For a Desperate Gov. Davis, the Buck Stops Over There

By Gov. Gray Davis’ standards, I guess you could say that was a passionate speech Tuesday afternoon. But then, it isn’t often that a person gets to deliver the eulogy at his own wake.

In case you missed it, the recall is part of that same right-wing conspiracy Bill and Hillary Clinton kept talking about back when the president was caught with his pants around his ankles.

Whatever elections the Republicans can’t win, they’re going to steal, according to the governor. And then they’re going to poison his dog.

“Make no mistake,” Davis said, shamelessly resorting to the old trick of trashing one side to rally the other. “I am going to fight this recall and the right-wing forces behind it. You can take that to the bank.”

Well, maybe it’s true that U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa qualifies as a right-winger, and he’s the guy who bankrolled the recall.

But now that we’re stuck with it, the candidates include Peter Ueberroth, who’s running a bipartisan campaign; Arnold Schwarzenegger, who doesn’t seem to know what stripe he wants to wear; and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat.

It’s not right-wing politics that unites that crew, but the conviction that Davis has done a lousy job of everything but panhandling up and down the state -- yeah, I’d even put Bustamante in that camp.

I could have told you the Davis speech was going to be an act of desperation when his own aides said the governor would be speaking “from the heart.”

Just as I advised Schwarzenegger to avoid discussing any issues and bank on his celebrity to get him into the winner’s circle, I would have advised Davis not to do anything so risky as to suddenly speak from the heart.

Did you see what happened?

A roomful of designated cheerleaders wasn’t always sure when to cheer. At a couple of points, Davis made the mistake of trying to get a little rhythm going with some hand signals, and managed to make Al Gore look like James Brown.

Now look, I’ve been telling you I think the recall is loopy, and I might have been prepared to defend the governor today, because he was right when he said he won reelection fair and square.

But after watching him devote roughly two seconds to his own failures as a leader while blaming pretty much everything on the right-wing conspiracy, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Let me confess yet again that I am the guy who wrote a notably flattering -- some called it laughable -- story about Davis early in his first term, when he was piling up little victories on HMO reform, gun control and reduction of class size.

I had sat with the governor as he went through dozens of bills, refusing the shortcut of accepting staff summaries or recommendations. Davis insisted on reading everything himself before deciding whether to sign.

What I failed to realize was that Davis’ strength was also a weakness -- he had the personality and instincts of a 25-year bureaucrat, not a political leader.

There are lots of different ways to become an effective leader. One tried-and-true method is to reward friends and punish enemies, but Davis has no friends.

Another way is to use charm, humility and other powers of persuasion in appealing directly to the people, but Davis runs into all sorts of trouble there.

To the extent that Davis was successful as a politician, it was because he made the choice to plant himself in the noncontroversial political middle at the right time. (Which, conveniently, made it possible to hit up both sides for money on every issue.)

He was in favor of better schools, for instance, and he was going to be tough on crime. Who could argue with any of that? Not many folks. Especially not when California was drunk on milk and honey, with millionaires being minted by the hour and state coffers running over.

“Gray was, I think, tailor-made to be a good-times governor,” says Democratic strategist Bill Carrick.

Unfortunately, the good times came to a screeching halt, and we were left with a governor who had no crisis experience, no allies and no history of tough choices.

That’s not the fault of any Republicans.

No, Davis didn’t create the energy or budget crisis. But he was neither swift nor heroic in dealing with either. And he was the last guy you’d ever expect to take a bold position on something like the short-sighted folly of Proposition 13, which is at the heart of every budget crisis in the state.

“Gray has had difficulty saying to voters, ‘OK, you’re not going to like this, but here’s what we’re going to have to do,’ ” says Carrick.

And now, with increasingly polarized politics undermining any hope of intelligent problem-solving conversations in California and beyond, what does Davis do to reassert his leadership in a time of crisis?

He rises up from the mushy middle and bashes the right, pandering to the left in a last, desperate attempt to save himself.

If you heard cheers, they were from all the other candidates.

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes .com.