Kevin Starr Examines Postwar California

By Allison Engel on September 30, 2009 9:53 AM

The eighth volume of historian Kevin Starr’s omnibus look at California, detailing the ascendency of the state in the post-World War II era, had the exquisite timing of appearing in July, at the very moment the Golden State was bankrupt.

There could be no better person to explain what went wrong than Starr, 69, the University Professor, State Librarian of California Emeritus and National Humanities Medal winner who is about the closest thing this state has to a living legend.

Starr, in fact, already had released his magisterial look at California in the 1990s, which turned over the seeds of current discontent. (That volume was written out of chronological order in his series, due to the fact that he has abundant “field notes” from those years.)

“We are on the verge of being a failed state because we can’t agree on anything,” he said. “So how did the men and women of 50 to 60 years ago in Sacramento, all those good ol’ boys and good ol’ girls, those Masons with their rimless glasses and double-breasted suits, who were only legislators for six months every other year, go up there and negotiate and help arrange for and supervise and enable and fiscalize the infrastructure of a global megastate?”

His answer is simple. “They horse-traded, they did deals. Aristotle defines politics as the art of the possible. It’s ‘what can we get done,’ not ‘I’m ideologically opposed to you and I’m going to destroy you.’ ”

Golden Dreams: California in the Age of Abundance, 1950-1963 (Oxford University Press) presents the state’s glory days in what USC historian William Deverell described as “a book of astonishing sweep … an exuberant portrait of the sheer boldness of postwar California and a thoughtful, even wistful, reckoning of the state’s ability to inspire dreams.”

Want to know about Herb Caen’s San Francisco, that Baghdad by the Bay, where sports, restaurants, swank department stores, newspapers and culture had their own distinctive swagger? California’s Levittowns and the giants of midcentury modern architecture and landscape design? Larger-than-life characters such as Walter O’Malley, Earl Warren, Dorothy “Buff” Chandler and Archbishop James Francis Cardinal McIntyre? The epic construction of freeways, the rise of the University of California and Cal State campuses and the state water project? The influence of Asian traditions, environmentalism and the Rat Pack?

It’s all here and much, much more, in lucid narrative that packs an impossible amount of detail in its 480 pages. (Not enough detail? Read the 49-page biographical essay that follows the text for even more intriguing book and journal recommendations.) As author Carolyn See puts it, “Starr works like the Flying Wallendas, high up on the wire, without a net, balancing absolutely every aspect of California culture.”

In an interview, Starr explained how we’ve gone off the rails since the halcyon ’50s and ’60s.

One change that led to the present political calcification, he said, was getting rid of cross-filings for primaries in 1958. Cross-filing allowed Democrats and Republicans to enter each other’s primaries and kept everyone running to the center. “It’s not rocket science,” Starr said. “If you have hardening of attitudes, if you have control of the parties by their extreme wings, you’re not going to have politics.”

A second roadblock is the two-thirds majority needed to pass legislation, although Starr noted it has been in effect since 1933. A third is term limits, which work against legislators who know the intricacies of finance, are experts in transportation, water, education or other fields and can practice legislative oversight. Add in unfunded mandates, he said, and suddenly, less than 10 percent of the state’s budget is flexible.

He called Prop. 13 a symptom of the current malaise, but noted that it didn’t spring from the professional politician class. “It might be a generational thing. A certain group of people who chose to come to California or came of age here when everything was easy, when the global economy had not come in and taken effect, when you could buy a home for $50,000. But then the state grows more complex, it gets younger, the global economy hits us and suddenly your home is worth a million dollars and the taxes have gotten out of control…. There are a lot of people who feel that time has passed them by. And so they want to roll it all back, particularly the public sector.

“The more disgusted people get with politicians, the less likely they are going to be to lift the draconian restrictions on them, even though the draconian restrictions are helping make them dysfunctional.”

What gives Starr particular hope? He mentioned Jack Knott, the dean of USC’s School of Policy, Planning, and Development (where Starr holds a joint appointment, along with his appointment at USC College) forming an institute on the future of California. Said Starr: “We use institutes to solve problems in medicine and scientific research, so universities should say that solving California’s problems is another thing we should be helping out with.

“You have to have a public sector commensurate with the vitality and creativity and energy of private life here. Look at the universities, the hospitals, our doctors! Look at the vitality of our literary culture, our painters! Politicians need to be equal.”

True to his librarian’s background, Starr has an omnivorous interest in all disciplines. His next projects are a book on the Golden Gate Bridge and a fine press book, Clio on the Coast, on the writing of California history from 1848 to 1948.

Is there anything that doesn’t interest Starr? He responded in Latin (he took four years of Latin and three years of Greek before entering college), quoting Terence:

"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.

"I am a human being. Nothing human is alien to me.”

TAGS: books, research

Search search

Search prior to August 2008