Like a powerful earthquake, it appears that last year's historic recall of an incumbent governor vented a lot of pressure that was building in the California electorate. Nearly a year later, it's hard to overstate the magnitude of that event and the total rejection of California's political leadership it represented.

Voters chose a celebrity Hollywood action star whose campaign was limited to outsider cliches from a ballot that included a second-term governor, a lieutenant governor and a longtime Republican state senator. The breaking point, it seems, came when California's earlier regular election set two dubious records for the lowest participation and the highest cost ever.

Today, our new governor has remarkably high poll ratings and progress has been made on some of the state's most immediate problems. But the tectonic pressure that led to last year's upheaval did not build overnight and many experts believe major and minor shakers are still to come.

California remains in crisis. Huge gaps in its health care safety net have left more than 4.5 million uninsured, wreaking financial havoc throughout the system. School test scores are still far behind national averages and, in higher education, budget cuts this year forced California universities to turn away 11,000 eligible students, the first-ever violation of the access guaranteed in the state's Master Plan for Education passed in 1960.

The economy is growing, slowly, but the state still has a structural budget deficit and its business climate is discouraging jobs. The energy market is a tenuous patchwork of desperate repairs and infrastructure needs are lagging population growth.

Perhaps most serious, however, is that California is dividing into parts just as it needs to come together for solutions.

There are growing differences between ethnic communities and income groups as well as regional disparities that discourage consensus. The state's media markets are regional, limiting a common forum for state discourse. Finally, there is a dangerous gap between the government and its constituents. In fact, it's arguable whether the Legislature can still be called a representative body since its members are elected from such ideologically concentrated districts.

Consider that the dominant political party has at least a 10-point voter registration advantage in all but 16 of the 173 California districts for the Legislature and the Congress. Only three districts have a margin of less than five percent. That partisan intensity produces lawmakers with little in common.

On the environment, the California League of Conservation Voters gave Democrats in the Legislature an average score of 94 out of 100, while Republicans averaged just 4. On business issues, not a single Republican scored lower than 80 percent with the California Chamber of Commerce while just five of the 64 Democrats in the Legislature last year scored above 40.

California is in need of a wider conversation about its problems and its future. It's also in need of new ideas.

One effort being launched to encourage a brighter future for the state is from the New America Foundation, a non-partisan policy institute whose purpose is to bring promising new voices and new ideas to the fore of America's public discourse. Believing that neither side of the political divide is adequately addressing the challenges and opportunities of our era, the New America Foundation seeks to reshape public debate by sponsoring individuals and ideas that transcend conventional politics.

The foundation has won high praise in Washington, D.C., where it is headed by President Ted Halstead and Chairman James Fallows. This year, with a grant from The James Irvine Foundation, New America will sponsor talented researchers and writers in California to explore new possibilities for resolving the state's most urgent challenges.

California is still in crisis. But as historian Carey McWilliams said a half century ago, it is also "The Great Exception." As it has before, California will solve its problems and many of its creative solutions will be models for America.