The Wild West Political Landscape

It started as something akin to tilting at windmills but now it may actually happen.
WaPo reports on the Gov. Davis recall effort.

Generally speaking, I'm very comfortable with representative democracy. Our federal system is built on that concept. A recall is not an option at the Federal level to my understanding. Anyone with knowledge of the Constitution and in the rules of the House and Senate may enlighten me?! To my knowledge, elected Federal officials can only be voted out at their term elections or expelled by their legislative bodies if they are found guilty of some ethical lapse.

However, California has always had a populist strain of political thought as reflected in the initiative process. The idea of people rallying around an idea and putting it on the ballot has been at times been very powerful as in the Prop 13 controls on property taxes which spread across America. And other times this kind of direct democracy is totally ridulous when special interest groups buy enough signatures to get their pet ideas on the ballot. Fortunately, most of the time California voters see through the nuttiness and vote the measure down.

So how would a supporter of representative democracy view the Gov. Davis recall? In principle, I would have to opposed it. He was voted in by the people of California for four more years and we should abide by that decision for good or ill.

However, I also have libertarian political instincts which says, less government is generally a better thing. Gov. Davis presided over a massive increase in the size of the state government and because the economy faultered revenues have fallen leading to the huge budget shortfall. Thus, the notion of knocking him out of office sooner rather than waiting until 2006 has a certain appeal because hopefully his replacement will be less of a more government governor.