The idea was that welfare would go back to being temporary to get families back on their feet, not a permanent lifestyle.

In recent years, including under the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, things have returned more to the Welfare State model. This is especially true in California, once one of America’s wealthiest states, but now the one with the highest level of poverty, at about a quarter of our people.

According to the Lucille Packard Foundation, 58 percent of California kids now are eligible to receive free or reduced-price school meals.

Now, California schools even are becoming centers for signing families up for Covered California, the state’s implementation of Obamacare. Reported EdSource:

In school libraries and courtyards from Sacramento to Los Angeles and beyond, trained enrollment counselors have been invited to set up folding tables, commandeer desk space and corral parents before the Feb. 15 sign-up deadline for Covered California, the state’s online health insurance marketplace created under the federal Affordable Care Act.

And the outreach will increase. Under a new state law, all California schools must include in their 2015-16 enrollment packets information about options for health care coverage and how to get help with the sign-up process. The law, Assembly Bill 2706, authored by Roger Hernández, D-West Covina, is intended to reduce the number of children who are eligible for health insurance subsidies but remain uninsured.

For perspective, here’s an excerpt from a 1987 interview with Moynihan, still relevant today:

There is a lot of vigorous research on welfare being done again, and it has really told us things we didn’t know. One of the most important things is that people who receive welfare cannot be regarded as one undifferentiated mass of people, and you can’t treat them all alike.

For instance, about a quarter of mothers who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children do so for less than one year. These are self-sustaining, capable people who have had a sudden divorce or separation. They’ll get their lives put back together and we won’t see them again.

At the other end of the spectrum – about a quarter of the people – are those who are unmarried and in real trouble and go on welfare very young. If you don’t get hold of those people very quickly and work very hard and put a lot of resources into them, you have a spoiled life. And their children have fairly chancy prospects.

When you know these things, the problem doesn’t seem quite so overwhelming. You don’t have to change the way people behave, because nobody knows how to change the way people behave. But you’ve got to make more equitable arrangements in areas like child support.

But high-profile doesn’t mean appropriate or qualified. Being a president of a university system is a uniquely challenging job. I thought the selection made little sense from day one.

“Why Napolitano?

“She has no past connections to UC. She is a lawyer without a background in academia or any history as a scholar. She is not a superstar fundraiser, as university presidents are increasingly expected to be.

“And if Napolitano was chosen for her supposed skills as a manager, we wonder what that view is based on. Homeland Security is not remotely considered a well-run agency. It was stitched together from more than 20 existing agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and has been decried for years as bloated, clunky and secretive by a bipartisan array of critics. In December, it was labeled the worst large agency to work for in the federal government after a comprehensive independent survey.

“Homeland Security needed a reformer. So does UC as it deals with budget headaches, unfunded retirement liabilities and the threat/opportunity posed by the rise of online education.”

‘Thoughtful’? Nope. That’s not in her skill set

On Wednesday, Napolitano gave her first major speech, at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, and the Sacramento Bee editorial writer who covered it could scarcely have been more disappointed.

“With no record as a scholar or in campus administration, she had to show that she would bring more than her background as a politician and political appointee to the job. … [But] she sounded like she was trying inoculate herself against protests of her tenure at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, rather than offer a principled, thoughtful vision of the future of the University of California. …

“More than 1,500 words into the speech, Napolitano backed into the issue of student and faculty diversity. This could have been a strong, original statement coming from the leader of one of the nation’s leading public university systems on the importance of increasing the variety of life experiences and perspectives on campus to enhance the academic mission and ‘opportunity society’ of the future.

“Instead, the former Arizona governor made general statements about the UC as a vehicle for social advancement and then announced new money for three diversity programs. …

“But why focus on ‘subsets’ of the university community in this first major address? What is Napolitano’s vision for access and affordability for all qualified California students, not just small subsets? What is her vision of the 10-campus system?”

Why even expect her to have a ‘vision’ of UC?

The problem with this line of thinking is that it assumes Napolitano has a “vision” of what she wants UC to be. She wasn’t a visionary U.S. attorney, Arizona governor or Homeland Security czar. Why would she be a visionary when it comes to handling a uniquely demanding job with a huge number of moving parts?

Some politicians may be suited to being university presidents, where they can act as fundraisers and as salesmen for the university brand. But few are suited to be university system presidents. It’s a different and much more demanding job.

If Daniel Patrick Moynihan could be brought back to life, I think he’d be suitable. But not the Napolitanos of the political world.