This is Leon Panetta’s take on the politics of California. He doesn’t get it, of course. You wanted progressive politics (initiative, referendum, recall, government by experts, and so called non-partisanship) and you got it. Now try to deal with it. I hope you will not be able to, and maybe we can begin crawling back toward some limitation, toward some form of constitutionalism. And I don’t mean the current California Constitution, which is the world’s third largest (after India and Lousiana) and has been amended over 500 times since 1879. For more on California politics, and especially the Progressive movement’s effect on it, see Brian P. Janiskee and Ken Masugi, Democracy in California: Politics and Government in the Golden State. And Gray Davis, to no one’s surprise, is going to try to make sure that the recall is not about him but about the right wing’s agenda for California.