Groping for leadership

It sounds, from the posts below, like the California recall race is all but over and Arnold is all but elected. Here’s Mark Steyn’s latest take. As I said at the beginning of this campaign, I will shed no tears over the demise of Davis and the defeat of Bustamante. However, I am far from sanguine about a Schwarzenegger administration. Apart from his tendency to grope women (which to me is disturbing even if the story is being reported by the L.A. Times), I agree with Steyn’s comment that Arnold “is not my kind of Republican; he’s barely any kind of Republican.” Steyn goes on to argue that Arnold “is not the issue, the state is. . . .The story here is that Calfornia is in crisis. And if it stays in the hands of its sleazy incompetent political establishment, the crisis will become terminal.” But what about Arnold’s competence? If the condition of the state is as bad as Steyn says, and if Bustamante is as hopeless a candidate as he now appears to be, then perhaps, in hindsight, it might have better if conservatives had rallied around a more serious and genuine Republican contender.