While in Austria this summer I was repeatedly asked whether I, as a Californian, would vote for their favorite son Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor. My answer was always an unqualified “Yes.” Schwarzenegger comes from humble origins. He traveled to the United States with no resources other than muscles, a sharp mind, and ambition. He worked his way up from bodybuilder to actor to director and producer, wisely managing his earned fortune by virtue of his talent and hard work.
Schwarzenegger has also expressed admiration for the economic philosophy of free-market proponent and Nobel-laureate Milton Friedman. I told my Austrian acquaintances that Schwarzenegger has demonstrated real-world managerial skills and a realistic view of economics, characteristics sorely missing among the left-wing pols who are now running the state of California into the ground.
More than anything else, I told them, Schwarzenegger understands California’s cultural issues. He voted for California’s Proposition 209 that ended racial and ethnic preferences in public education, public contracting, and public employment. He voted for Proposition 187–later derailed by the courts and Gray Davis, the governor now facing recall–a measure that would have withheld tax-supported services from people who are in the country illegally (a financial drain that is part of the reason for California’s fiscal problems). Schwarzenegger has also served on the board of advisers of and has donated money to U.S. English, an organization advocating the promotion of the English language as a unifying factor in a rapidly balkanizing society.
ARNOLD’S MISTAKE
As an actor, Schwarzenegger knows how to reach out to and communicate with an audience. His celebrity also gave him instant access to the press and to the public as he began his campaign for governor; everybody has heard of the Terminator. What he lacked was political experience. So, he turned to professional consultants for advice.
His mistake was not in seeking advice, all candidates do that. His mistake was in selecting the same people who advised former governor Pete Wilson. Schwarzenegger is a very different individual than Wilson, requiring a different kind of campaign. Wilson’s handlers do not seem to recognize this. Instead of taking Schwarzenegger’s strengths as the starting point for his campaign, they have insulated him from the public, advised him to stay away from the cultural issues, kept him from public debate unless closely scripted, in the hopes that his celebrity would carry him to victory. The only policy point he makes is the generic Republican promise of better fiscal management than the Democrats and that as governor he would not raise taxes…maybe.
This is in marked contrast to the campaigns of two other celebrities turned political candidates, Ronald Reagan and Jesse Ventura. Both of them were gregarious, confident, engaged, and not afraid to speak their minds in an honest way on controversial issues. They understood people who in turn understood them and recognized their sincerity. And they both won. It was for this very reason that Reagan was so deeply disliked by the Republican establishment, elites who have no sympathy for the issues that stir people outside their narrow social class; an elite more interested in social standing than in truth and honesty. What Schwarzenegger’s managers have given him is an elitist-tinged campaign, programmed like a movie script that does not fit the actor chosen to play the part. They have done this rather than highlighting a sincere candidate who wants to win the confidence and the trust of the people he is asking to vote for him by addressing issues that mean something to them.
HE COULD WIN
One would like to see Arnold be Arnold, to hear Arnold speak up on the issues of language and illegal immigration, telling the story he has told before about the unfairness of having to wait years in line in the immigration process while others jump in front by coming here illegally. One would also like to hear Arnold say that his support of U.S. English is based on a fact that he as an immigrant knows so well” that English in America is the key that opens the lock of opportunity and that “multicultural” policies that dominate public education cruelly withhold that instrument from newcomers and their children, condemning them to a life of marginal economic success.
Language and illegal immigration are not abstract issues. They are issues that concern millions of Californians. Proposition 187 won by a wide margin in 1994 and according to polls would win with a margin as high or higher if placed on the ballot again. Proposition 227 also won in 1998, a ballot measure that ended most bilingual education in public education, programs that condemned limited English speakers to the lower end of the economic scale. Prop 227 was immediately vindicated as test scores moved up once the bilingual-education impediment was removed. Those are winning issues. They are also topics anathema in the polite society of the country club.
But there is also the possibility that Schwarzenegger’s campaign does indeed reflect the true Arnold Schwarzenegger. After all Reagan and Ventura had the character to be themselves despite the political elites around them. Maybe Schwarzenegger is not just naively taking advice from the Republican establishment. Maybe he has become a part of it, more concerned about his social status at exclusive clubs than winning elections with issues that appeal to real people. There is some indication that that might indeed be the case.
In last week’s debate, Schwarzenegger was an embarrassment. He refused to talk about illegal immigration as if it was something he had never thought about before. Subsequently he has addressed the issue of taxation, but no one is asking him about the cultural issues, perhaps because he has signaled that he has no interest in them.
A strong indication that the Arnold we are seeing is the real Arnold is a comment he made about supporters of California’s Proposition 54, which will appear on the recall ballot. The measure would prohibit the state from classifying people by race, ethnicity, color, or national origin in public contracting, public education, and public employment–a logical extension of Proposition 209. Proposition 54 was designed to get the state out of the business of prying into the racial and ethnic identity of people and to remove the means by which the state and its agencies continue to allocate public funds according to race and ethnicity. The measure asserts the principle of colorblind government in the face of a balkanization of society.
When asked about Proposition 54, Schwarzenegger said he was against it. He promptly added, “If the right-wing crazies have a problem with it, so be it!” Right-wing crazies? Was Schwarzenegger a right-wing crazy when he voted for 209? Were all the people in California right-wing crazies when they voted with him? Was Hubert Humphrey, a liberal Democrat, a right-wing crazy when he fought so hard for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, on which 209 is based? There are some who voted for 209 to prevent the state from awarding benefits to some individuals and imposing handicaps on others on the basis of race and ethnicity, voters who still believe that the state should continue to collect racial and ethnic data. But they do not call others who advocate the principle underlying both initiatives “right-wing crazies.”
Perhaps it was a slip. On reflection, Schwarzenegger might realize that those remarks were hasty and ill considered. But then the apparent contempt he has shown for voters by saying this, together with his willing subordination to establishment handlers, might in fact be another indication that Arnold is indeed being Arnold; that the Arnold so many of us liked before is not the candidate who is running for governor.
–Glynn Custred was coauthor of California’s Proposition 209 and is