There are more Democrats here than most would believe

A steady reading of the Pilot’s Forum page leads increasingly to the

conclusion that Democrats are a dying breed in these parts. So it

came as a considerable revelation to me to find a whole crowded

roomful of Democrats at a stunning home on Lido Isle last Monday.

They were there to meet up with Sen. Barbara Boxer, and I came

along on the invitation of my friend, Dick Lewis, and the gracious

hospitality of the hosts, Martin and Elaine Weinberg.

I turned out to be a problem to the senator’s campaign team

because I’m a journalist, and this was an off-the-record session with

a group of Boxer’s benefactors. But since I was there just to get a

sense of Boxer, whom I had never met or seen in action, I was happy

to play by their rules.

The first thing that struck me about Boxer is how tiny she

appears. In the heels she was wearing, her head came under my chin.

But she is suffused with energy, palpable to anyone standing in the

same room with her. It comes out in bursts of staccato talk, quick

movements and an edge of impatience.

She’s a quick read, anticipating questions before the questioner

is through, and plunging into answers. She was never at a loss for

words, most of them substantive, and many of them funny. She mostly

responded to questions with answers rather than abstract or

irrelevant speeches.

Boxer delivered her informal message without notes from atop a

stone ledge beside the fireplace, framed against a backdrop of

bobbing boats and sea water behind a huge window. I didn’t hear much

that I thought needed to be off the record. Her words were a paragon

of restraint when contrasted with some of the rhetoric from the other

side. There were times when her presentation seemed closer to a

symposium than a battle cry, but it was solidly upbeat, and she

seemed taller at the end than at the beginning of the evening.

I caught up with Boxer as she was moving toward the door to ask if

she was aware of the powerful perception among many Democrats that

their representatives in Congress have been consistently

chicken-hearted in standing up to the aggressive agenda of the Bush

administration. Her answer was an immediate and vigorous, “No, no,

that isn’t true.”

When I then asked :”Whether or not it’s true, are you aware of

this widely held perception?” she repeated her denial and said firmly

that the Democrats would unify under a common banner before next

year’s election.

Then she was out the door, and I wandered back to my car, pleased

at seeing all those home-grown Democrats in one place and wanting to

believe that the good guys have a real shot after all.

*

One of the major ironies -- and one of the few virtues -- of this

recall fiasco is that it has exposed some deeply embedded political

wounds that we have inflicted on ourselves over the years and that

have metastasized into the problems we are struggling with today. At

the head of the pack is Proposition 13.

It has come back into our lives because Arnold Schwarzenegger

chose a Democratic billionaire named Warren Buffett to advise him on

economic matters. And one of the first things Buffett did was point

matter-of-factly -- and apparently without weighing any political

collateral damage -- to Proposition 13 as a principal villain in

California’s financial crisis today, an assessment Schwarzenegger has

been distancing himself from as rapidly as possible, along with most

of the other major candidates.

My wife and I are typical of the people who have greatly profited

personally from Proposition 13. Because we have lived in the same

house for 20 years, our property taxes have gone up a maximum of 2%

per year, while the value of our property has zoomed. Thus we have

profited over the years at the expense of public services that have

suffered because of this lost revenue and because of homeowners who

have come along later and paid taxes on the market value of their

homes.

So Buffett is right. The passage of Proposition 13 eroded the tax

base in California that is the principal source of revenue in

virtually every other state. It was a broadsword attack on a problem

the state Legislature should have addressed with a scalpel -- and

didn’t. It can still be modified to protect people with fixed incomes

without undermining the tax base of the state.

But because it is cast in legal concrete, Proposition 13 stands as

Exhibit A in the gallery of inflexible direct democracy initiatives

that now tie up almost two-thirds of the state budget, says public

policy professor John Elwood at UC Berkeley.

Whoever succeeds Gray Davis will have to start with that problem.

And somewhere down the line, some statesman who doesn’t regard

getting reelected as his main goal in office is going to have to tell

the citizens of California that their beloved direct democracy is

causing a lot more problems than it solves.

*

I finally caught up with “The O.C.,” the Fox TV soap opera that is

almost as bad as Fox news coverage.

It’s connection with Orange County doesn’t go very far beyond the

title of the show and some periodic static background shots of water

reputed to be the Pacific Ocean. It is a tale of unpleasant and

uninteresting people doing unpleasant and uninteresting things to one

another.

“The O.C.” is supposed to take place in Newport Beach, and if this

is how our city is seen by Hollywood and projected to the world at

large, we either need to mend our ways or hire the people who sold

the Great Park at El Toro to change our image.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.