[Mb-civic] "Is Arnold Losing It?"

[Jim Burns]

I happen to think it would be a disaster, in this political era, to
change the mentioned election law...

 
"Is Arnold Losing It?"
By Mark Z. Barabak, Washington Monthly.
 
The governor of California is seated in his office at Oak Productions,
smoking a cigar and sipping espresso, his black cowboy boots propped on
the distressed wood table before him. A plate of apple strudel sits
untouched. The Santa Monica outpost, which houses the governor's film
company, doubles as his state office whenever Arnold Schwarzenegger is
in the neighborhood. It is quite unlike any governor's office anywhere
in the country, that much is certain. The walls are lined with movie
posters and photographs of Schwarzenegger in all manner of political and
commercial poses. Outside the door to his inner office stands a
life-size mock up of Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, his face half
gone and a red laser eye gleaming. Inside the office, amid a jumble of
movie memorabilia, rests a stuffed crocodile. Overall, the effect is
interior design by a very rich, very extravagant 16 year old.
The governor is speaking of his role on a larger stage as smooth jazz
wafts in the background. Far be it for him to offer prescriptions for
the GOP. "I'm not elected to represent the Republicans," Schwarzenegger
said over the course of a 55-minute interview with The Washington
Monthly. "When I look at my pad of things that I want to accomplish
every day, or every week, or every month...it does not have on there
anywhere to get more Republicans registered.... It's not something that
I ever get up in the morning and say, 'This is my mission.'"
That may be just as well. His support for gay rights, stem-cell
research, legal abortion, gun control, vigorous environmental
protection, and prisons that focus less on punishment and more on
rehabilitation are hardly in the mainstream of GOP thinking. He suggests
that religion "should have no effect on politics,"' giving a
back-of-the-hand to the Christian conservatives who have become a pillar
of the national party. In many ways, Schwarzenegger's style and
philosophy recall those of California's last celebrity governor, Jerry
Brown, who famously practiced what he called "canoe politics: Paddle a
little on the left, paddle a little on the right, and keep on going
right down the middle." Or, as Schwarzenegger himself put it: "One has
to find some kind of happy medium in this whole thing. So that's the way
I do my governing."
It may not win hearts and minds in the ruddiest red-state precincts. But
it may be the only way for Schwarzenegger to succeed in California,
where the GOP remains a distinct minority in both the statehouse and
among registered voters. Schwarzenegger is something of an anomaly in
Sacramento, not quite an accidental governor, but one elected under
extraordinary circumstances: a recall election that short-circuited the
usual political process and played like campaign burlesque. It may have
been the only way Schwarzenegger could have been elected governor, even
in California.
The glamour and novelty he brought to the drowsy state capital served
him well throughout his first year in office. But in the second reel,
much of the glitter has started flaking from California's movie-star
governor, making him appear a good deal more like one of the
standard-issue politicians he regularly vilifies.
When he was first elected, some Republican strategists--as well as
fretful Democrats--thought Schwarzenegger's centrist approach, enticing
to voters of both parties, might represent the future of an even more
dominant national GOP. There was discussion of amending the Constitution
to let an immigrant like the Austrian-born Schwarzenegger become
president and speculation that he, like a certain other
actor-turned-California-governor, would become a transformative national
figure.
But in recent months, such talk has diminished considerably.
Schwarzenegger showed during the recall that conventional politicians in
a hurry-up campaign are no match for someone of his outsized
personality. But governing has proven far different. He has been forced
to pare back much of his second-year reform agenda. His poll numbers are
sagging, and newly emboldened Democrats are challenging the governor at
every turn. Now, the question is whether Schwarzenegger can make the
transition from a cartoon-like character, all swagger and bluster, into
a political leader capable of using his fame and considerable charm to
achieve something lasting and meaningful.
Can he repeat the success of Ronald Reagan, who picked up Barry
Goldwater's fallen standard and made Western conservatism the governing
philosophy of the Republican Party? Or is Schwarzenegger destined to
relive the implosion of Jesse Ventura, another muscle-bound insurgent
who won early acclaim as Minnesota governor, stumbled badly, then
disappeared--from politics anyway--without a trace?
Benchmarking Reagan
Back in the 1970s, when Ronald Reagan was California governor, the Los
Angeles County Republican Party sponsored a biannual seminar known as
the "Western Winner's Roundup." From across the region, GOP nominees for
Congress and state legislatures would gather at an airport hotel for a
series of workshops on campaign strategy and tactics. Everyone was
welcome; privately, staffers called it the "Western Loser's Roundup,"
reflecting the often mediocre quality of the candidates and their dismal
performance on Election Day.
