Posted on 10/25/2006 10:31:01 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
The governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger has been like a three-act play, making it challenging for California voters to figure out exactly who he is politically or what a re-election victory on Nov. 7 would portend for the next four years.
Elected in the October 2003 recall of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, the Republican action-movie star took office intent on “cleaning house” in Sacramento and “blowing up boxes” in the state bureaucracy.
But he also showed a willingness to collaborate with the Democratic-controlled Legislature to pay down what was then a $21 billion state budget deficit and overhaul a costly workers' compensation system.
In 2005, Schwarzenegger morphed into a strident partisan. He railed against Democratic legislators and public employee “union bosses” and called a special election for a four-part “reform agenda” that voters soundly rejected.
Chastened after that shellacking, he vowed to work with the Legislature to the point of embracing Democratic proposals such as raising the minimum wage, offering discount prescription drugs and curbing greenhouse gases – some of which he had earlier vetoed.
Yesterday: When Phil Angelides took over as state treasurer in 1999, he targeted investments not only to make California money but to achieve social goals, as well.
“The thing that makes assessing the Schwarzenegger administration really interesting and really frustrating is that more than any other governor since Jerry Brown, he is still an enigma,” said Tim Hodson, director of the Center for California Studies at California State University Sacramento. “There are clearly some consistent philosophical beliefs, but we've had at least three different governors since 2003.”
Voters plainly prefer the current incarnation over last year's.
Schwarzenegger holds a double-digit lead over his Democratic opponent, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, despite what many believe is shaping up as a Democratic rout nationally.
Voter opinion about Schwarzenegger's performance has shifted as wildly as his governing style.
In the fall of 2004, the Field Poll showed that 65 percent of the state's voters approved of the job he was doing. His approval rating dropped to 36 percent in the fall of 2005 but had climbed back to a respectable 48 percent as of late last month.
That leads most analysts to conclude that Schwarzenegger has settled on a governing style that suits him – one that would continue into a second term.
“He's a smart guy,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. “He knows that when you have a flop, you don't repeat it. When you have a hit, you do a sequel.”
Schwarzenegger is not a career politician and has scant options should he desire to become one. The Austrian immigrant is constitutionally barred from running for president. And he would seem temperamentally unsuited to the U.S. Senate because his impatience with the legislative process led to the biggest blunder of his governorship – the 2005 special election.
“I think he wants to build a legacy, and that dictates a more serious persona,” said Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at Sacramento State. O'Connor noted that Schwarzenegger has mostly chucked the publicity stunts and overused movie lines that characterized his first two years in office.
“We don't get the movie lines because I think he's carving out a new him, which is the deal maker,” she said. “You can't be a caricature of yourself and be a deal maker. You have to listen and negotiate and be taken seriously.”
Schwarzenegger's attempt to overhaul state government and its politics through the initiative process was met with resistance from Democrats and public employee unions. It didn't set many Republicans' hearts aflutter, either.
Teachers, nurses, firefighters and police officers protested outside the governor's events, often in such numbers that Schwarzenegger had to slip in through a back door or garage.
“The kind of barnstorming that got him elected didn't sell so well in the second year when he had a determined enemy who could fight back,” said Jaime Regalado, director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University Los Angeles.
Former state Senate President Pro Tempore John Burton chalked up the special election to naiveté driven by Schwarzenegger's impatience.
“I think he probably did realize, as most people who have never gotten elected to something, that you can't do it all yourself,” the San Francisco Democrat said. “He took it in the shorts.”
Schwarzenegger has issued several public mea culpas for the special election, most recently in this month's debate with Angelides, when he was asked to identify his biggest mistake in office.
“I went too fast,” he said. “I decided that if the legislators don't agree with me in the first two months that I would go to the people.”
The governor recently indicated that the bipartisan cooperation that marked this year would continue if he wins a second term.
“I think we are on to something where we start trusting each other enough that we can do many more things together rather than fighting each other all the time,” he said in an Oct. 12 interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune's editorial board.
Schwarzenegger hails his three-year record as adding up to nothing less than rescuing California from the depths of economic despair. He touts that California has gained more than 600,000 jobs on his watch.
By his reckoning, when he overturned the tripling of the motor vehicle license fee on his first day in office, he pumped $12 billion into the state's economy. Cutting workers' compensation was worth another $11 billion.
“That's $23 billion we put back in the private sector,” he said. “That is what stimulates the economy. That is what created the 635,000 jobs, that $23 billion in additional revenue.”
Schwarzenegger's self-portrayal as the “incredible job-creating machine” doesn't stand up to scrutiny, said economist Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast.
Leamer said the governor is correct that California has gained more than 600,000 jobs over the past three years, but he said that represents nothing more than the state's share of a growing national economy.
“We grade on a curve,” the economist said. “We want to know if California is doing well as compared to the rest of the nation.”
By that standard, he said, California's job growth as a percentage of the national economy was slightly better under Davis than under Schwarzenegger.
Schwarzenegger also claims to have reversed the job hemorrhaging he contends occurred during Davis' time in office. “Businesses were fleeing the state,” he said during the debate with Angelides. “People were losing jobs right and left.”
That, too, is fiction, Leamer argued.
“There's no doubt that there are anecdotes about people leaving,” he said. “But offsetting that are expansion of companies here and companies moving here. The reality is California is doing OK. Sacramento can take credit that they haven't screwed it up, but they can't take credit for the relative behavior of the California economy as part of the national economy.” Schwarzenegger took office determined to tame a massive state government bureaucracy.
