For the ever-ebullient Kevin Starr, who retired two weeks ago as California's state librarian, optimism about his native state is second nature, the view almost as grand as it was a decade ago when he took the job. And as California's premier social and cultural historian, he's as entitled to it as anyone.

Even when Starr talks about the latter-day "intellectual impoverishment" of California's leadership, or the "time-out" in support of the state's once celebrated public programs and policies, it sounds as if he regards the enervation as little more than a passing thing.

Why, he asked the other day, is there no grand vision? Where are the Clark Kerrs, the Earl Warrens, the Phil Burtons, the scholars, the visionary writers, the people who, in this period of crisis, can "rebuild the California narrative?" Why is "the Democratic Party (his party) brain-dead?" As a poor boy growing up in San Francisco a half-century ago, he "struggled for the optimistic view of life," a view that was nurtured by "the larger California impetus." Now, he says, he's less optimistic about California than he used to be - finds fewer people to share or sustain his optimism.

Yet almost in the same breath, the tone changes. There are the writers Richard Rodriguez and Gregory Rodriguez (no relation), who are thinking about California's new demographics and its emerging culture in new ways. There is the political maturity of a new generation of Latino politicians who - contrary to the warnings of anti-immigration nativists - are not irredentists seeking to retake lost Mexican soil. And, of course, there's Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The state, he says, is fortunate to have Schwarzenegger - a most improbable governor - who "has the state moving again." That may well be overly optimistic: Even the tough short-term problems are a long way from solution, the bonds voters approved last month no more than a deferral. And while, as Starr contends, the governor's budget cuts may not be ideological - Starr's state library budget had already been whacked by former Gov. Gray Davis - Schwarzenegger's elimination of the "car tax," which adds $4 billion to the state's budget problems, was altogether political.

But like many others who have dealt with Schwarzenegger, including a lot of Democrats, he finds him smart, a good listener, "not the Terminator ... but quiet and good-humored. ... Arnold wants to be great." That's a statement that was rarely made about any of the last three governors.

Schwarzenegger, he said, really is trying to re-establish bipartisanship in Sacramento, "trying to build up the self-esteem of the Legislature." (That statement was made just before the governor, declaring that legislators wasted too much time on trivia, called for a return to a part-time Legislature.)

And then there is the view from 40,000 feet. There is that "time-out." It took 50 years to build up the state's, and the nation's, "social democratic base" - the progressive policies and infrastructure of universities, schools, parks, freeways and water systems for which California became a national model.

Now there's a "fatigue among Americans about the cost of programs," a mood that calls for a reconsideration on how the money is spent and whether the spending accomplishes the things it was supposed to. But that thought, too, leads to broader vistas: Los Angeles as "the epicenter of a new Mexican-American civilization"; the pride that, as state librarian, he saw among Californians in their local communities. And, reflecting on last year's devastating fires in Southern California, he recalled a Latina TV reporter interviewing a fire chief who also happened to be Latino and an emergency room physician (ditto) - all performing like anyone else in the same jobs - "the old genes inhabiting new people."

Most important, unlike 1994, when Gov. Pete Wilson first made him director of the state library, and when the state was still feeling the effects of the last recession - and when the state had also been hit with a massive budget deficit - "now everyone is aware of what can be lost. Everyone now gets it. We could be in receivership, if not to the banks then to the bondmeisters."

The task now (rising to yet greater heights) is to find the intellectual vision - for government, for the emerging new California society, for "reassembling a larger California."

Starr will surely be among the leaders in the attempt. The retirement from the library will leave more time for his two other nearly full-time engagements: teaching at the University of Southern California and writing. Late this summer, there'll be another book, "Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990-2003," to put alongside his multi-volume "Americans and the California Dream," which has become a standard work in California social history.

He acknowledges that too few people are doing the hard thinking about the state's future. Where will the next great impulse come from? But in the very process of asking the question there's also the certainty that in California, it will come from somewhere.