The highlight each year was Reagan's keynote address. The governor would
arrive early and retire to a small conference room where he would
individually greet each of the candidates and pose for an hour or so
before dinner. Smiling his crinkly smile, treating his supplicants like
the big shots they weren't, Reagan appeared in grip-and-grin photos from
the Cascade Mountains to the Sonoran Desert.
The current governor of California is decidedly more stinting in his
political generosity. When Republican candidates gathered after the 2004
primaries at a luxury hotel across the street from the state Capitol,
Schwarzenegger dropped by and posed for portraits with the hopefuls. But
afterward, his office controlled the pictures for release at the
governor's discretion. Later, when Schwarzenegger agreed to a lone
fundraiser for U.S. Senate candidate Bill Jones, who was waging a
hapless struggle against Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer, reporters
and camera crews were barred. (Not that it mattered; an air-traffic
glitch prevented the governor from showing up at the Beverly Hilton
hotel. There was no make-up appearance.)
Schwarzenegger's standoffishness should come as little surprise. He was
elected governor essentially as a nonpartisan combatant. The effort to
recall Democrat Gray Davis had been led by conservative Republicans; but
once they gathered the voter signatures needed to force a special
election, the field was open to all comers. In all, 135 candidates
eventually made the ballot, including a Ripley's menagerie of hustlers,
performance artists and other unabashed publicity-seekers, most of whom
were not already politicians. There was no primary and no runoff, thus
no need to pass the litmus tests of one party or another. Schwarzenegger
ran not as a Republican but a reformer, with a message perfectly pitched
to one of California's regular voter upheavals.
In a state that's still as blue as the Pacific (Democrats enjoy an
8.5-point registration edge over Republicans, virtually the same as
before the governor was elected), keeping the Republican Party at arm's
length may be the smartest way for Schwarzenegger to position himself
for reelection in 2006, should he run. (Republicans send up nightly
prayers. But the governor's influential wife, Maria Shriver, recently
told Oprah Winfrey she wants her husband home.)
Action, action, action
When Schwarzenegger was elected in October 2003, he promised to
revolutionize the way California operates. He spoke of action, action,
action. But in the roughly year-and-a-half since, his record has been
decidedly mixed, stopping well short of the extravagant promises he made
while campaigning and the larger-than-life image he brought to
Sacramento.
Upon taking office, Schwarzenegger immediately repealed an unpopular
vehicle license fee--blowing a further $4 billion hole in the state
budget--and overturned legislation that would have granted driver's
licenses to illegal immigrants. Both moves won wide applause. He worked
with Democrats to overhaul the workers' compensation system,
renegotiated gambling compacts with the state's Indian tribes, and
forged a bipartisan coalition to push through a $15 billion borrowing
measure that kicked California's fiscal reckoning further down the road,
limiting the pain for politicians in both parties. But as Dan Schnur, a
Republican strategist and one of Sacramento's wryest observers, put it,
"Nobody builds statues to the guy who passed workmen's comp reform."
Schwarzenegger began the new year by setting his sights considerably
higher. In his January 2005 State of the State address, he outlined the
most ambitious legislative agenda Sacramento has seen in a very long
time. He proposed paying teachers based on merit and not their length of
employment, partially privatizing the retirement system for state
employees, enshrining a legal limit on state spending, eliminating
nearly 100 bureaucratic boards and commissions, revamping the state's
prison system, and eliminating partisan gerrymandering by allowing
retired judges, not lawmakers, to draw the state's political boundaries
starting in 2006.
"If we here in this chamber don't work together to reform the
government,'' he warned lawmakers, "the people will rise up and reform
it themselves. And I will join them. And I will fight with them."
Schwarzenegger drew a line: If lawmakers defied him, he would go over
their heads and call a special election, the sixth statewide vote in
three years. To back up his threat, the governor launched a $50 million
fundraising frenzy, which made Davis--once the very model of political
voraciousness--appear amateur by comparison.
After much bluster from both sides, the governor began yielding,
shelving certain proposals and signaling that he was open to
negotiations on others. He was plainly wounded when teachers, nurses,
police, and firefighters--all having separate beefs with
Schwarzenegger--began dogging his public appearances and mussing his
public image. He fired back with TV ads and rhetoric that were
alternately inflammatory and contrite.
Part of the problem seems to be apathy. For all the governor's efforts,
the obtuse matters of redistricting and worker retirement just haven't
stirred Californians much. Ineptitude also played a part; the governor
abruptly dropped his support for a measure overhauling the state pension
system when it turned out that the ballot initiative could deny death
benefits to police and firefighters. The governor capitulated after
weeks of bad publicity, including complaints from the widows and orphans
of public-safety officers.
But more than anything, Schwarzenegger has suffered from the way in
which he tried to challenge the entire power structure in Sacramento:
frontally, all at once, with little preparation for the inevitable
backlash.
