Had gold not been discovered in California, its admission as a state would have been delayed for many years, perhaps decades. Thus, when California gave up its brief status as an independent nation and joined the United States, it was separated by thousands of miles of mostly unpopulated wilderness from what was then the center of American finance and culture.
The passage of time -- more than 150 years -- has not diminished California's sense of being different. If anything, the size of its population and economy, its cultural diversity and its global status have enhanced California's metaphysical separation from the rest of the nation.

In recent years, that divide has extended to politics. California once closely tracked national political trends. More recently, the nation has drifted a bit rightward, manifested in Republican takeovers of the White House and Congress. California has shifted a bit to the left, handing Democrats control over the governorship, both U.S. Senate seats, other statewide offices, the congressional delegation and both houses of the Legislature.

Washington and Sacramento have become studies in ideological contrast, to wit:

* While President Bush and the GOP Congress have enacted a series of whopping tax cuts, Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature are proposing billions of dollars in new taxes and fees. The last federal tax cut, signed into law the other day, totals $330 billion over 10 years with Californians' share being roughly $4 billion a year. But if Davis has his way, state taxes will increase by about $8 billion a year.

* Democratic senators are filibustering conservative Bush judicial nominees, effectively imposing a 60-vote requirement on confirmation. Republicans are fuming over what they characterize as an undemocratic barrier and are talking about changing Senate rules to do away with the 60-vote rule. But in Sacramento, Democrats are complaining about the state's two-thirds vote requirement on budgets and taxes, saying it is undemocratic and gives minority Republicans too much power. Unions and other Democrat-friendly groups are drawing up a ballot measure to eliminate the two-thirds votes.

* As the Republican Congress moved toward prohibiting "partial birth" abortions last week, the Democratic state Legislature was rejecting anti-abortion amendments to the state budget.

* Unions, consumer activists, trial lawyers, environmentalists and other liberal groups complain incessantly that the Bush administration and a Republican Congress tilt too far toward business. But in Sacramento, business leaders complain just as constantly that Democrats are adopting too many "job-killer" measures in response to pressure from unions, consumer activists, trial lawyers and environmentalists. When the Bushies dropped "new source review" in California's federal air quality standards, for example, the California Senate promptly adopted the rules as state laws.

And so it goes. As conservative Republicans push national policy in one direction, liberal Democrats nudge state policies the other way. With each new declaration, the political divide widens. Oddly, however, politicians in both capitals may be out of step with most of their constituents.

George W. Bush, after all, won the White House in 2000 on an electoral vote majority stemming from a hotly disputed U.S. Supreme Court ruling on vote-counting in Florida, having lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore. Republicans control the House, meanwhile, by just a handful of seats and the Senate by an even closer margin. Republicans can do what they do because they hold the offices, but polls indicate that on many issues, they're out of sync with a majority of voters.

Democrats may hold every major office in California, and the Legislature may be increasingly dominated by liberals, but California voters are not nearly as liberal as those numbers might imply. Davis is the most unpopular governor in at least recent history and faces a serious recall drive. Meanwhile, Bush's standing in the state has increased sharply and he stands a fair chance of winning here in 2004.

Californians, perhaps, are not as far out of step with the rest of the nation as the stark partisan division implies.