Kevin Starr, the preeminent California historian currently serving as the state librarian, says he had an "attack of Harvard snobbery" when he first thought about the attempt to recall Gov. Gray Davis. This is a circus, Starr quickly concluded, that will devalue the culture of California.

But as the campaign took shape, Starr reconsidered. An appointee first of Republican Pete Wilson and then of Democrat Davis, and the author (so far) of three volumes of California history, Starr says he slowly began to realize that his original take was all wrong.

"I spoke too soon," Starr told me in an interview this week.

Instead of a petulant partisan jihad, Starr now sees the eruption of a political volcano, a legitimate citizen movement reacting to a disconnect between the governors (not just Davis) and the governed.

"The culture of politics, the appropriations, the hearings, the budget proposals, the whole apparatus of California government is basically 18th century in origin," Starr said. "It's become a self-perpetuating system, in both Republican and Democratic circles.

"On the other hand, people are getting information on a 24-7 basis. They're used to feedback. They're used to things being changed. They're used to laying down databases. Everything moves very rapidly, and people want that from their government as well."

But beginning with the dot-com crash in 2000, government hasn't seemed to work very well at all. We have gone from an energy crisis to a budget crisis to a political crisis. And Californians who came here craving something special or were born into the state's heightened sense of self are shaken by such failures.

"People are personally offended when California doesn't work," Starr said.

Finally, there is the lack of a rapport between Gray Davis and the voters. Starr didn't say this, but I will: Davis worked his way up the political ladder playing an insider's game, finely tuning his positions to match the will of the voters, to avoid angering them, but never really bothering to win them over. Davis is the spouse who is always walking on eggshells. His very attempts not to offend, over time, themselves become offensive.

"I think people want a connection with the person who's the leader," Starr said. "This doesn't mean male or female, Republican or Democrat. It doesn't mean the person has to be the smartest guy on the block. It does mean there has to be a personal connection."

The recall was begun by a small group of anti-tax activists and nurtured by a conservative Republican congressman, but the strands of which Starr speaks combined to give it energy that crossed party lines. Starr thinks that no matter who wins, the activism reflected in the recall will not soon subside. Voters, he predicts, are going to demand the very sort of structural reform about which experts have been talking for years but which the politicians, wedded to competing interest groups, have refused to enact.

"We have earned it and we will get it," he said, "either through representative politics or back at the ballot box again. We are past the point of no return." He predicts the voters won't be fooled by half-measures or platitudes.

"There was an old saying in vaudeville: Never follow a dog act with a dog act," Starr said. "The people are tired of dog acts. There has to be a new act, the re-founding, the rebuilding of this state."

Starr says the current period is reminiscent of 1879, when California tore up its original constitution and started over, and of the Progressive Era during which the state adopted the tools of direct democracy, including the recall, that have come to be a cornerstone of our political system. Today the defining characteristic, he says, is the lack of faith in big institutions, and the desire to break down the hierarchies that rule our world.

The Internet and other new technologies are a transforming force behind that trend. The World Wide Web has leveled the traditional barriers to information that once forced citizens to depend on opinion leaders for their news.

"We are getting ready for the 21st century, getting ready for the destiny that history has given us," he said. "California is the epicenter of creativity in so many fields, and it has got to have a government equal to its creativity. The people understand that. They don't want to be bothered with the details. They just want it done."

Given that Starr is a Democrat and an appointee of the man at the center of this storm, I give him a lot of credit for having the courage to check his reflexive "Harvard snobbery" and examine the recall through a clear set of eyes. Now if he can just get a few of his fellow alumni still residing east of the Mississippi to do the same.