Leadership Quote by Gray Davis

Davis is talking like a man trying to outrun the calendar. The clipped opening - "Why?" - isn’t curiosity; it’s preemptive defense, the verbal equivalent of stepping in front of the cameras before someone else defines the story. Coming out of California’s early-2000s electricity crisis, the quote reads as an argument for staying the course on an energy plan already in motion, even if everyone knows it’s messy. "Very well down this process" signals inevitability: we’ve committed, we’ve spent, we can’t afford to look indecisive now. The parenthetical "flawed as it is" is the tell. It acknowledges public anger and bureaucratic missteps without admitting culpability, a politician’s calibrated confession meant to sound candid while keeping liability at arm’s length.

The real engine of the sentence is faith in a future condition: "counting on" plants coming online, "so we have a surplus". That’s not a technical forecast so much as a political promise designed to neutralize panic. After rolling blackouts and price manipulation, Californians didn’t need a seminar on grid capacity; they needed assurance that scarcity - and the humiliation of being powerless in the literal sense - would end on a specific timeline. By naming "the end of 2003", Davis tries to pin competence to a date, converting a systemic vulnerability into a manageable project plan.

Subtext: judge me by what’s coming, not what’s happened. It’s governance as deferred gratification - and a subtle plea for patience from an electorate that had already learned how quickly "counting on" can turn into the next crisis.