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Posted on 09/25/2003 12:26:52 AM PDT by calcowgirl
Arnold is not as Arnold does
Lionel Van Deerlin
Van Deerlin represented a San Diego County district in Congress for 18 years.
'Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. ... "
So begins King David's 133rd Psalm. The words came back to me as I scanned the list of San Diego sponsors for a fund-raising extravaganza in our state's recall campaign. It involves $1,000 checks, as the price of entry, signed by loyal Republicans who'll be turning out next week for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As befits this event, they're holding it at the five-star Westgate Hotel. Will anyone be surprised if the Terminator deigns to don a tie in such surroundings?
What especially caught my sometimes jaundiced eye, however, was evidence of the solid support all five of our county supervisors are giving an untried actor who aspires to be governor – a job that must be every bit as tough as a county supervisor's.
From north, south, east and west across all 4,260.5 square miles of this southernmost county – indeed, across all lines of racial, economic or political differences within their sizable constituency – each of these elective officials has decided the contest in precisely the same way.
Considering that metropolitan San Diego, comprising more than half the county's population, has a majority of Democrats, one might expect a note of caution in top officialdom. Their districts span the low-income folk of minority and working neighborhoods along with more affluent sectors to the north. As if poured from the same mold, however, all five fell into line behind Schwarzenegger and are lending the heft of their names to his money haul. They appear as "honorary vice chairs" of a San Diego finance team numbering the likes of Doug Manchester, Kim Fletcher and Corky McMillan.
Good company, I say. For one thing, we have learned from the candidate's own lips that he disdains contributors who expect something in return for their money. Heaven forbid. Arnold goes further, saying he'll have no truck with scheming donors like labor unions or those Indians who are into gambling.
We must wonder, though, whether our GOP stalwarts have listened closely to their candidate in recent days. It's true, he refrains from specifics regarding much of anything. But there are two matters he's made promises about. To wit:
a) There'll be no more gerrymanders. Political districts henceforth will be drawn not by self-serving officeholders to suit themselves, but by a nonpolitical commission, in the public interest.
(b) Big fund-raisers like this one next week will be forbidden so close to an election.
Hmmm. Future boards of supervisors won't carve their own district lines as they please? And Arnold will achieve a level of financial purity that has eluded all reformers before him?
Sure, chuckle-chuckle, wink-wink.
So what gives here? Can a substantial number of conservative Californians be ready to entrust the state's future to an untried newcomer who, despite the rippling muscles of Mr. Universe, shies from the give and take of a political campaign?
Any proposals for dealing with problems that plague our state have been shared thus far only with the 20 or 30 industrialists and millionaire businessmen who comprise Schwarzenegger's ad hoc "California Recovery Council." And even this, let it be noted, behind closed doors.
What, then, may be expected if a plurality of voters makes him our new governor? I've sat in on enough of those one-shot political committees to guess what's probable – that no one among even the candidate's inner circle has a clearer idea what's up than we on the outside.
Or than Arnold himself. From the start, his has been a campaign of kiss and don't tell. The likeliest truth, alas, may be that there is nothing to tell.
For substance, try a dubious note with which Schwarzenegger brightened an address to his party's recent L.A. convention. The story goes over so well, he's taken to repeating it. He says his decision to become a Republican was prompted soon after he'd arrived from Austria in 1968, and watched a presidential debate between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. A friend translated their words for him. Says Arnold:
"I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism, which I had just left, and Nixon talking about free enterprise, getting the government off our backs, and lower taxes. ..."
Maybe the young muscleman suffered a case of jet lag. Else what was he hearing? There were no presidential debates in 1968.
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