The questions have been flying thick and fast in the past couple of weeks -- from the New York Times, from Newsweek, from National Public Radio: Does the recall campaign against Gov. Gray Davis signal the beginning of a wave of dissatisfaction that, like the tax revolt of 1978, will sweep the country? Or is this just another form of California craziness that reaches no farther than the Sierra?

That all this is happening in the midst of a paralyzing budget crisis that's threatening to downgrade California's credit to junk bond status, gut public services and make the Golden State the staple of the late-night comics obviously makes California-is-crazy the default position.

But the answers have to be hedged. You could say that with its casual acceptance of multitrillion-dollar long-term deficits, its lust for ever-more tax cuts for the rich and its frightening disregard for the fact that the country is hardly more prepared for terrorism than it was on 9/11, Washington is crazier than we are.
Did President Bush tell us we were going to have those deficits when he pushed those tax cuts? Did Washington phony up the intelligence reports on Iraq? Why have the Democrats been so gutless and undisciplined? If the tables were turned, Republicans would be ready to impeach.

Yet that's no answer either. For now the voters love Bush, despite the recession, the erosion of jobs and the near-certainty that the nation will have to drastically cut its public services, including Medicare, in the years ahead. For now most people, even if they're not content, aren't likely to go after their leaders. In any case, only 19 states have the recall.

California does have its unique problems. We have a friendless governor who won his last election only because his Republican opponent was a leaky vessel. That Davis' successful manipulation of voters in the GOP primary enabled him to pick that opponent hardly endeared him to those voters.

We also have a set of constitutional constraints that gives a minority of Republicans a veto over the budget. And we have term limits and safe districts that fuse legislative ignorance, incompetence and indifference with cult-like partisanship, paralyzing responsible government.

And, to be sure, with our 35 million people, we are a state that, for sheer size alone, would be difficult to manage. Our self-imposed governmental mazes make the system so incomprehensible that our confused and frustrated voters are even more prone to blame anything that moves for what they perceive to be the state's problems.

If the state hadn't bailed out local governments after the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 and had let voters feel the direct and immediate consequences of that vote -- on schools, on local public safety, on roads and libraries -- maybe we wouldn't be snarled in the mess we have now.

But there may also be a deeper answer to all those questions coming from our bemused friends back East, and that's our demographics. The other day someone sent an e-mail referring to the state's deficit. "Our State," it said, "is bankrupt from subsidizing Mexicans and it is going to stop -- one way or another."

The message isn't quoted because it's typical -- it's not, though it's hardly the first such message that's been sent in recent weeks. Nor is it quoted to show that there's still a lot of ethnic resentment flying around. But it's a reminder that California recently became the first major U.S. state to have no ethnic majority and that a lot of California voters are not living in the overwhelmingly Anglo state they were born in or moved to when they first came here in the seemingly golden decades after World War II.

Recent surveys by the Public Policy Institute of California indicate that while the vast majority of every major ethnic group says it's satisfied with race relations in its area, there remain sharp divisions on ethnically charged issues such as immigration and affirmative action.

It's just nine years since Californians approved Proposition 187, which sought to deny services, including schooling, to illegal immigrants; seven years since Proposition 209, which prohibited race preferences in public education and employment; and five years since we passed Proposition 227, which sought to end bilingual education in the public schools.

We can dispute endlessly about the extent to which any of these measures were tinged with racism. But there's no question that each reflects voters' responses to the state's changing demographics and their attempts to adjust to California's new ethnic mix. Conversely, Latino voting dropped sharply in last November's election in considerable part because Davis vetoed a bill that would have allowed illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses.

That, too, reflects our changing political demographics and our difficulties in adjusting to California's new circumstances. We may well be uniquely crazy, but as the proportions of Latinos and Asians grow elsewhere, California's churning will come to a lot of other places as well.