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The L.A. Times has decided to throw more heft at the recall campaign, tapping the paper's former California columnist and city editor Peter H. King to write two columns a week. His first "On the Recall" today adheres to my bias that the recall is a lot closer to politics as usual than it is to New New Thing, so I like it:
Listen closely and it's almost possible to hear the state's legion of political operatives slapping their foreheads in unison: Why oh why didn't we think of this before? We could have recalled Moonbeam, moan the Jerry Brown detractors. We could have recalled Pee Wee, weep the Pete Wilson haters. Maybe we wouldn't have taken them out, but we certainly could have roughed them up, tied down their money, shortened their leashes.
For a quarter of a century it has been canon in California politics that anybody with $1 million or so to invest can put anything before the voters in the form of an initiative. The recall simply has taken this truth and applied it to another of Hiram Johnson's hallowed experiments in direct democracy.
I'm glad to see the Times is putting King's pieces on the op-ed page. In the past, the paper would have run them alongside the news stories -- see Jim Ricci's writerly observations on the secession campaign last year. That effort ran out of creative gas before election day, but King should enjoy more freedom to be opinionated. I just hope he doesn't run out of ideas and keep writing anyway, as sometimes happens when the Times appoints these kinds of ad-hoc columns around a news story.
Of the staff on hand, I think King was a good choice -- he knows the state, knows politics and probably wants to speak to and for the great center that isn't sure what to think of this new phenomenon yet. It could turn into a waste of space, though, if he just keeps repeating the same cynic's line. Even I'm willing to be excited by high turnout, new ideas and other evidence it's more than a new partisan twist. That leaves one inside baseball question: how will King's columns really be that much different from what Steve Lopez does on the cover of California?
Also: Clint to Arnold: Watch What You Wish For (Carmel Pine Cone) Updated 8:23 p.m.: The Eastwood interview is by Kirstie Wilde, the ex-anchorwoman in L.A. Richard Horgan columnizes at FilmStew.com.
Best column I've ever read in the Los Angeles Times -- or any other Southern California newspaper or magazine -- was by Peter King.
Posted by: Garrison at August 20, 2003 02:42 PMI agree with Garrison on this one -- Peter King's old column in the Times was one of the best things I've ever seen in the paper, and I wouldn't expect him to just repeat a "cynic's line."
King used to write about the San Joaquin Valley like he'd actually, I don't know, been there. He traveled, asked real questions, and put work into his columns -- they were reported commentary, not off-the-cuff, Steve Lopez rants.
A bigger role for Peter King is good news.
Posted by: Chris at August 20, 2003 02:54 PMBell, you're right. Pete left the Times in the late '90s to be a Bee columnist, then returned to the LAT 3-4 years ago. He writes so well about the Central Valley partly because he is a Fresno boy and, I think, began his career there.
Posted by: Kevin Roderick at August 20, 2003 03:22 PMYep, Pete's from Fresno, though he was a little too brilliant for the neighborhood and was soon up in the Bay Area working for AP and then the Ex.
The Valley has hatched more than a few good columnists. Must be the warm summer nights. Jack Smith came from Bakersfield, Herb Caen from Sacto.
Pete detoured through San Luis Obispo, where he studied at Cal Poly and worked at the Trib with the equally brilliant mentor Jim Hayes, who has become a writing coach for the Times.
Posted by: Glenn S. at June 23, 2004 09:14 PM
of LA Observed
Hey, can you give some background on Peter H. King.
I remember him being a terrific writer in the 90s. Then he left to the Sac Bee. And now he's back. What gives?
Posted by: Bell at August 20, 2003 02:04 PM