The night began no differently than the thousand nights before it. The sun discretely slipped below the horizon to the west, bathing the sleepy carefree hamlet of Pomona College in the sort of glow that almost could have been called iridescent.

I turned my attention away from the last stubborn rays of sun valiantly coming through my window and redirected it onto my infamous quadmate Jacob Hector Wolman III. I sometimes like to just sit in quiet awe and watch young Jacob work. Lord knows I don’t mean schoolwork, for "little Jake," as we infrequently refer to him, has somewhat of an aversion to straying from the safety of his world of computerized football. However, tonight there was a game of a different sort afoot.

Watching my quadmate chat with his self-proclaimed "girls" over Instant Messager was, as usual, an awe-inspiring sight to behold. I was reminded of the sheer power and grace of a tiger stalking some sort of gazelle on the open prairie.

It was at that moment that my night, as well as that of whatever girl had her screen name on my quadmate’s computer, took a horrible turn for the worse. With the ferocious violence of a soft wind, the California countryside was plunged into irrevocable darkness.

Nothing makes you take stock of yourself like a blackout. And so with my eyes useless in the semi-darkness of the afternoon, I turned my focus inward, to take a personal inventory of sorts.

Questions streamed down this river of uncertainty, the most pressing of which seemed to be "why the hell am I sitting here in the dark?" This apparently is a complex question for the residents of the nation’s most populous state. One beyond their ken, if you know what I mean.

Californians are a simple people, caring not for the accoutrements of the life glamorized in opulent Hollywood movie pictures. However, on the issue of power, those poor impressionable people have been caught up in the over-hyped and sensationalized rhetoric of the fat cats on Capitol Hill.

Southern California is a typical fishing village. Its residents like nothing more than to drive their Suburbans the 80 miles down to the docks through congested cobblestone streets. These people know not of how power is made, they only know that they like it.

However, if Californians don’t know what they like, they know what they hate, and they hate people destroying the environment. Thus no new power plant has been constructed in this fine state in some one score years.

But these poor impressionable Californians didn’t realize that no new power plants would mean no new power. Silly Californians. All we want is cheap power, they cried, and their representatives in the government smiled warmly and assured them that they need not create new power plants, for they had created a new word: deregulation, which would end everyone’s power woes. California breathed a collective sigh of relief and thought that they could return to their simple lives of baiting hooks and throwing nets.

But then horrible things started happening. The new word solved nothing. Where the power companies should have been bidding against each other and offering lower prices for their precious life-nectar, they instead began to declare that they couldn’t produce more power, and that they were in financial trouble. Bedlam ensued. Californians needed their power; they were addicted to it. "Help us!" they screamed at whom ever would listen.

Fortunately, their cries fell on receptive ears. Former President William Clinton, nearing the end of his stay in the White House, pressed California to his bosom and for twelve weeks ordered power companies in other states to help these beleaguered small town folks. Clinton had a special place in his heart for this most western of states, where things run at a slower pace, and he had always tried to defend its people against the smooth talkers from the big city. But then came the day when Clinton could no longer protect the Californians. They were cast forth, alone, forsaken and lost in the proverbial wilderness of our times.

George "Bling-Bling" Bush had usurped Clinton, and when California came to him for help, he too was waiting. When he swiveled his chair to face little California, however, he was grinning maliciously. For Bush was from the mighty state of Texas, and California and Texas had hated each other for as long as time had existed. Texans are an ornery bunch, angry at life for making them live in a hot, frenetic, teeming dustbowl, and they resented California’s lush coastline and slowly paced lifestyle.

Indeed it’s rumored that during his Yale days, California Governor Gray Davis (D) struck out Bush on three pitches during a batting contest in a field, while their train was making a fuel stop. Bush still smarted from that day and had waited for the moment when he could take his revenge. Finally, he thought to himself, the fruits of waiting are ripe. Here was one man who truly understood the application of the old adage "revenge is a dish best served cold". This power crisis could not have come at a better time for young Bush. It was a chance to reassert not only Texas’ supremacy, but also prove the need for some of his vital national programs and policies.

The only remedy for this problem is to expand drilling for oil throughout the United States, said Bush, his cowboy hat perched solemnly on his head and his spurs gleaming in the afternoon sun. And he at first said that no, he would not help California. This is a problem that California needs to fix for itself, he went on, because it’s the only way they’ll learn. The days when the president would coddle and protect California were over.

And California was hopping mad. The former Texas Governor was accused of partisan politics. Indeed, Bush’s initial response not to jump to California’s rescue was clearly rooted in partisan politics.

But Bush should not be vilified for such conduct. Today the phrase "partisan politics" has come to represent all that’s perceived as evil or detrimental in American politics. However, partisan politics is as much a part of our country as the two-dollar bill or the Articles of the Confederation. How quickly we forget Hamilton and Jefferson nearly dueling over the existence of a national bank. Indeed, what we now dismiss as partisan politics is the self-interest of the parties and politicians that helps ensure that everyone is represented in government.

Bush eventually agreed to sign an order for power companies outside California to send in power for two weeks while California tries to fix its problems.

In the end though, the problem lies not with Bush ordering or not ordering help for California, but with the laws that California has foolishly allowed to pass, and the facilities that the state has foolishly refused to build. California has become fat and lazy after being coddled for so many years by so many presidents, and it’s about time that someone forced the nation’s grandest and most populous state to take action itself to remedy the problems that it has created.