The honorific and the name just don't seem to go together. But television and radio newsreaders refer to "Governor Schwarzenegger" without stammering, and without any hint of irony.
Celebrity politicians are, of course, well known in California. Stage and film actress Helen Gahagan Douglas served in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The same seat was later held by song and dance man George Murphy. Clint Eastwood served a term as mayor of the small seaside town of Carmel. Most famously, Ronald Reagan served two terms as governor of the state before running for president.
When Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his gubernatorial candidacy in 2003 (on a late-night chat show, appropriately enough), it wasn't for a regularly scheduled election, but a special election designed to recall the deeply unpopular incumbent, Gray Davis. Davis had failed to respond adequately to Enron's fraudulent marketing strategies in California, and partly as a result energy costs in the state had skyrocketed and its finances had been wrecked. Davis wasn't solely to blame for the mess, but he had displayed ineptitude under pressure and became a target for public wrath. When the recall initiative was approved, politicians of every stripe could smell Davis's blood in the water. In the end, 135 candidates vied to replace Davis, and in that kind of chaotic situation, name recognition became a critical factor. Being a movie star guaranteed that to Schwarzenegger. His campaign consisted largely of repeating lines from his movies ("Hasta la vista, baby," was his frequent apostrophe to Davis) and assuring voters that his business experience and independence of Sacramento's political culture would allow him to govern effectively. A longstanding Republican, Schwarzenegger nevertheless claimed to be above party politics, and secured the endorsements of a few well-known Democrats. It was a content-free travesty of an election campaign, but it worked.
In the wake of his election, Schwarzenegger's approval ratings soared. In his first few months in office he was viewed favourably by more than 70 per cent of the state's voters. National Republicans started eyeing him as a possible national figure—his speech to the 2004 Republican convention, in which he excoriated Democrats as "girlie men," was a huge crowd-pleaser—and even began floating the notion of a constitutional amendment to permit naturalised citizens to run for president. At the least, his future dominance of state politics seemed a given.
But among the pleasures of spending this summer in California has been seeing Schwarzenegger's political career, with breathtaking suddenness, implode.
Movie stardom, it turns out, isn't necessarily the best preparation for governing a large and fractious state. Stars are coddled and indulged. Governors, on the other hand, must deal with dozens of conflicting entities and interests that do not hold the governor in awe. Schwarzenegger, believing his popularity an irreversible fact of life, assumed he could deploy it in any way he chose; he thought he could even instruct his supporters whom to hate. It didn't work. Last spring, in an attempt to rein in state expenditures, Schwarzenegger introduced an initiative to privatise the pensions of public service workers, whom he demonised as "special interests." But those special interests included nurses, teachers, firefighters and policemen. The public were not persuaded such people were their enemies. It did not strengthen his case that Schwarzenegger, discussing the nurses, declared he would "kick their butt"; this seemed like an odd boast for a putative he-man to make with regard to angels of mercy. The initiative proved so unpopular he abandoned it.
This summer he has been campaigning for a new set of initiatives, to be decided by yet another special election set to be held in the autumn. One of the proposals grants the governor new powers to cut the state budget unilaterally, another extends the time schoolteachers must serve before receiving tenure, and the third changes the method of drawing the state's electoral map, transferring the power from the legislature to a panel of judges. Of these, the first is generally regarded as a naked power-grab, the second may qualify as a reasonable procedural adjustment, and the third is a plausible good-government reform. Of the three, only the second has won any support; polls show the other two losing by large margins.
Then, in July, the third initiative was invalidated by a state court on a technicality. Schwarzenegger is appealing, but failing a reversal, he has only two measures remaining on the ballot. And the first, the one enhancing his powers to cut the state budget, is also facing legal challenge. Given all these setbacks, many of his supporters are urging him to abandon the special election.
In February of this year, a healthy 54 per cent of all California adults approved of the job he was doing as governor. Today that figure is 31 per cent, the fifth lowest in the history of state polling. He's approaching the point where Gray Davis stood at the time of his recall. There is even speculation that he won't seek re-election when his term ends. The Terminator, in other words, may be close to finding himself terminated. There's a good chance he…well, he won't be back.
