PRESTOPUNDIT -- A Good Blog at a Great Price. Guaranteed.

Danial Weintraub talks with historian Ken Star:

Instead of a petulant partisan jihad, Starr now sees the eruption of a political volcano, a legitimate citizen movement reacting to a disconnect between the governors (not just Davis) and the governed.

"The culture of politics, the appropriations, the hearings, the budget proposals, the whole apparatus of California government is basically 18th century in origin," Starr said. "It's become a self-perpetuating system, in both Republican and Democratic circles.

"On the other hand, people are getting information on a 24-7 basis. They're used to feedback. They're used to things being changed. They're used to laying down databases. Everything moves very rapidly, and people want that from their government as well."

But beginning with the dot-com crash in 2000, government hasn't seemed to work very well at all. We have gone from an energy crisis to a budget crisis to a political crisis. And Californians who came here craving something special or were born into the state's heightened sense of self are shaken by such failures.

"People are personally offended when California doesn't work," Starr said ..

Starr thinks that no matter who wins, the activism reflected in the recall will not soon subside. Voters, he predicts, are going to demand the very sort of structural reform about which experts have been talking for years but which the politicians, wedded to competing interest groups, have refused to enact.

"We have earned it and we will get it," he said, "either through representative politics or back at the ballot box again. We are past the point of no return." He predicts the voters won't be fooled by half-measures or platitudes.

"There was an old saying in vaudeville: Never follow a dog act with a dog act," Starr said. "The people are tired of dog acts. There has to be a new act, the re-founding, the rebuilding of this state."

Starr says the current period is reminiscent of 1879, when California tore up its original constitution and started over, and of the Progressive Era during which the state adopted the tools of direct democracy, including the recall, that have come to be a cornerstone of our political system. Today the defining characteristic, he says, is the lack of faith in big institutions, and the desire to break down the hierarchies that rule our world.

The Internet and other new technologies are a transforming force behind that trend. The World Wide Web has leveled the traditional barriers to information that once forced citizens to depend on opinion leaders for their news.

"We are getting ready for the 21st century, getting ready for the destiny that history has given us," he said. "California is the epicenter of creativity in so many fields, and it has got to have a government equal to its creativity. The people understand that. They don't want to be bothered with the details. They just want it done."