The governor of California … was truly a strange mix–he was canny when it came to his personal options and the main chance, and he was a superb politician, and this was welded onto–in an uneasy seam–the fact that he was an economic nincompoop.

Not only was he personally shrewd with his own money, and clueless with regard to finances at whatever transition point it turns from “money” to “economics,” but he was also an ugly man. But this ugliness–of the plain kind, not the grotesque freak show kind–was combined with uncanny amounts of personal charisma. He could talk virtually anybody into virtually anything, and this was a function of that charisma sloshing out of him whenever he made any sudden moves whatever.

He knew how to add and subtract. But, to underline it again, when it came to money on the loose, money in the pockets of others, and particularly when it came to money that corporations had mysteriously obtained, or the smaller reserves of the upper-middle-class taxpayer, he hadn’t a clue. He thought of public money as coming from a limitless aquifer of funds deep beneath their feet. Those who opposed him were obstinate and stiff-necked people who inexplicably did not want to pay a modest amount to install a new well and pump.

The ventures that remained in California kept going bust for some reason, and this was invariably attributed to “bad luck.” His ignorance of how this kept happening to the same kind of people was sincere, although it was also culpable. He should have known better. He had gotten through college. He had also had a driver’s license for decades.

–from Ride, Sally, Ride by Douglas Wilson, taken from pp. 107 – 111