If there’s a wise man among this state’s poli­tical journalists, it’s Peter Schrag. When I was a young editor at California magazine, he wrote a column for me containing what I still consider the best one-line summary of Jerry Brown as a public figure. Schrag, who had closely followed Brown’s journey from governor to acolyte of Mother Teresa and back to state party hack, characterized Brown as “a man never comfortable in the political world of fallible people, yet unable to stay out of it.” That’s eerily good. Because here we are almost 20 years later, and Brown is making his way toward his umpteenth political job (governor again?), yet somehow still in denial that he even works in politics.

Obviously, Schrag’s observations stand the test of time, so when he asks me if he can report on the University of California’s protest-battered president, Mark Yudof, I say yes. In this issue, he astutely captures Yudof’s and UC’s fix, neither overhyping nor underplaying the potential for disaster if the state continues to disinvest in one of the world’s finest universities.

For 30-plus years, Schrag has reported watchfully on everything else about state government, too—so when Arnold announces his 2010–2011 budget proposal (again pledging “no new taxes,” though state revenues are down another 18 percent and he has to find another 20 billion dollars’ worth of ways to disinvest), it is Peter I call for perspective. Back in 2006, during boom times, his book California: America’s High-Stakes Experiment sounded slightly optimistic about the state’s willingness to trade what he called “basically un-American” public policies—those built on fear of the future—for more visionary and ambitious ones that might help California stay in the lead. So how does he feel in 2010, as the full force of the latest bust hits? He pauses a long time, considering how to word his reply. “I feel a depressing lack of surprise,” he says.

Then he goes on, a guy who spent 19 years as the editorial-page editor of the Sacramento Bee—hosting a parade of governors, assembly speakers, and UC presidents in his conference room—and then the past 14 years continuing to write books and articles about Cal­ifornia’s slide: “The saddest thing is it has all been so predictable,” he says. “This state has so much going for it—skills, talent, natural resources, climate—but it has gotten itself into this insane political gridlock. We’ve had terrible leadership, which has gotten worse, and the voters make it impossible for politicians to succeed. They tell the politicians to go up to Sacramento and ‘fix it,’ then won’t let them fix it. The leaders have pandered to this illusion by saying we can ‘cut, cut, cut, and everything will be fixed.’ It’s not that the state is ungovernable. It’s not like we’re Bangladesh. With political will and leadership, it all could be changed.”

Schrag’s next book, due out this spring, is about immigration. He believes our state’s huge immigrant presence explains much of our gridlock, as well as a potential resolution—at least someday. “Whites are a minority in California but are still the electorate. And they have so much reluctance to pay for public goods, because the beneficiaries of those goods don’t look like them. In 20 to 30 to 40 years, however, the population and the electorate will become identical, and it will be clear just how much we need the new majority—Latinos, Asians, immigrants, and their kids—to succeed. Because who else is going to buy all the boomers’ houses?”

Wise and pointed words. For more of them, read The Profile.