Schwarzenegger a Poor Choice for Governor

Note: Sorting through some of my old columns, I ran across this one that I wrote in 2004, when a politically inexperienced bodybuilder and action movie hero named Arnold Schwarzenegger was considering a run for governor. So don't blame me for what happened. -- LM

By LEONEL MARTINEZ
LA VOZ DE KERN

I love it when immigrants succeed. That’s what America is all about, which is one reason I’ve been a big Arnold Schwarzenegger fan for more than 20 years.

I saw the film “Pumping Iron.” I devoured the Austria native’s autobiography. I watched all his movies from the little-known “Hercules in New York” to “Collateral Damage,” and I plan to catch “Terminator 3.”

As much as I’d love to see someone with 20-inch biceps and an accent become governor, I’m perplexed about all the excitement over the possibility of Schwarzenegger running for that office. At the moment, there are conflicting reports about whether Schwarzenegger will decide to run, but he’s seriously mulling the idea.

And he could succeed. In some polls, Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has done as well as more seasoned candidates. But the state is enveloped in political chaos and facing serious, perhaps unprecedented problems. In this environment, voters can’t afford to elect someone who has little political experience, no matter how likeable he comes across on camera. If he decides to run, Schwarzenegger would be one of the least qualified candidates in recent years.

So why did so many people want him to run? California’s infatuation with Schwarzenegger seems to be the latest evidence that during tough times, voters seem all too willing to confuse a carefully crafted public-relations image with a flesh-and-blood human being.

As nearly as I can determine, Schwarzenegger’s major qualifications for governor are:

A. He’s pretty buffed.

B. He stars in some cool movies where he shoots a lot of people and blows up a lot of things.

C. He’s not Gray Davis.

OK, to be fair, Schwarzenegger, 55, is an inspiring success story. Through sheer will and self discipline, he rose from obscurity in Austria to uncontested status as the world’s top bodybuilder.

As a bodybuilder, Schwarzenegger won the Mr. Olympia contest – the Super Bowl of bodybuilding – a record seven times, the last time after a five-year layoff and only a month of training. He retired from bodybuilding to start an acting career that many thought was doomed to failure, yet he became one of the world’s top action movie stars. Along the way, he became an American citizen and successful businessman.

Stories like that make most people want to stand up and cheer.

And we should.

But let’s not confuse economic success and celebrity with political savvy and extensive knowledge of the issues. Schwarzenegger may be handy with his fists, machine guns and rocket launchers on screen, but in the real world of partisan politics, you can’t simply remove the opposition with the threat of force. Congressman Bill Thomas tried it at the federal level, and it didn’t work.

Take a closer look at his politics, and Schwarzenegger seems the most unlikely of Republican candidates. He reportedly supports gun control, abortion rights and gay rights. He’s an immigrant in a party that is still viewed by many as anti-immigrant. And he’s married to, of all things, a member of the Kennedy family, television reporter Maria Shriver.

Family values? Schwarzenegger has killed more than 300 people on screen, once posed for nude photos and admits that he’s smoked pot. He once compared weight-lifting to sex, and he missed his father’s funeral in Austria because he had a bodybuilding competition.

Values aside, Schwarzenegger’s only major political success came when he spearheaded the successful effort to pass Proposition 49, which funds after-school programs. That may be an admirable accomplishment, but it doesn’t earn him the office of governor of a state with the seventh largest economy in the world.

So if Davis gets booted in the recall, which seems more and more likely, who should be governor?

Let me put it this way. I was at a political gathering in Visalia a few years ago, and they keynoter was Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante. In the middle of his speech, Bustamante happened to use the word, “Governor.”

Then he paused for a few seconds, as if pondering the meaning of the word.

“Governor,” he repeated. “I like the sound of that.”

Me too, Cruz, me too.