Watching Gov. Schwarzenegger brief state-of-the-state speech Thursday morning, only one question came to mind. (The speech wasn’t long enough for more than one). Why did he bother making the speech at all?
Perhaps it was merely tradition. But tradition had been blown when the speech was scheduled for a morning in mid-January. It’s usually early evening a week earlier. The timing alone – during the workday, at a moment when those who follow government and politics are focused on President-Elect Obama and his incoming administration –offers plenty of evidence that the governor didn’t want much public attention on what he had to say.
And perhaps it was out of some sense of constitutional duty, though a state of the state speech is not a constitutional requirement. Article V, Sec. 3 of the California constitution says only: “The Governor shall report to the Legislature each calendar year on the condition of the State and may make recommendations.” There’s nothing there about a speech. By my reading of the constitution, Schwarzenegger could have sent Tom Arnold over to the Assembly with a bugle, take-out from Frank Fat’s, and suggestions for preventing a Screen Actors Guild walkout. A state of the state message like that would have been entertaining, at least — and it might have even qualified as economic stimulus.
But he gave a speech – an address so without real content or meaning that I wonder if I can get an IOU from the state for the 12 minutes of my time on this planet that I spent watching. (I’d actually accept an IOU for 11 minutes and 30 seconds of the speech; The 30 seconds it took to set up and deliver the Conan reference—well, I enjoyed those 30 seconds). He didn’t offer any new proposal on the budget. He didn’t offer a new diagnosis of the problem (the problem, he says, is still partisanship). He didn’t reframe the debate. He said what we all know: that the situation is bad, and that he and the legislature must find a solution.
Schwarzenegger might have made his point better if he had skipped the speech entirely. The governor was right when he said there’s no point in talking about other programs with the state running short of cash and facing an estimated $42 billion budget deficit over this year and next. So why bother talking at all?