I wish we had persuaded San Diegans to renounce our booster slogan before federal agents moved into City Hall and securities fraud overwhelmed a new central library as a civic concern. Our city offers much and demands much, but it has never been America's Finest City.
Our scarred city government now raises a warning flag for complacent citizens anywhere who assume that cities are able to run themselves.
Jealous relatives across America were just waiting for some catastrophe here in golden San Diego to even the score. But New Yorkers, for once, may be sympathetic. Bonding agencies compare San Diego's economic collapse with theirs in 1975.
It was followed by six intense years of renogotiations between New York City government and employees, labor unions, vendors, city, state and federal authorities. Only then was the economic order restored in New York. In San Diego, it will be a long and arduous process.
For many of us who migrated, after World War II to California from an older, quieter America, such outrages as this revive nightmares of civic betrayal that we had hoped to outrun in our race to start a fresh new world out West.
THe Westward tilt of the 1950s and 60s was the largest migration in American history. It was dominant in shaping America's most populous state.
In 1962, James Michener wrote that we were building a subnation whose future was both chaotic and brilliant.
Our Westward tilt built modern California and made history. We were naive, but full of hope. The prospect of a new kind of Amercia was beautiful. Our bet on the West was a good bet. But we ourselves did not live up to our dreams, and we were the ones who had to make them work.
I spent three wonderful years criss-crossing the 13 states of American West to write a book called Westward Tilt. The great naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch sat in his Arizona garden one day and talked a warning into my recorder.
He said, "If this pell mell rush into the West is not accompanied by some controlling impulse, by some novelty of purpose, all you will have is simply another East on the West coast. Some sense of value and purpose must be developed.
In that, we failed.
Many have worked hard at getting it right. But too many have expected a new society to happen without their efforts. Our consciences nag. I hope next time, they will nag us sooner.