It may be the contradictions are finally catching up with
Schwarzenegger. After campaigning as the scourge of special interests
and vowing to take money from no one, the governor has collected
political cash at a ravenous pace, raising more than $30 million since
taking office. (Invitations to a recent Sacramento fundraiser, "An
Evening With Governor Schwarzenegger," blithely offered access at four
levels, starting at $10,000 for a ticket and one photograph and topping
out at $100,000 for a seat at the head table.)
He routinely assails Democratic lawmakers at the same time that he
insists he would prefer to work in bipartisan fashion. In one radio
interview, Schwarzenegger criticized lawmakers for wasting time on
"silly bills," such as one regulating the height of motorcycle
handlebars. Unmentioned was the fact the governor had signed the bill
into law three to four weeks earlier.
Or perhaps it is merely the turning of the political season. Whatever
the reason, the governor is no longer viewed as the invincible
dragon-slayer he once was. While most handicappers agree that
Schwarzenegger remains a strong favorite to win reelection in 2006, the
prospect no longer seems as certain as it did as recently as six months
ago.
Worse, perhaps, for a governor so image-obsessed has been his decline in
public opinion surveys, which has been almost entirely a function of
Democratic and independent defections. (Like President Bush,
Schwarzenegger continues to enjoy near universal support among
Republicans despite his disdain for party-building.) By late February,
his approval number in the statewide Field Poll was a decidedly mortal
55 percent, down 10 points in five months. More galling still, the
governor's rating stood a tick below that of the rejected Davis before
the bottom fell out for the beleaguered Democrat amid the 2001
California energy fiasco.
An encore performance
If the narrative arc sounds familiar--a charismatic, unconventional
governor comes to the statehouse in a weird election, succeeds at minor
reforms, but soon overreaches with ambitions exceeding his political
skills--that's because we've seen this movie before.
Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura won office in 1998 as an independent
in a fluky three-way contest. He began his tenure with promise and in
his first year achieved some modest accomplishments. He managed to push
an on-time budget through the Democratic Senate and Republican House
with relative ease. He also made a start at improving public transit and
reducing congestion in the Twin Cities area. By the end of his second
year, however, voters grew weary of Ventura's macho act, impatient with
his inability to balance the state budget or work with lawmakers, and
indifferent to initiatives such as creating a unicameral legislature.
Lawmakers, once cowed, gleefully struck back, slashing--among other
things--money for the governor's security detail. Ventura left office
bitter and mocked, his "populist-centrist" reforms largely unfulfilled.
The danger for Arnold Schwarzenegger is falling into a similar spiral.
Voters are clearly less awed by their celebrity governor in his second
year in office, and he's staked out ambitious goals that would try even
a far more practiced politician. "He's shown himself to be someone who
really can communicate with voters," says Tony Quinn, a non-partisan
Sacramento analyst. But more than any philosophy or set of policies, he
suggests, Schwarzenegger's tenure, thus far, has been primarily about
salesmanship. "The problem he seems to be having now is getting a
consensus on what we need to sell," Quinn adds. In short, the business
of governing.
There are reasons to believe Schwarzenegger is smarter and more
resilient than Ventura. He has shown a willingness to cut his losses
before the political wounds fester: When the public responded with
outrage to a proposal to hasten the execution of cats and dogs--at a
savings of $14 million to local communities--Schwarzenegger quickly
dropped the plan, thereby limiting the damage from one of his biggest
public relations blunders. He backed off controversial plans to slice
health-care funding for the elderly and disabled and, more recently,
abandoned efforts to "wipe out" 88 government boards and commissions in
the face of widespread political opposition.
Stuart Spencer, the campaign genius who helped Reagan become governor,
then move from Sacramento to the White House, is among those keeping a
close watch on Schwarzenegger.
"It's too early to tell," Spencer says from his retirement aerie above
Palm Springs. "He's an aberration. He's not viewed as a Republican, he's
viewed as a star and a personality. A lot of personalities have a short
shelf life." Some, a la Reagan, make the transition." In
Schwarzenegger's case, Spencer surmises, his future rests on whether he
proves himself "a great political leader. He hasn't proven that yet."
President Arnold?
Arnold Schwarzenegger would love to be president someday. (First,
however, there is the matter of his reelection in 2006. He is not
expected to announce his intentions before the end of the year, if
then.)
Before Schwarzenegger can run for president, however, there is the
matter of the U.S. Constitution, specifically Article II, which holds
that a president must be a "natural born" citizen. Schwarzenegger was
born in Austria and maintains dual citizenship. Supporters have started
a movement to amend the Constitution, with the governor's quiet support.
(The Schwarzenegger camp sent one booster a complimentary picture of the
governor to use in her effort, sparing her the royalty fee she'd been
paying for a different shot.)
