I f California's misbegotten electricity deregulation scheme is ever reduced to canvas or film, the artist would have to be some cross between Hieronymus Bosch and Federico Fellini. At one level, it's a surreal story of grossly compounded economic errors; at another, a gruesome morality tale--not only about corporate greed and political stupidity, but about the illusions of a new economy floating, detached, in some space of its own, unburdened by the problems of old-economy infrastructure and government. The resulting disaster has caused John Bryson--the CEO of Edison International, in whose offices much of this deal cooked up, to declare it a mistake and call for re-regulation. It is prompting serious talk about having the state seize the whole California power system and construct its own generating facilities. And it has succeeded in making Gray Davis, California's ever cautious New Democratic governor, sound like William Jennings Bryan. "California's deregulation scheme is a...