The Terminator's Fall from Grace-Schwarzenegger Goes Down in California

SPIEGEL ONLINE - November 10, 2005, 03:48 PM

The Terminator's Fall from Grace

Schwarzenegger Goes Down in California

By Marc Pitzke

A year ago, he was the state's wunderkind. Now, though, Californians are tired of
their action-film-actor-turned-governor. He failed miserably in Tuesday's referendum
and seems to have lost his touch. His approval ratings are even lower than Bush's.

REUTERS
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is losing his touch.
The honeymoon is over: California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, once seen as the
rising star of the Republican party, has lost the support of voters. His popularity
is now lower than that of George W. Bush. With the loss of a referendum, his
political future is now in doubt.

In times of crisis, US President George W. Bush likes to cling to the coat-tails of
history. Recently, for example, he flew to California for the dedication of Ronald
Reagan's presidential jet as it went on display to the public. The Boeing 707, Bush
announced, was a "symbol of America's strength and resilience." The crowd applauded
happily, among them the VIP elite of California's Republican community: Nancy
Reagan, former Governor Pete Wilson, a host of Congressmen and Mayors.

Only one person was missing: Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Governor had excused himself
from the festivities, saying he was "very busy".

Schwarzenegger was up to his neck in a crisis of his own. And more than that, he
wasn't happy that Bush had chosen this of all times to wander into his territory,
just as Schwarzenegger himself was struggling in the middle of a seemingly hopeless
re-election campaign. During his quick stopover, Bush also managed to knock off
another errand -- that of hosting a private fundraising dinner in Beverley Hills to
pull in more than $1 million for the Republican Party coffers in Washington.
Schwarzenegger, though, could really have used that money -- no wonder the governor
was too busy to see the president.

Ratings even lower than Bush

The honeymoon is over. Two years after Schwarzenegger triumphantly moved into the
Sacramento Capitol as a reformer and a mediator, his political future is in
question. The 58-year-old retired action hero -- for a long time the most successful
newcomer to the Republican circle and in the 2004 elections, a crowd-pleaser at Bush
campaign appearances -- is suddenly out of favor. With Tuesday's risky referendum,
which was transformed into a referendum on Schwarzenegger himself, Arnie staked all
he had on one throw of one dice. And he lost the bet.

Schwarzenegger's approval ratings, which started out at 70 percent, have crashed to
35 percent -- now even lower than those of President Bush. In one survey, 56 percent
of those questioned said they would not vote for his re-election in the next
gubernatorial vote in 2006 against only 36 percent who said they would. In
hypothetical contests, he loses out to even the most obscure opponents.

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Schwarzenegger, grumbles his Hollywood buddy Warren Beatty, has turned from someone
even Democrats could like, into a rightist who governs by "show, spin, cosmetics,
photo ops, fake events, fake issues and backdrops." The recall of Schwarzenegger's
predecessor Gray Davis, says Beatty, should now be followed by a new recall -- that
of the Terminator himself. Indeed, Beatty himself has become the most talked-about
potential opponent for the Democrats.

So what went wrong? The fallen wunderkind's talent has become his undoing. The
talent to stage everything just like the movies, to paint himself as a political box-
office smash, his landslide victory like a film and his appearances like a
Terminator script. "Politics is Entertainment" was his motto, but now he is
realizing that in the long-term, politics must do more than simply entertain.

The mood has changed

Schwarzenegger's early achievements are undisputed. He wrapped the unions around his
little finger. He balanced the budget. He stood up for the farmers. He took liberal
positions on some issues. He beguiled environmentalists. He brought four Democrats
into his cabinet.

But a year later, the mood changed. And Schwarzenegger himself was to blame. People
got over his bitter tirades against opponents ("girlie men" he called them) at
Bush's New York party conference relatively easily. But when he then put forward an
uncompromising "Year of Reform" agenda, in which he prescribed a series of brutal
savings measures, all the while wanting more power for himself and threatening the
opposition with ultimatums, that was the end of the fun.

All at once he went from being greeted at public appearances with cheers of "Ar-
nold! Ar-nold!" to being booed off the stage. The worst instance was in June while
on a visit to his Alma Mater, Santa Monica College. There, surrounded by graduation
gowns and mortar boards, he was to give the traditional Graduation Day speech.
Instead, his words were drowned out by choruses of disapproving shouts. Students
chanted, "Stop lying to us!"


REUTERS
Nurses against Schwarzenegger.
An anti-Schwarzenegger front quickly formed. His opponents even managed to sneak
into private fundraising events. Citizens' groups began a new recall initiative,
this time against Schwarzenegger himself.

"The romance lasted only one news cycle," wrote the left-wing weekly paper The
Nation. Even Schwarzenegger's own strategy team lost the plot. Their decision to set
their boss against illegal immigrants went drastically wrong, losing him the Latino
vote, the biggest electoral sector in the state.

Hush money

Schwarzenegger's private business matters, too, were cause for concern. His dealings
with publishing giant American Media (AMI), the company behind the National Enquirer
tabloid and a host of body-building magazines, reeked of nepotism. Not only did he
have a lucrative advisory role with the company, but there were also revelations
that AMI had paid off potential critics of the Governor with hush-money. The company
said it had just wanted to protect him.

Intoxicated by his own success, Schwarzenegger seemed to have lost his balance in
the all-important tightrope walk between the two parties. "His whole operation
failed to learn the lessons of the recall election," said democratic election
strategist Bill Carrick. "Now that he's veered into inheriting the old worn-out
Republican agenda, he's in deep trouble."

With the referendum, Schwarzenegger went for broke. He put his whole agenda to the
vote and, to raise the stakes, threw in the question of whether he should stand for
re-election, a full year before the next gubernatorial vote is due to take place. He
called it "Part II" in the hopes of profiting from what he thought would be a
success.

But right from the start, there were signs of a storm ahead. The majority of
Californians disapproved of the governor's turning the referendum into a vote on his
person. Most did not even know why the vote was taking place. Even Schwarzenegger's
tour of all the late-night talk shows could do nothing to change that.

REUTERS
Actor Warren Beatty may be the Democrats' next candidate for mayor.

All or nothing. Schwarzenegger gave the voters their say on every section of his
reform prescription: the Governor's authority, budget cuts, the re-zoning of
electoral boundaries, medical help for the poor, parental consent for under-age
abortions, strict limits on trade union donations to political parties.

Schwarzenegger's Armageddon

Above all, his commitment to cut union donations -- which would have meant financial
death for California's Democrats -- was seen as an escalation. The unions forked out
$100 million to stop this part of the reform program from succeeding. The
pharmaceutical industry spent $80 million on the anti-Schwarzenegger campaign. In
turn, the governor himself spent more than $50 million -- $7.2 million of it out of
his own pocket. Altogether fundraising over the referendum broke through the $250
million mark. "Armageddon," was how political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe saw it.
Fabian Nunez, the Democratic assembly speaker spoke of a "nuclear war".

And it was all for nothing. An overwhelming majority of Californians from all
quarters shot the referendum down. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no" yelled the
headline in the Los Angeles Times. Schwarzenegger's image, the myth of him as an
indestructible "Terminator" has been damaged. The voters have given Hollywood's VIP
politicians clear boundaries.

In the meantime, anti-Bush Schwarzenegger is displaying the first Bush-like
symptoms. His events are becoming more choreographed and stage-managed -- his speech
in front of the state Republican convention for example. There, it was back to the
good old days, delegates springing to their feet with enthralled chants of "Ar-nold,
Ar-nold!" Location? At the Marriott Hotel in Anaheim -- right next to that other
fantasy world, Disneyland.