Still, the odds of success are exceedingly long. In the whole history of
the United States, just 27 of more than 10,000 proposed amendments have
passed. Opinion polls have shown little public support for overhauling
the Constitution; one survey of California voters showed opposition
running 2-to-1, and that was back when Schwarzenegger's popularity was
at 65 percent. Moreover, consider the political hurdles: A proposed
constitutional amendment must win the support of two-thirds of both
houses of Congress, followed by ratification by 38 states. As Sherry
Bebitch Jeffe, a political scholar at the University of Southern
California, notes, "There's not a senator who doesn't wake up in the
morning and look in the mirror and see the next president of the United
States. You think they're going to roll over and open the door for
Arnold Schwarzenegger? I don't think so."
Still, an immigrant governor can hope. For someone who arrived in
America with little more than a gym bag and his dreams (as the movie
poster might say), nothing can seem utterly impossible. And
refreshingly, Schwarzenegger does not offer the usual rococo double-talk
when asked about his future political prospects.
"If I do my job really well in California and I create the reforms this
year, I don't have to worry about anything,'' he says. "Running for
governor. Walking away from the whole thing.... I can have all the
different options, to run for another office, whatever it may be. The
key thing is to do whatever you do well, and that opens opportunities."
Hence, Schwarzenegger stands at a pivot point in his governorship. The
policies that he has made his priority in 2005 are of a much different
order than anything he has previously attempted, and not just because
Democrats and their allies are fiercely resisting the governor, tagging
him with the partisan label he has worked so hard to avoid.
The fact is that Schwarzenegger's greatest political successes have come
when he transcended politics and rose above partisanship. First, as an
epic figure in the 2003 recall and, more recently, when he linked hands
with prominent Democrats--among them U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and
former Govs. Davis and Brown--to push through last year's borrowing
measure and defeat a provision to relax the state's three-strikes prison
sentencing law.
There has been little public clamor for such reforms as redrawing
California's political lines, overhauling state worker pensions, or
changing the way public schoolteachers are paid. "He's facing a whole
new battle, a whole new level of competition," says Mark Baldassare,
director of research at the Public Policy Institute of California, a
non-partisan think tank in San Francisco. "There are pretty serious odds
for him to overcome as a Republican governor."
Democrats in Sacramento have learned not to underestimate
Schwarzenegger, in the same way that Democrats in Washington know better
than to count Bush out too soon. But the president has never tried to do
what the former muscle man is attempting to accomplish: maintaining his
popularity with Republicans while shunning much of what the party stands
for; bidding for the support of Democrats while antagonizing many of the
party's core constituencies; creating a sense of urgency around issues
about which most voters have never given much thought.
Schwarzenegger, who has known little in the way of professional failure,
continues to brim with outward confidence, even as he acknowledges
uncertainty over where both he and California are headed. "All I know is
that I have faith in myself and in my abilities to bring people
together, that we will be successful," Schwarzenegger said, punctuating
his point with the stub of his cigar. "But how it's going to happen,
that should be a nice surprise."
Just ask Ventura
For all his heresies, some Republicans say the party would be foolish to
ignore Schwarzenegger and his hybrid philosophy, treating him as some
overstuffed attraction to be trotted out at fundraisers, or to give an
American Dream speech like the one he delivered on Bush's behalf at the
Republican National Convention last summer.
"If we want to get some blue states to turn red, we ought to take a
lesson in what he's saying,'' says Tom Rath, a veteran GOP strategist in
the lead presidential primary state of New Hampshire.
Schnur, the Sacramento party strategist, suggests there is an important
difference "between a precarious majority and a permanent majority."
"Bill Clinton spent the better part of the 1990s convincing economically
upscale, socially liberal voters"--the famed soccer parents--"to move
Democratic," Schnur says. "George W. Bush has spent the last several
years convincing economically populist, cultural conservatives to move
in precisely the opposite direction. To take the current Republican
majority and lock it in long term, some of those soccer parents are
going to have to come back. And Schwarzenegger represents the sector of
the party best equipped to speak to those soccer parents."
But the Republican Party is hardly in the shambles that followed
Goldwater's landslide defeat, suggesting Schwarzenegger would have to
prove himself an extraordinarily effective leader to move the national
GOP in his centrist direction. Which means, for starters, delivering on
his vaunted "year of reform." Experience shows there is a limit to the
politics of personality. Unorthodox political philosophies tend to rise
and fall with the fortunes of their messenger. Celebrity can only carry
an insurgency so far. Just ask Jesse Ventura.
Mark Z. Barabak is a roving political writer for the Los Angeles Times.
 
E-mail message   
 
From: ASTARMITE at aol.com Date: Mon, May 2, 2005, 6:27am To:
undisclosed-recipients: ; Subject: Is Arnold Losing It? 
