Can anyone govern California?

Has California become just too complicated to govern? Have the problems become so vast -- and the politics so bitter -- that state government can't get anything done?

In more polite and elegant language, those are essentially the issues raised by The Times' Evan Halper and Michael Rothfeld in an incisive look at the political problems facing the nation's most populous state. They quote Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger observing that California's chief executive wields only so much power and needs the cooperation of the Legislature.

"Look, I'm frustrated," the governor told reporters last week in Sacramento. "I'm sitting here and we have a system where we rely on the 120 legislators to make those decisions. I cannot make them stay here. I cannot lock them into the building. I don't have those kinds of powers. Believe me, I would do it otherwise." (Above, that's the governor in November, discussing state finances. Not surprisingly, the graph ends on a downward slope.)

Halper and Rothfeld also have sobering comments from Leon Panetta, a former California congressman and White House advisor who co-chairs California Forward, a bipartisan think tank focused on solving the state's problems. "For whatever reason, democracy is not working in Sacramento right now," he said. "I am convinced it can be fixed. But people have to make sacrifices" -- in politics and policy.

Some people, including those behind a blog called Three Californias, have even suggested that the state should be chopped up in three parts. Follow this link for the full analysis from Halper and Rothfeld.

-- Steve Padilla

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Photo credit: Ken James / Bloomberg News