(via Virginia Postrel) Back when the Cali Recall Brouhaha was in full swing, I found myself in a pretty conflicted place - I genuinely liked the populism, charisma and guaranteed recipe for change that Schwarzenegger brought to the table.  BUT, doctrinaire side of me still yearned for intellectual integrity that Tom McClintock represented.

Cali govt watcher Dan Weintraub argues I may have gotten both -

Amid all the hoopla that went along with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's second State of the State speech, and all the talk of the governor's bold plan to attack some of the Capitol's most sacred cows, state Sen. Tom McClintock went almost unnoticed.

...principles or not, [McClintock] lacked Schwarzenegger's movie-star credentials, and he could not budge the leader's numbers among a mass audience. McClintock faded down the stretch, finishing third behind Schwarzenegger and Democrat Cruz Bustamante, with 13 percent of the vote.

...Then, Wednesday night, suddenly everything changed. It was if the flashy governor were channeling his straight-laced colleague. Schwarzenegger's speech sounded almost as if McClintock had written it.

"Maybe I should have copyrighted some of my ideas," McClintock said with a laugh when I asked him later about the resemblance.

..."I don't think he is doing this because he wants to, but because he has to," McClintock said of the governor. "He made it very clear that this is going to be a nasty fight and he's probably going to emerge from it less popular than when he went in. But it has to be done. Because these problems can't be ignored, and time has run out. That's what leadership is all about."

Sometimes Democracy really does prevail.