Perhaps You Would Like To Terminate My Governorship?
Posted by Morbo
What is one to make of Arnold Schwarzenegger?
On the one hand, any Republican who holds even a few moderate views these days is to be applauded. On the other, there’s no denying that the man is a frightening example of celebrity-worship run amok.
Other than recite catchy lines from his insipid, violent movies (“I’ll terminate those special interests. Ha, ha.”) what did Schwarzenegger ever do prior to ousting Gray Davis to demonstrate that he was capable of running the nation’s most populous state?
Nevertheless, Golden State residents couldn’t shake the stars from their eyes and flocked to the polls to elect their muscle man. Early reviews of his reign were positive.
Now there are signs — albeit small — that the honeymoon may be ending. A recent Associated Press story noted that the governator’s approval rating has slipped from its previous astronomical level. He’s now in the mid 50s — still good but no longer phenomenal.
Interestingly, and perhaps more ominously for Ah-nold, 53 percent of Californians now say they believe their state is headed in the wrong direction versus 35 percent who say it’s not.
One of Schwarzenegger’s problems is that he’s arrogant. Morbo has a feeling a lot of celebrities are that way. They are used to being sucked up to and accustomed to having a star-struck public accommodate their eccentricities.
Schwarzenegger seemed to think he could run California by the force of his personality. He backed initiative questions allowing the state to borrow its way out of debt, convincing an initially skeptical public that this was they way to go. He also persuaded Californians to earmark $3 billion for stem-cell research.
But his charm has its limits.
Voters rejected Schwarzenegger’s party in state elections last year, and his appearances on behalf of President Bush didn’t do anything for Bush in California. It remains solidly blue.
In December, Schwarzenegger ticked off lots of people in the state by insulting a group of nurses who had to come to confront him during a women’s conference. The nurses were angry that Schwarzenegger had sided with hospitals in a dispute over a state law relating to nurse-to-patient ratios.
Schwarzenegger is fond of a type of phony populism. He brushed off the nurses as a “special interest” and bragged, “The special interests don’t like me in Sacramento because I am always kicking their butts.”
Let’s get this straight: Schwarzenegger sided with giant, well-funded hospital group as opposed to nurses — and we’re supposed to believe the nurses are the special interest? Please.
“He behaves like an arrogant patriarch with respect to women’s occupations,” Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, told the Associated Press. “Nurses, teachers, home-health workers, it’s vulgar how he’s run roughshod over them. He’s arrogant, and he’s a bully.”
Public school teachers aren’t real happy with the guy either. The California Teachers Association and the nursing group aren’t afraid of the muscle-bound governor and are running anti-Schwarzenegger ads. One suggests that Schwarzenegger is just typical politician and notes his corporate supporters. Sounds like a man beholden to special interests, no?
Teaching and nursing are two professions dominated by women. Already dogged by allegations that he’s a groper who views women as objects for sexual gratification, Schwarzenegger doesn’t need any more problems with this demographic group.
In the end, recycling dumb movie clichés and calling your opponents “girlie men” are a poor substitute for political vision. For a while it may seem like fun to have a governor who’s a movie star, but even bad jokes about “Kindergarten Cop” can’t carry a man through four long years.
Most political analysts would say that chances are that Schwarzenegger will win a second term easily. But who knows? A spirited challenger who isn’t afraid to stand up and say that the emperor has damn few clothes on could give this guy a fight next year.