“Every governor proposes moving boxes around to reorganize state government,” he said in his 2004 State of the State address. “I don't want to move boxes around. I want to blow them up.”
With that, he launched the California Performance Review – a commission that solicited ideas from state employees and experts on how to streamline government.
It produced a report containing 1,200 recommendations for saving money and improving services, including the elimination of one-third of the state's boards and commissions.
Nothing really happened.
“The boxes proved to be pretty darned sturdy,” said Claremont McKenna's Pitney. “He learned the lessons that would-be reformers have been learning for decades, which is that people become comfortable with existing bureaucracies and it's hard to change those structures. Just about every agency and every bit of red tape is there because there's somebody who wants it there.”
In a highly partisan political landscape populated predominantly by ideologically rigid liberals and conservatives, Schwarzenegger is an anomaly.
“He's consistently moderate to liberal on social issues,” Pitney said. “He's held the line on taxes. While he talked about restructuring government, he never talked about massive reductions in its size the way a lot of conservatives would have liked.”
In his first State of the State address, Schwarzenegger declared: “We do not have a budget crisis; we have a spending crisis.”
Although the $21 billion budget deficit he inherited has been slashed to $5 billion, that owes more to massive borrowing and an unanticipated tax windfall than fiscal discipline.
Schwarzenegger trumpeted reduction of the deficit as “an extraordinary accomplishment” to the Union-Tribune editorial board. Still, there are automatic formulas that drive state spending at a faster clip than normal revenue – the structural deficit.
If Schwarzenegger has a plan for eliminating the remaining deficit, it seems to be “let the good times roll.”
“There is no reason why we cannot continue on with that same momentum and wipe out that structural deficit,” he said.
For that, he is chided not only by Angelides, but by the state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill.
“Five billion dollars in the state context is still a lot of money,” Hill said. “It's more than we spend on the University of California. It's more than we spent on the state universities.”
You sound almost bitter that your candidate, Philthy, doesn't seem to have a chance. A say almost because your post is written so poorly and you can't decide which direction to aim your insults.
The only fault the ilk are responsible for is their attempts at disruption.
Don't sweat it, Normie, you can still deride the republican agenda after Arnie is elected.
You seem to have this fantasy that I support Philth.. probably part of why you say you can't follow my posts.
I support sound fiscal governance and a shrinking one, alas ,,
It is something we have seen neither of the last 10 years or so in California , imo. If that is too tough for you to figure out,, just look at the spending increases the last 10 years or so.. it pretty much speaks for itself.
Oh, and btw,, re: disruption,, Bill Bradley offers that per the latest PPIC poll, 88% of the Republicans are happy with the GUb. How that squares with all the additonal borrowing and spending ties into that "acceptance" is a mystery to me but certainly not "enlightended" folks like you and the Milk. It's just more slop for the feeding trough, besides we won't be the ones paying for it, right?
Now, that should make you very concerned, but I doubt it will.
That's because California is mostly liberal.
That's why we should vote for the (R) that has a chance to win.
Arnold vs. Phil.
Vote Arnold.
Somehow, I know you're just striking out with that same old tired crap becuz you know you and a pile of folks have been bamboozled and will continue to be for quite some time, it appears.
btw,, So you and FO are clones, I see..or do you just live next door to each other.. it's the same old crap.. mindless accusations.. lolol,, I can hardly wait to see your faces when he signs the tax legislation that raises your taxes.
We'll see what tune you're singing then. Philth was the quick path, aRnie will get us there soon enough. It will happen. especially if all the bonds crash and burn as usual.
He has his own version of universal healthcare coming up next year, and so much more he wants to do in his 2nd term, all he needs is the money to do it and shills to push it over the top.
It's gonna be awful hard to keep spending like the Robber Barons have been doing , as all the new restrictive policies force businesses to flee .. Yeah, we can feel so blessed that we had a choice of hari kari or jumping off a cliff.. You first. :-)
Getting a head start on next year's disruption, huh?
You show your true colors with that one. Thanks grunt..
Harvesting your posts is always an excellent way to illuminate for others what some like you are really all about.
Socialism is just OK with you, Yeahhh!!!!
And this coming from an Angelides booster.
Enjoy your free healthcare. Coming soon.. lol
I've already got free healthcare, compliments of the VA. What I don't have is your fear of things which haven't happened yet.
It's not free, grunt. You EARNED it.
~ thank you ~
VA, free? hardly. You earn that the hard way.
You sure seem to not be above standing by and lampooning others who do recognize when bad things are happening and speak out while a lot of folks just turn their heads the other way.
Unbelievable.
*THE FIRM of Sully, Slam, B.Smirch, M.Pune, D.Stract, D.Grade, D.Vide, D.Stroy & Hugh Miliate
I am lampooning the ilk. Recall that I see this herd with distinct characteristics; bulls, cows, and the occasional confused sort. At the head of the herd are the fifth columnists, the phonies, those invested in conservative demise. The herd follows the leaders, duped by the fifth columnists faux-conservative facade. The direction of the herd distinguishes it; always toward the divisive, always toward the negative. Yes, I lampoon the herd. Its easy not to be in the herd, simply do not consistently and constantly post negative nonsense.
I am not lampooning these 'lot of folks'. I want us to figure out ways to unit.
Gotta run, but I'm sure you'll give me the opportunity to respond ...
I'm back and you're very sweet, thank you.
Unite, not unit. What we need to do is to figure a way to unite as conservatives to effect republican change. You don't unite by alienating.
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