THIS IS A LONG, BUT VERY INFORMATIVE ARTICLE (PRETTY FAIR-MINDED TOO)
ABOUT HOW ARNOLD IS ACTUALLY DOING SO FAR....B
Is Arnold Losing It?
By Mark Z. Barabak, Washington Monthly. 
The governor of California is seated in his office at Oak Productions,
smoking a cigar and sipping espresso, his black cowboy boots propped on
the distressed wood table before him. A plate of apple strudel sits
untouched. The Santa Monica outpost, which houses the governor's film
company, doubles as his state office whenever Arnold Schwarzenegger is
in the neighborhood. It is quite unlike any governor's office anywhere
in the country, that much is certain. The walls are lined with movie
posters and photographs of Schwarzenegger in all manner of political and
commercial poses. Outside the door to his inner office stands a
life-size mock up of Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, his face half
gone and a red laser eye gleaming. Inside the office, amid a jumble of
movie memorabilia, rests a stuffed crocodile. Overall, the effect is
interior design by a very rich, very extravagant 16 year old.
The governor is speaking of his role on a larger stage as smooth jazz
wafts in the background. Far be it for him to offer prescriptions for
the GOP. "I'm not elected to represent the Republicans," Schwarzenegger
said over the course of a 55-minute interview with The Washington
Monthly. "When I look at my pad of things that I want to accomplish
every day, or every week, or every month...it does not have on there
anywhere to get more Republicans registered.... It's not something that
I ever get up in the morning and say, 'This is my mission.'"
That may be just as well. His support for gay rights, stem-cell
research, legal abortion, gun control, vigorous environmental
protection, and prisons that focus less on punishment and more on
rehabilitation are hardly in the mainstream of GOP thinking. He suggests
that religion "should have no effect on politics,"' giving a
back-of-the-hand to the Christian conservatives who have become a pillar
of the national party. In many ways, Schwarzenegger's style and
philosophy recall those of California's last celebrity governor, Jerry
Brown, who famously practiced what he called "canoe politics: Paddle a
little on the left, paddle a little on the right, and keep on going
right down the middle." Or, as Schwarzenegger himself put it: "One has
to find some kind of happy medium in this whole thing. So that's the way
I do my governing."
It may not win hearts and minds in the ruddiest red-state precincts. But
it may be the only way for Schwarzenegger to succeed in California,
where the GOP remains a distinct minority in both the statehouse and
among registered voters. Schwarzenegger is something of an anomaly in
Sacramento, not quite an accidental governor, but one elected under
extraordinary circumstances: a recall election that short-circuited the
usual political process and played like campaign burlesque. It may have
been the only way Schwarzenegger could have been elected governor, even
in California.
The glamour and novelty he brought to the drowsy state capital served
him well throughout his first year in office. But in the second reel,
much of the glitter has started flaking from California's movie-star
governor, making him appear a good deal more like one of the
standard-issue politicians he regularly vilifies.
When he was first elected, some Republican strategists--as well as
fretful Democrats--thought Schwarzenegger's centrist approach, enticing
to voters of both parties, might represent the future of an even more
dominant national GOP. There was discussion of amending the Constitution
to let an immigrant like the Austrian-born Schwarzenegger become
president and speculation that he, like a certain other
actor-turned-California-governor, would become a transformative national
figure.
But in recent months, such talk has diminished considerably.
Schwarzenegger showed during the recall that conventional politicians in
a hurry-up campaign are no match for someone of his outsized
personality. But governing has proven far different. He has been forced
to pare back much of his second-year reform agenda. His poll numbers are
sagging, and newly emboldened Democrats are challenging the governor at
every turn. Now, the question is whether Schwarzenegger can make the
transition from a cartoon-like character, all swagger and bluster, into
a political leader capable of using his fame and considerable charm to
achieve something lasting and meaningful.
Can he repeat the success of Ronald Reagan, who picked up Barry
Goldwater's fallen standard and made Western conservatism the governing
philosophy of the Republican Party? Or is Schwarzenegger destined to
relive the implosion of Jesse Ventura, another muscle-bound insurgent
who won early acclaim as Minnesota governor, stumbled badly, then
disappeared--from politics anyway--without a trace?
Benchmarking Reagan
Back in the 1970s, when Ronald Reagan was California governor, the Los
Angeles County Republican Party sponsored a biannual seminar known as
the "Western Winner's Roundup." From across the region, GOP nominees for
Congress and state legislatures would gather at an airport hotel for a
series of workshops on campaign strategy and tactics. Everyone was
welcome; privately, staffers called it the "Western Loser's Roundup,"
reflecting the often mediocre quality of the candidates and their dismal
performance on Election Day.
