Oh, the heady days of 2003; there was a perfect storm brewing that Gray Davis could do nothing to stop. Darrell Issa was busy tossing around his car security cash around in order to be elected governor in the recall election.  Of course, that never happened, as Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped in to the race, and the rest is history.  But what is the CW on that?

Well, if there is a source of Sacramento CW, certainly George Skelton is your man.  And today, he declares that the recall was folly:

One thing should now be evident as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger packs up his office: It was a mistake to recall Gray Davis.

Davis didn’t deserve it. He had just been reelected the year before. He would have been out of office in three years anyway.

Schwarzenegger wasn’t an improvement except for, briefly, providing entertainment. He didn’t make the state’s money mess any better. In fact, it has gotten worse. (LA Times)

Of course, seeing where he is now in the polls, and the position the state is in right now, this takes no great source of conventional wisdom.  During the last seven years, Arnold made some pretty important moves.  But, ultimately, he was a failure because he didn’t understand the system, and his only attempts to change it were at the margin where it is safe and cuddly.

He billed himself as a reformer, and the only reforms he could get through were do-nothing reforms like redistricting and Top 2.  He billed himself as somebody who could sweep away the debt and deficit, but really, he was in no position to do either.  And he never even seriously tried to work for real change on the budget system.  He was content to further aggrandize the Big 5 system, making the system even more closed than it was in the past.

Gray Davis got rolled, but as we learned from Prop 8, the voters of this state can make mistakes.  Some they learn quickly, and others it takes a few years.  It seems with the Mistakinator, it took about 6 years.