The desperation to which the state's constitutional officers are willing to go to avoid getting a real job is extraordinary.

For the last several years politicians of both parties have learned the best way to handle a problem like this is to bare their souls. Cheney is a throwback to another era.

By nature, Kennedy and Schmidt are both the type of people who administer with a very strong hand. But the most important thing is for Schwarzenegger himself to vest them with that authority.

In the days before term limits, politicians who knew they weren't ever going to be governor were content to stay in the Legislature. They knew that being a Senate committee chair was a better job than being lieutenant governor.

Arnold is not moving substantively very far at all, but he is dramatically changing his emphasis. Almost every policy proposal that's come out of the Governor's Office over the last week or two is not significantly different from things he's talked about in the past. But he's making a much greater effort to emphasize a more moderate and conciliatory approach.

It's very hard to see why he'd want to spend another four years working under the same set of restrictions. Legislators in safe districts and a budget process that doesn't work -- that doesn't seem like a fun way to spend four more years of his life.

It's politics as usual. He can blame Sacramento -- I don't think that's his first or his best option but it's a fallback.

This is very much in keeping with Cheney's persona, but it is also a natural byproduct of what you will find with a politician who has already run his last campaign.

This isn't what term limits were supposed to do. While they've brought new faces and a diversity of backgrounds to the Legislature, it's taking awhile for the new faces to seep upwards because the old faces don't want to leave.

Schwarzenegger's critics last year argued that voters didn't care about what he was trying to fix. You can't say that this year.