2010 governor: does it matter?

I had developed the opinion that who wins any given election makes very little difference. Humans are adaptable, and the influence of any particular politician on my day-to-day life is tiny. Especially considering all the checks and balances in our government. It’s nigh impossible for any one person to have a dramatically helpful or hurtful influence.

Now, like all too few (even if it was the majority), I didn’t trust GWB. I didn’t trust him not to go off half-cocked and do something stupid. When my fears proved justified, some asked me if I still thought it didn’t really matter who got elected. Well, my opinion was shaken (but was it stirred?).

I’m now facing a choice between Whitman and Brown and everybody else on the ticket for CA governor. I often give third parties serious consideration and even vote for them when I have confidence who the winner of the election will be. I think diversity of opinion is essential to making the best decisions, and I’m overtired of the grid lock of power struggle that our 2 party system has devolved into and prevents progress, prevents new ideas. So I often look Green. Much of their tenets parallel mine. But I often find their candidates uniformed, unsophisticated, pie-in-the-sky, over-eager idealists so far out of the mainstream that they have no chance to accomplish anything if elected. So my Green vote is more support for a >2 party system and for general principles than it is for the Green candidate.

But this election seems so close between Brown and Whitman that I’ve not even glanced at the Green governor candidate. And though I’d like to think Whitman or Brown doesn’t make a difference, I am shaken. By itself not enough to vote my preference between the two. So I looked at their websites (in addition to reading endorsements). And that piffle helped not a whit. Whitman’s site was all motherhood and apple pie, spouting all sorts of political incantations: Meg will create jobs, Meg will cut government waste, Meg will protect the environment, Meg will improve education, Meg will fix the immigration problem. Lah-ti-dah. Long on apparent commitment, short on details about how.

Brown’s site is a bit fuller in the details, but still pretty thin, still saying the same kinds of things, though slightly different, more tuned to my values. But I know I’m rationalizing here. Yeah, Brown’s best, but Whitman lost me long ago as she fought Poizner to see who could be further right during the primary. And now she’s headed back to the middle? I’m not buying that, particularly because she’s so thin on details, even in the bits of the debates I’ve heard.

I’m scared that Whitman as governor takes the partisanship politics, the governing to stay in power rather than the governing to improve life in the state up to 11. (Though thinking that through makes me think that someday I have to figure out what I think the role government is. Hmm, start with the preamble of the US Constitution?  Still brings a tear to my eye) And Jerry Brown? Well, he invokes strong dislike in many, and that’s something tough to overcome, but I think he is focused on improving CA rather than fighting for power. Maybe he had presidential aspirations last time throgh the state house, but that seems far from his mind now. I think he has a vision for CA, not a vision based on what people will vote for. And I mostly like what I think his vision is, so I’m planning on voting for him.

That doesn’t mean I’ve given up on Green. I’m voting Green for Lieutenant Governor: Castillo. He seems pretty well-grounded based on my trip to his website. I don’t like his focus on prisons, which isn’t bad by itself, but it’s bad how he focuses on it as a means to solve many problems. But the rest of his positions seem pretty solid and well-thought out. Not so cursory and idealistic as many Greens. And if either Newsom or Maldonado wins, no big deal. Either seems OK, and the Lieutenant Governor doesn’t do much of anything anyway!