Combative Air Has Not Served Wilson Well

SACRAMENTO — There is this striking oddity about Gov. Pete Wilson: People agree with him but don’t really like him. They like his policies but not him personally.

Reducing class sizes, slashing welfare, denying services to illegal immigrants, permitting abortions, dumping government affirmative action, “striking out” career criminals. . . . The majority of Californians side with him, according to polls and votes.

Yet, except for a brief period after he first took office in 1991, people never have been happy with Wilson as governor. His job rating improved last fall--probably because he latched tightly onto the Democratic issue of education--but more people still disapproved than approved of his job performance, according to the Times Poll.

Aides respond by recalling that voters returned him to office in 1994 by a mini-landslide. But his opponent, Democrat Kathleen Brown, ran a weak race. It also was a big year for Republicans everywhere. Plus, nobody ever accused Wilson of being a dunce politically--at least until he ran for president.

The paradox of Wilson’s popular positions versus his personal unpopularity came to mind last Tuesday as I watched him deliver his annual State of the State address to the Legislature. Traditionally, this is the most festive day of the year in the Capitol. The Assembly chamber is jammed with lawmakers, statewide officials, Supreme Court justices, families and friends. They are all on their best behavior.

Expounding at length on two winning issues--improving schools and reforming welfare--Wilson should have been ringing up points with the public and pols alike. I doubt he was with the public. I know he wasn’t with the pols.

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So what’s with this governor, who came to Sacramento with such high expectations, but these days is widely characterized as a disappointment?

Here are some views, my own as well as those of savvy political pros:

* To be fair, you can’t overstate the damage he suffered by entering office just as California was being rocked by its worst recession since the Great Depression. State revenues plummeted, forcing the Republican governor to raise taxes by $7.5 billion. That probably has been his single most statesman-like act, but he did it in a bullheaded, hasty way that forever alienated GOP conservatives.

* You also can’t exaggerate the bitterness he created among Democratic lawmakers by endorsing term limits and refusing to compromise on redistricting.

* But it’s his feisty style that’s at the root of his personality problem. The governor and his spokesmen have oversold the fighting Marine image, although--in truth--that’s the real Wilson. “He’s pugnacious,” says a longtime associate. “He’s always acting like he wants to start a fight. He loves a fight.” Another ally is less charitable: “There’s a lot of Nixon in Pete.”

* Wilson comes across in speeches and TV photo-ops as an unfeeling cold fish, although one-on-one he can be warm and witty. “He’s dullsville,” concedes an advisor. “Like in that [State of the State] speech: He moves his eyes back and forth to the TelePrompTer, but doesn’t move his head. He looks like a beady-eyed SOB.”

* He doesn’t instinctively sense people’s moods. He reads polls and devours policy papers. “He’s a policy wonk, a bureaucrat who gets elected,” says a friend. “He hasn’t got the nuances of a good pol.”

* For the past two years, Wilson’s hoarse, crackly voice has crippled his ability to communicate. People cringed listening. A plastic chip recently was removed from his throat and the voice again is normal.

* But the words still are unnecessarily polarizing, as were the Proposition 187 TV ads that licensed critics to brand him an “immigrant basher.” He raised hackles during last week’s speech by depicting welfare moms “sitting on a couch collecting [checks while taxpayers] subsidize idleness or promiscuity.”

* The all-time career screw-up, however, was running for president after promising not to and being willing to turn over his office to a Democratic lieutenant governor. People saw him as an untrustworthy opportunist. “That hurt him bad,” says a strategist. “He never realized it.”

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The climate is hostile. Wilson is a lame duck with little political capital, a Democratic Legislature and hardly any good friends in Sacramento.

The animosity was evident during the speech when Democrats refused to join Republicans in applauding even mom and apple pie lines, such as: “We will not increase [student] fees for public universities.”

You sometimes look at Wilson and wince. To salvage these last two years in office, he needs to conciliate, compromise and cool the combat.