Fact, fiction often collide with Schwarzenegger

Bakersfield Californian ^ | 8/30/04 | Beth Fouhy - AP

[NormsRevenge]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - When Arnold Schwarzenegger takes the stage at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, he'll be praised as a vanquishing hero - a wildly popular Republican who, like the party's most beloved icon, Ronald Reagan, parlayed Hollywood fame and cheery optimism into political power.

But recently, Schwarzenegger has started to resemble Reagan in another way - his tendency to say things that bear only a passing resemblance to reality.

Just as the genial Reagan infuriated his critics with outlandish claims - such as suggesting trees cause more pollution than cars or inventing Cadillac-driving welfare "queens" - Schwarzenegger's verbal gaffes often seem only to bother nitpicky reporters or diehard Democrats in Sacramento.

Earlier this month, he told radio talk show host Tony Snow that he was working so hard that, "I haven't even taken a vacation yet. I have not gone anywhere. I don't have time for anything."

Schwarzenegger, however, vacationed on the Hawaiian island of Maui in April, where he allegedly rescued a tired swimmer from the sea. He's also flown off to his $12 million mountain home in Idaho for skiing outings and spent three days in early March at his annual Arnold Fitness Classic in Columbus, Ohio.

In yet another national interview, this one on NBC-TV's Tonight Show, Schwarzenegger boasted that like the swimmer in Hawaii, he had "saved" the state budget.

"Now we've turned the whole thing around again ... and resolved the budget problem," Schwarzenegger told Jay Leno.

But Schwarzenegger didn't fix the state's chronic budget mess, even though his pledge to do so was one of the key reasons voters swept him into office. While he did negotiate a balanced budget with legislators, it is balanced for only a short time and only because of borrowing and transfers - the kind of accounting gimmicks that his predecessor, Democrat Gray Davis, was panned for.

Similarly, Schwarzenegger has vastly outraised Davis in campaign contributions after deriding Davis' greedy fund-raising habits and declaring that he himself couldn't be bought. Most recently, Schwarzenegger's office announced the $350,000 tab for his trip to the Republican convention would be paid by ChevronTexaco and other corporations with legislative interests before the state.

In February, with only minimal anti-gay protests evident at the height of San Francisco's gay marriage spree, Schwarzenegger told NBC's Tim Russert that the state needed to crack down on the marriages or risk anarchy.

"All of a sudden we see riots and we see protests and we see people clashing and the next thing you know there is injured and there is dead people," Schwarzenegger said, as the parade of peaceful weddings continued at San Francisco's city hall.

Perhaps his biggest reversal so far is on his pledge during the recall campaign to oppose urban casinos and to reduce the influence of Indian gaming tribes in Sacramento. Last week, Schwarzenegger announced a deal with the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians to build one of the nation's largest casinos in the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area on the promise the tribe would share 25 percent of its revenue with the state. He and the Indians scaled back and then shelved the plan this week after furious opposition in the Legislature.

So far, none of these misstatements or reversals seem to have affected Schwarzenegger's popularity with voters. A poll this month by the Public Policy Institute of California showed that fully 69 percent of voters are happy with the job he is doing as governor.

Besides Schwarzenegger's Hollywood star power and unique ability to project a nonpartisan image, political scientists have differing theories on what explains' the public's willingness to cut him so much slack.

"Reagan was the Teflon president, and Schwarzenegger is the Teflon governor," said Republican strategist Kevin Spillane. "Like Reagan, people believe in his good intentions and trust his overall vision for the future. The public's not interested in the kind of details that press often complains about."

While some of Schwarzenegger's misstatements amount to little more than harmless exaggerations, or can be blamed in part on his occasional mangling of the English language, others are more substantive and cut to the heart of his credibility.

That, said Bruce Cain of the University of California, Berkeley, could cost Schwarzenegger some public confidence if he begins to resemble the type of politician he campaigned against.

"On the trivial, humorous inconsistencies - only Sacramento cares about those," Cain said. "But he now has some issues, like urban gambling, that are starting to look like the kinds of politics he's trying to get rid of.

Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College, said Schwarzenegger would be wise to keep looking to Reagan for answers.

"During his presidency, Reagan was able to maintain the image of an outsider - someone there to reform the government," Pitney said. "With Schwarzenegger as with Reagan, people like the music even if the lyrics don't always come out right."

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Associated Press Writer Beth Fouhy has been covering national politics since 1988.

[lepton]

such as suggesting trees cause more pollution than cars

Were those his exact words? I thought he was specifically referring to a particualr areas smog.

or inventing Cadillac-driving welfare "queens" Well, I've met some.