A successful businesman, married into a poitical family, runs as a center-right candidate against an immensely unpopular governor, a special-interest-bound lieutenant governor, and a true-blue conservative Republican ideologue … and wins.<\/p>\n
Sounds like politics as usual, and in most cases it would warrant a few articles in the natiional press, perhaps, and that’s about it, even if it were in a big state, like New York or Florida or Texas or, yes, California.<\/p>\n
But make that successful businessman a major Hollywood star as well, and suddenly it’s The World Turned Upside Down. Whether it’s conspiracy theorists<\/a>, bewildered sf writers<\/a>, or alarmist foreign journalists<\/a>, everyone seems to think that the California public has taken leave of their collective senses for electing Ah-nold as governor.<\/p>\n But why? I mean, yeah, plenty of people disagree with his politics, to the extent they were elucidated, but that’s to be expected in any election. Tom McClintock was a lot more far to the right, and didn’t face anywhere near the eye-bulging hostlity and “are all of his supporters nuts?” that Arnold did.<\/p>\n Is it all just part of the “Dubya is an evil genius and\/or an evil idiot, the GOP is the Great Satan, and therefore anyone running as a Republican is the Antichrist and anyone who votes for a Republican is absolutely insane” meme? Is every Republican that gets elected going to face the same collective gasp of horror and incredulity? I’d find that hard to believe (and would be aghast myself to discover that political discourse in this country has devolved so).<\/p>\n Is it just that he’s an actor? Well, you read the various comments about him, and, yeah, there seems to be a lot of “He’s a muscle-bound goon” or “he’s a shoot-em-up action guy.” That he’s an actor, and a former body-builder (another form of acting), and that he’s acted in a variety of action films, seems to be the easy ad hominem <\/i>to level at him — by the same folks who hang on every word from Barbra Streisand or Martin Sheen or Alec Baldwin or Sean Penn or Ed Asner or Danny Glover, or who have no problem with Clint Eastwood serving as mayor of Carmel, or who want to see Robert Redford get into politics.<\/p>\n If Arnold were just <\/i>an actor, it might cast some doubt on his qualifications as far as knowledge of the issues and so forth — though see above on the entertainment types who are <\/i>somehow considered qualified to speak thereon (not to mention the sf writers also mentioned above). <\/p>\n On the other hand, don’t we all somehow hold to the myth that, really, anyone <\/i>can be President? Or that we all collectively run this country? That you and me and the folks standing in line at the supermarket are qualified enough on the issues to be able to vote on ballot propositions and candidates, and to write nastygrams to our Congresscritters when they do something we dislike? That term limits are a good way to get rid of the folks who have been trained to the job, because citizen-statesmen is where it’s really at? Is there anyone among us who doesn’t really think, deep down, that if they <\/i>were somehow tapped to be Governor of California through some bizarre lottery system, they couldn’t do at least as good a job as the other folks who have been elected to the role?<\/p>\n I mean, I’m not saying Arnold is any paragon of virtue, or that he’s some sort of super-genius who has the answers to all of California’s manifest problems. But is he really that much more stupid, vain, power-hungry, or unsuited to the role of governor than, say, Cruz Bustamonte, or Tom McClintock, or Gray Davis, or Pete Wilson, or George Deukmajian, or Jerry Brown, or Ronald Reagan, or Pat Brown? Were the folks who voted for him really <\/i>all that strangely deluded or utterly insane for doing so?<\/p>\n I just don’t see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A successful businesman, married into a poitical family, runs as a center-right candidate against an immensely unpopular governor, a special-interest-bound lieutenant governor, and a true-blue conservative Republican ideologue … and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4545,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/08\/08\/arnold_ternativ.html","url_meta":{"origin":4243,"position":0},"title":"Arnold-ternatives","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 8-Aug-03 10:53am","format":false,"excerpt":"Peter David weighs in on the top ten people other than Arnold he'd like to see as Governor of California. Hilarious. A short sample: 3) HARLAN ELLISON: He might not...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4557,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/08\/07\/the_running_man.html","url_meta":{"origin":4243,"position":1},"title":"The Running Man","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 7-Aug-03 5:50am","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't know if Schwarzenegger can win -- certainly goofier things have happened in California politics -- but the analogy to a dog who finally catches a car is a...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5211,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/10\/15\/the_exodus.html","url_meta":{"origin":4243,"position":2},"title":"The Exodus","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 15-Oct-03 7:15am","format":false,"excerpt":"Will the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger to the governorship of California lead to an exodus of philosophy professors from the state? (Scratches head, eschews obvious joke that this might be...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4455,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/08\/28\/total_recall.html","url_meta":{"origin":4243,"position":3},"title":"Total Recall","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 28-Aug-03 7:51am","format":false,"excerpt":"[N.B. This post was never actually finished\/published at the time it was written.] My memories of Gray Davis are of his name ubiquitously showing up in the legislative analyses of...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30782,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/23\/the-zombie-governor.html","url_meta":{"origin":4243,"position":4},"title":"The Zombie Governor","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 23-Oct-12 2:33pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, that's pretty darned cool.\u00a0And, of course, he's not worried they'll use the picture in an attack ad -- because attack ads these days use pictures that look a lot worse than zombies. Embedded Link Colorado's unabashed governor joins \"Zombie Crawl\" Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and his son donned fake\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.denverpost.com%2Fthespot%2Ffiles%2F2012%2F10%2FCD20ZOMBIECRAWL_KO19732-495x398.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":33428,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/30\/the-truth-hurts.html","url_meta":{"origin":4243,"position":5},"title":"The Truth Hurts","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 30-Apr-13 12:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"As +George Wiman\u00a0notes to Gov. Perry, it's not the victims who are being mocked here.Reshared post from +Les JenkinsSometimes being shown the truth is painful. Texas Governor Perry Demands Apology For Political Cartoon Governor Rick Perry wants an apology and his lieutenant governor wants the cartoonist fired. The cartoon shows\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}