Bottom line, there will be no recovery for the US economy that does not include California. If President Bush is pinning his re-election hopes on an economic rebound to cut the legs completely out from under his Democratic rivals, he probably needs to take an active interest in California -- now. Sure it's fun in a schadenfreude sort of way to laugh at the looniness of California, but the more they screw up, the more it affects you and me here in flyover country and even on the other coast.
California is more than 1/10 of the entire country no matter how you want to slice it. That's too big a hole for the rest of the country to compensate for if California continues to decline. I have little faith that Cruz will fix it -- mostly because he probably can't whether he wants to or not. In fact, I think Cruz will be a sort of Gray-lite -- less filling!, more waste!, less filling! more waste! I'm doubtful that Arnold Schwarzenegger can "fix" all of California's problems either, but at least he can shake things up enough to break the complacency of the populace and lay the groundwork to foster some serious reform by the next governor. At the very least, the perception of California as a case study for the long-term deleterious effects of loony leftism and good intentions could be cast aside as the people of California make an effort to reintroduce reality to their political decision making.
Or not.