For the past eight months, media ranging from the local Chronicle to the New York Times and the New Yorker have triumphed the political skills of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The political novice was said to be running rings around the Dems, using his celebrity connections to neutralize State Senate Leader John Burton. But media predictions about the Governor bending the Democrats to his will on the budget have proved false, and Arnold’s mantle of invincibility has been shredded.
The media fawning over Governor Schwarzenegger has been painful to read. The Governor was universally credited with passage of the Prop 57 state bailout bond in March, with little mention given to the fact that the measure embodied the Democrats budget proposal rather than Schwarzenegger’s.
Arnold’s repeated claims that he would go “over the heads” of the Legislature directly to “the People” were taken at face value. The media quickly accepted the Governor’s premise that he, rather than elected Democrats, had his pulse on the public will.
As the media puff pieces continued, polls correspondingly showed widespread popularity for the Governor. The media claimed that the Governor “bowed the Legislature to his will” to achieve a workers compensation “reform” whose terms few Californians could even describe (and whose benefits to consumers remain unclear). Schwarzenegger had allegedly reduced the fiery Burton to a jolly drinking buddy, and had so intimidated Assembly Democrats that they were desperate to find ways to avoid conflict.
But as occurred with George W. Bush, eventually facts interfere with the media’s preferred spin.
Some of the rumbling began with the Governor’s deal to expand Indian gaming, a position that ran counter to his attacks on such interests during the recall. Media scrutiny then increased when Schwarzenegger weakly capitulated to the prison guard union after promising to oppose their exorbitant pay hikes.
Perhaps impacted by seeing the weakness behind the Terminator’s bravado, Democrats stood firm on the budget. They did so despite the Governor’s threat to support a ballot initiative reducing the Legislature to part-time, and his implicit vow to campaign against them in November.
The Governor threatened to huff and puff and blow the Democrats house down, and the Democrats called his bluff.
The Governor then sought to raise the stakes by touring the state to urge “the People” to pressure Democrats. But after the celebrity seekers heard the Governor speak, they went on with their shopping and ignored his pleas.
With his bluff called, and his populist appeal failing, Schwarzenegger was left to chastise his opponents as “girlie men.” This further undermined his credibility, led to editorial condemnations throughout the state, and negatively impacted the Governor’s image.
Only one month ago the New Yorker was portraying Arnold as a born politician and an instinctive political genius—today, the media is seriously questioning whether Schwarzenegger has the temperament to govern through the democratic process.
A Governor who vowed to end “business as usual” in Sacramento is now being described as perpetuating the same. Details are finally leaking out about Schwarzenegger’s massive fundraising —the candidate who said he did not need to solicit donors has raised three times as much money as that inveterate money raiser Gray Davis did after his election.
After the media helped the Governor promote his notion that he served the People, not a Party, a reality check has set in. Now the media reports that the Governor has aligned with the budget agenda of the Republican right-wing, and that he is doing nothing to push his Party to end the stalemate.
Two people deserve the credit for this dramatic reshaping of the Governor’s public image.
Assembly speaker Fabian Nunez, whose colleagues were supposedly intimidated by the Governor, used the tactics he learned as a union organizer to put the Governor on the defensive. And John Burton, whom a number of pundits felt had been totally taken in by the Governor’s charm, showed again why he is the most wily and effective politician of his era.
While Democrats were criticized over the past months for not taking a more combative stance toward the Governor, the media’s canonization of Schwarzenegger would have caused a harsher approach to backfire. Nunez and Burton wisely waited for the perfect opportunity to let the Governor be the agent of his own defeat.
The Governor has no choice but to soon cave in and accept the Democrat’s budget. The Democratic Convention starts on July 26, and Burton has vowed that if Democratic Legislators are forced to miss their event, there will be no budget deal until after the Republican Convention.
Schwarzenegger will be a prime-time speaker at the Republican event, and it would be embarrassing for him to speak while a budget stalemate persists in California. Given the Bush Administration’s need for the Governor to promote the National Party’s “moderate” image, its likely recalcitrant Republican legislators will sign off on a budget deal later this week.
Like the emperor with no clothes, Schwarzenegger has been exposed as having no mobilizable base. This should bolster efforts to combat his consistently conservative agenda for our state.
