In 1967, five years after California became the most populous state, novelist Wallace Stegner said that California - energetic, innovative, hedonistic - was America, "only more so." Today, this state's budget crisis is like the nation's, only more so. Bob Dutton is an island of calm in the eye of the storm - which should agitate Gov. Jerry Brown. Dutton came to California from Nebraska at age 19 in 1969 and now is the leader of Republicans in the state Senate. He contentedly says that his caucus is "almost like a Chamber of Commerce board of directors." Its members are...