The highlight each year was Reagan's keynote address. The governor would
arrive early and retire to a small conference room where he would
individually greet each of the candidates and pose for an hour or so
before dinner. Smiling his crinkly smile, treating his supplicants like
the big shots they weren't, Reagan appeared in grip-and-grin photos from
the Cascade Mountains to the Sonoran Desert.
The current governor of California is decidedly more stinting in his
political generosity. When Republican candidates gathered after the 2004
primaries at a luxury hotel across the street from the state Capitol,
Schwarzenegger dropped by and posed for portraits with the hopefuls. But
afterward, his office controlled the pictures for release at the
governor's discretion. Later, when Schwarzenegger agreed to a lone
fundraiser for U.S. Senate candidate Bill Jones, who was waging a
hapless struggle against Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer, reporters
and camera crews were barred. (Not that it mattered; an air-traffic
glitch prevented the governor from showing up at the Beverly Hilton
hotel. There was no make-up appearance.)
Schwarzenegger's standoffishness should come as little surprise. He was
elected governor essentially as a nonpartisan combatant. The effort to
recall Democrat Gray Davis had been led by conservative Republicans; but
once they gathered the voter signatures needed to force a special
election, the field was open to all comers. In all, 135 candidates
eventually made the ballot, including a Ripley's menagerie of hustlers,
performance artists and other unabashed publicity-seekers, most of whom
were not already politicians. There was no primary and no runoff, thus
no need to pass the litmus tests of one party or another. Schwarzenegger
ran not as a Republican but a reformer, with a message perfectly pitched
to one of California's regular voter upheavals.
In a state that's still as blue as the Pacific (Democrats enjoy an
8.5-point registration edge over Republicans, virtually the same as
before the governor was elected), keeping the Republican Party at arm's
length may be the smartest way for Schwarzenegger to position himself
for reelection in 2006, should he run. (Republicans send up nightly
prayers. But the governor's influential wife, Maria Shriver, recently
told Oprah Winfrey she wants her husband home.)
Action, action, action
When Schwarzenegger was elected in October 2003, he promised to
revolutionize the way California operates. He spoke of action, action,
action. But in the roughly year-and-a-half since, his record has been
decidedly mixed, stopping well short of the extravagant promises he made
while campaigning and the larger-than-life image he brought to
Sacramento.
Upon taking office, Schwarzenegger immediately repealed an unpopular
vehicle license fee--blowing a further $4 billion hole in the state
budget--and overturned legislation that would have granted driver's
licenses to illegal immigrants. Both moves won wide applause. He worked
with Democrats to overhaul the workers' compensation system,
renegotiated gambling compacts with the state's Indian tribes, and
forged a bipartisan coalition to push through a $15 billion borrowing
measure that kicked California's fiscal reckoning further down the road,
limiting the pain for politicians in both parties. But as Dan Schnur, a
Republican strategist and one of Sacramento's wryest observers, put it,
"Nobody builds statues to the guy who passed workmen's comp reform."
Schwarzenegger began the new year by setting his sights considerably
higher. In his January 2005 State of the State address, he outlined the
most ambitious legislative agenda Sacramento has seen in a very long
time. He proposed paying teachers based on merit and not their length of
employment, partially privatizing the retirement system for state
employees, enshrining a legal limit on state spending, eliminating
nearly 100 bureaucratic boards and commissions, revamping the state's
prison system, and eliminating partisan gerrymandering by allowing
retired judges, not lawmakers, to draw the state's political boundaries
starting in 2006.
"If we here in this chamber don't work together to reform the
government,'' he warned lawmakers, "the people will rise up and reform
it themselves. And I will join them. And I will fight with them."
Schwarzenegger drew a line: If lawmakers defied him, he would go over
their heads and call a special election, the sixth statewide vote in
three years. To back up his threat, the governor launched a $50 million
fundraising frenzy, which made Davis--once the very model of political
voraciousness--appear amateur by comparison.
After much bluster from both sides, the governor began yielding,
shelving certain proposals and signaling that he was open to
negotiations on others. He was plainly wounded when teachers, nurses,
police, and firefighters--all having separate beefs with
Schwarzenegger--began dogging his public appearances and mussing his
public image. He fired back with TV ads and rhetoric that were
alternately inflammatory and contrite.
Part of the problem seems to be apathy. For all the governor's efforts,
the obtuse matters of redistricting and worker retirement just haven't
stirred Californians much. Ineptitude also played a part; the governor
abruptly dropped his support for a measure overhauling the state pension
system when it turned out that the ballot initiative could deny death
benefits to police and firefighters. The governor capitulated after
weeks of bad publicity, including complaints from the widows and orphans
of public-safety officers.
