California’s chronic inability to govern itself has made it an international laughingstock with a blistering article in the Economist, a highbrow British magazine, only the latest manifestation of that unfortunate status.

The state now has another opportunity to either cement its image as a civic buffoon or begin acting like an adult. It is the disaster-in-waiting known as the high-speed rail project.

On a whim, politicians and voters decided a few years ago that a bullet train connecting the northern and southern halves of the state would be a jim-dandy thing to have, even though nobody knew how much it would cost, whether it would generate enough riders to justify whatever the cost might be, or whether the money could be obtained.

The state High-Speed Rail Authority, made up of politicians and political appointees with side agendas, has supposedly been working on the details. But we still don’t know how much it would cost, what the ridership would likely be or what would be the sources of construction money.

Even so, the rail authority authorized construction of a $5 billion initial line from nowhere to nowhere in the San Joaquin Valley because the federal government gave it some money and dictated that it be spent there.

Why? Probably to boost the 2010 re-election chances of a Fresno congressman, Democrat Jim Costa, who faced a tough challenge.

Meanwhile, the rail authority faces entrenched opposition to running bullet trains down the bucolic San Francisco Peninsula (a route chosen to please one member of the authority’s board). Official reviews of the project’s ridership estimates, costs and “business plan” have been uniformly negative, and the Legislature has become very skeptical.

The latest criticism was issued Tuesday by the Legislature’s budget analyst, Mac Taylor, in a report fittingly called “High-Speed Rail Is at a Critical Juncture.”

If the project is to

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