of campaign funds, Lockyer launched a "Project California , holding meetings throughout the State at which fellow "wonks communed with each other before small audiences, and then offered a wealth of solutions to every burning problem of public policy.
Nobody seem to care. Journalists paid little attention and meetings were sparsely attended. And when Lockyer went on to announce his gubernatorial candidacy, declaring "this is the job I want , no special interests rushed to offer him support to take on two other Democratic aspirants, multi-millionaires who proceeded to savage each other, insuring a second victory for the best-known and least-effective Governor in a half century of California history.
Lockyer had earlier made the biggest political mistake of his life by publicly stating that he had voted, the first time around, for the illustrious Arnold in the Recall election of 2004. He spoke, in part, out of personal pique at some dishonorable Democratic shenanigans surrounding the Recall, but he never made plain his other reasons. He and Schwarzenegger had been casual friends for years and Lockyer honestly believed that electing a world-famous celebrity who was also that most endangered of species, a GOP moderate, might signal a break from the incessant partisan bickering that was crippling State government.
Almost at once, Lockyer realized he had made an error " not just a mistake that might damage his own career, but a miscalculation about how to return the State to political sanity.
Many of the Democratic faithful were shocked. Others laughed that it was just another instance, albeit a whopper, of "classic Lockyer .
In his Wikipedia biography, much of which I wrote, I described Lockyer's "peculiar intellectual brand of Truman-esque ˜plain talk'; he often speaks his mind with a picturesque frankness that seems almost cheerfully to invite political embarrassment. He truly find pleasure in waking up the snoring, getting a rise out of the cautious and trying to stir debate about sacred cows.
He appreciates the theatrical. Once a strikingly handsome young man who now has no illusions about winning a senior body-building contest, Lockyer quips that "politics is theater for the ugly. He clearly enjoys injecting dramatic moments into the daily humdrum of government.
He shares this impulse with former Governor Jerry Brown, who succeeded him as Attorney General and, at the moment, is the most likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee of 2010. Both men are highly intelligent and somewhat eccentric, marching to a tune they alone can hear. Both have been called "unpredictable , though Brown, the ex-Jesuit Seminarian, is more sensitive and responsive to subtle shifts in the political winds, while Lockyer simply goes his own way, priding himself on what veteran Democratic pundit Steve Maviglio calls "a streak of populist independence.
But their strengths are fundamentally different. Jerry Brown is brilliant at promoting innovative ideas with one hand, while keeping the other firmly fixed on the pulse of the popular will.
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