But more than anything, Schwarzenegger has suffered from the way in
which he tried to challenge the entire power structure in Sacramento:
frontally, all at once, with little preparation for the inevitable
backlash.
It may be the contradictions are finally catching up with
Schwarzenegger. After campaigning as the scourge of special interests
and vowing to take money from no one, the governor has collected
political cash at a ravenous pace, raising more than $30 million since
taking office. (Invitations to a recent Sacramento fundraiser, "An
Evening With Governor Schwarzenegger," blithely offered access at four
levels, starting at $10,000 for a ticket and one photograph and topping
out at $100,000 for a seat at the head table.)
He routinely assails Democratic lawmakers at the same time that he
insists he would prefer to work in bipartisan fashion. In one radio
interview, Schwarzenegger criticized lawmakers for wasting time on
"silly bills," such as one regulating the height of motorcycle
handlebars. Unmentioned was the fact the governor had signed the bill
into law three to four weeks earlier.
Or perhaps it is merely the turning of the political season. Whatever
the reason, the governor is no longer viewed as the invincible
dragon-slayer he once was. While most handicappers agree that
Schwarzenegger remains a strong favorite to win reelection in 2006, the
prospect no longer seems as certain as it did as recently as six months
ago.
Worse, perhaps, for a governor so image-obsessed has been his decline in
public opinion surveys, which has been almost entirely a function of
Democratic and independent defections. (Like President Bush,
Schwarzenegger continues to enjoy near universal support among
Republicans despite his disdain for party-building.) By late February,
his approval number in the statewide Field Poll was a decidedly mortal
55 percent, down 10 points in five months. More galling still, the
governor's rating stood a tick below that of the rejected Davis before
the bottom fell out for the beleaguered Democrat amid the 2001
California energy fiasco.
An encore performance
If the narrative arc sounds familiar--a charismatic, unconventional
governor comes to the statehouse in a weird election, succeeds at minor
reforms, but soon overreaches with ambitions exceeding his political
skills--that's because we've seen this movie before.
Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura won office in 1998 as an independent
in a fluky three-way contest. He began his tenure with promise and in
his first year achieved some modest accomplishments. He managed to push
an on-time budget through the Democratic Senate and Republican House
with relative ease. He also made a start at improving public transit and
reducing congestion in the Twin Cities area. By the end of his second
year, however, voters grew weary of Ventura's macho act, impatient with
his inability to balance the state budget or work with lawmakers, and
indifferent to initiatives such as creating a unicameral legislature.
Lawmakers, once cowed, gleefully struck back, slashing--among other
things--money for the governor's security detail. Ventura left office
bitter and mocked, his "populist-centrist" reforms largely unfulfilled.
The danger for Arnold Schwarzenegger is falling into a similar spiral.
Voters are clearly less awed by their celebrity governor in his second
year in office, and he's staked out ambitious goals that would try even
a far more practiced politician. "He's shown himself to be someone who
really can communicate with voters," says Tony Quinn, a non-partisan
Sacramento analyst. But more than any philosophy or set of policies, he
suggests, Schwarzenegger's tenure, thus far, has been primarily about
salesmanship. "The problem he seems to be having now is getting a
consensus on what we need to sell," Quinn adds. In short, the business
of governing.
There are reasons to believe Schwarzenegger is smarter and more
resilient than Ventura. He has shown a willingness to cut his losses
before the political wounds fester: When the public responded with
outrage to a proposal to hasten the execution of cats and dogs--at a
savings of $14 million to local communities--Schwarzenegger quickly
dropped the plan, thereby limiting the damage from one of his biggest
public relations blunders. He backed off controversial plans to slice
health-care funding for the elderly and disabled and, more recently,
abandoned efforts to "wipe out" 88 government boards and commissions in
the face of widespread political opposition.
Stuart Spencer, the campaign genius who helped Reagan become governor,
then move from Sacramento to the White House, is among those keeping a
close watch on Schwarzenegger.
"It's too early to tell," Spencer says from his retirement aerie above
Palm Springs. "He's an aberration. He's not viewed as a Republican, he's
viewed as a star and a personality. A lot of personalities have a short
shelf life." Some, a la Reagan, make the transition." In
Schwarzenegger's case, Spencer surmises, his future rests on whether he
proves himself "a great political leader. He hasn't proven that yet."
President Arnold?
Arnold Schwarzenegger would love to be president someday. (First,
however, there is the matter of his reelection in 2006. He is not
expected to announce his intentions before the end of the year, if
then.)
Before Schwarzenegger can run for president, however, there is the
matter of the U.S. Constitution, specifically Article II, which holds
that a president must be a "natural born" citizen. Schwarzenegger was
born in Austria and maintains dual citizenship. Supporters have started
a movement to amend the Constitution, with the governor's quiet support.
(The Schwarzenegger camp sent one booster a complimentary picture of the
governor to use in her effort, sparing her the royalty fee she'd been
paying for a different shot.)
Still, the odds of success are exceedingly long. In the whole history of
the United States, just 27 of more than 10,000 proposed amendments have
passed. Opinion polls have shown little public support for overhauling
the Constitution; one survey of California voters showed opposition
running 2-to-1, and that was back when Schwarzenegger's popularity was
at 65 percent. Moreover, consider the political hurdles: A proposed
constitutional amendment must win the support of two-thirds of both
houses of Congress, followed by ratification by 38 states. As Sherry
Bebitch Jeffe, a political scholar at the University of Southern
California, notes, "There's not a senator who doesn't wake up in the
morning and look in the mirror and see the next president of the United
States. You think they're going to roll over and open the door for
Arnold Schwarzenegger? I don't think so."
Still, an immigrant governor can hope. For someone who arrived in
America with little more than a gym bag and his dreams (as the movie
poster might say), nothing can seem utterly impossible. And
refreshingly, Schwarzenegger does not offer the usual rococo double-talk
when asked about his future political prospects.
"If I do my job really well in California and I create the reforms this
year, I don't have to worry about anything,'' he says. "Running for
governor. Walking away from the whole thing.... I can have all the
different options, to run for another office, whatever it may be. The
key thing is to do whatever you do well, and that opens opportunities."
Hence, Schwarzenegger stands at a pivot point in his governorship. The
policies that he has made his priority in 2005 are of a much different
order than anything he has previously attempted, and not just because
Democrats and their allies are fiercely resisting the governor, tagging
him with the partisan label he has worked so hard to avoid.
The fact is that Schwarzenegger's greatest political successes have come
when he transcended politics and rose above partisanship. First, as an
epic figure in the 2003 recall and, more recently, when he linked hands
with prominent Democrats--among them U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and
former Govs. Davis and Brown--to push through last year's borrowing
measure and defeat a provision to relax the state's three-strikes prison
sentencing law.
There has been little public clamor for such reforms as redrawing
California's political lines, overhauling state worker pensions, or
changing the way public schoolteachers are paid. "He's facing a whole
new battle, a whole new level of competition," says Mark Baldassare,
director of research at the Public Policy Institute of California, a
non-partisan think tank in San Francisco. "There are pretty serious odds
for him to overcome as a Republican governor."
Democrats in Sacramento have learned not to underestimate
Schwarzenegger, in the same way that Democrats in Washington know better
than to count Bush out too soon. But the president has never tried to do
what the former muscle man is attempting to accomplish: maintaining his
popularity with Republicans while shunning much of what the party stands
for; bidding for the support of Democrats while antagonizing many of the
party's core constituencies; creating a sense of urgency around issues
about which most voters have never given much thought.
Schwarzenegger, who has known little in the way of professional failure,
continues to brim with outward confidence, even as he acknowledges
uncertainty over where both he and California are headed. "All I know is
that I have faith in myself and in my abilities to bring people
together, that we will be successful," Schwarzenegger said, punctuating
his point with the stub of his cigar. "But how it's going to happen,
that should be a nice surprise."
Just ask Ventura
For all his heresies, some Republicans say the party would be foolish to
ignore Schwarzenegger and his hybrid philosophy, treating him as some
overstuffed attraction to be trotted out at fundraisers, or to give an
American Dream speech like the one he delivered on Bush's behalf at the
Republican National Convention last summer.
"If we want to get some blue states to turn red, we ought to take a
lesson in what he's saying,'' says Tom Rath, a veteran GOP strategist in
the lead presidential primary state of New Hampshire.
Schnur, the Sacramento party strategist, suggests there is an important
difference "between a precarious majority and a permanent majority."
"Bill Clinton spent the better part of the 1990s convincing economically
upscale, socially liberal voters"--the famed soccer parents--"to move
Democratic," Schnur says. "George W. Bush has spent the last several
years convincing economically populist, cultural conservatives to move
in precisely the opposite direction. To take the current Republican
majority and lock it in long term, some of those soccer parents are
going to have to come back. And Schwarzenegger represents the sector of
the party best equipped to speak to those soccer parents."
But the Republican Party is hardly in the shambles that followed
Goldwater's landslide defeat, suggesting Schwarzenegger would have to
prove himself an extraordinarily effective leader to move the national
GOP in his centrist direction. Which means, for starters, delivering on
his vaunted "year of reform." Experience shows there is a limit to the
politics of personality. Unorthodox political philosophies tend to rise
and fall with the fortunes of their messenger. Celebrity can only carry
an insurgency so far. Just ask Jesse Ventura.
Mark Z. Barabak is a roving political writer for the Los Angeles Times.