Home
In this issue
Nov. 25, 2009
Daniel Pipes: Islamism 2.0
JWisdom.com: No God … No You! Know God, Know You! with Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (8 minutes)
Nov. 24, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran : The Atheists' unintended gift
JWisdom.com: You are a Philanthropist with Aliza Bulow (5 minutes)
Nov. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff
Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review January 9, 2009 /13 Teves 5769

A great oak with nowhere to grow

By Wesley Pruden


Printer Friendly Version
Email this article

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The Terminator is bored and weary of California. California is bored and weary of the Terminator. Real life, it turns out, is more difficult than the movies, though in California it's often difficult to tell the difference.


Arnold Schwarzenegger is bigger than life in a place where everybody imagines he's bigger than life, too. But he has stood out from the beginning of his career in politics, dominating the crowd of wannabe successors to the recalled Gray Davis. He's a movie star with heft, size and brains to match a star's ego. The race was quickly over. Californians could hardly wait for Act Two, and Republican hearts across the land went pitter-patter.


But the rigid, bloated Sacramento bureaucracy - bloated and rigid at the same time - that Mr. Schwarzenegger promised to ride into Sacramento to smash like a bug has beaten down the man who was once invincible. Against movie bad guys, anyway. The deceptively mild and meek of Sacramento with Coke-bottle eyeglasses, hand-held calculators and neat little briefcases turned out to be of tough stuff.


When the Terminator came to office seven years ago, he inherited a $38 billion budget deficit, the work of the dull-gray Democratic governor whose prescient mother named Gray. At the end of 2008, the budget deficit had grown to $40 billion. Democrats are still buzzing a year later about the rousing ovation for the same gray Gray at the presidential California primary debate, for one remarkable moment rendering both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton irrelevant to the heart.


No one imagines California wants to elect Gray Davis governor again, but it was sweet enough for the recalled governor and perhaps a flash of recognition that maybe California, which relishes the fact that it has a bigger economy than most of the nations of the world, is beyond effective governing. Everybody, even for California, wants too much.


He was elected as a Republican, but he's more comfortable with Democrats, and he's really a synthetic Kennedy, anyway. He's trying to make a deal with Democrats to raise "revenues" - he won't call them "taxes" - but on his terms. He thought he had worked out a complicated maneuver to boost state income taxes by $9 billion and enact further "fees" without help from the Republicans, who have been estranged from him almost from the beginning. But when Democrats balked at his demand to soften environmental and union rules in return, to kick-start the slumbering building-trades industry, the Terminator balked, too. It was no deal. Like Mr. Davis' relations with Democrats, so the governor's relations with Republicans have soured into open conflict, too.


"Does all this mean that Schwarzenegger really is just like Davis?" asks the LA Weekly, which watches the governor closely. "The answer from former staffers, observers and California politicians - even the journalists who once covered his exciting first couple of years going after 'waste, fraud and abuse' - is a definite maybe. The real drama of the Schwarzenegger administration has been the spectacle of a big man dubbed the Austrian Oak during his weightlifting years now being cut down to size - a charismatic, visionary figure brought to stasis by a culture of laughably unimpressive politicians. California has a history of big-tent Republican governors, including Hiram Johnson, Earl Warren and Ronald Reagan, who left large footprints. If anybody appeared likely to restore some GOP razzle-dazzle to Sacramento after the frigid terms of George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger."


But it's hard for Gulliver to razzle when he's surrounded by Lilliputians, and it's hard to dazzle when the subject is budgeting. The governor has accomplished some things: a bond issue to pay for rebuilding roads and bridges, reform of a workman's compensation boondoggle that was stifling small-business growth, and even a sweeping state law to deal with global warming. (This last might be a guide for Congress. If a legislature tells the sun to behave, and quit upsetting weather on Earth, what choice would Ol' Sol have?)


But the Terminator's fundamental dilemma is that there's nowhere to go. His foreign birth bars the way to presidential politics, and a seat in the U.S. Senate is no consolation prize for a California governor. There's always a return to Hollywood, and some of his friends say he might follow the example of Clint Eastwood, who returned to the movies after a stint as mayor of Carmel and won Oscars. He would be surrounded by Beautiful People, and have a manageable budget to manage. Making the story come out right should console.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

Wesley Pruden Archives

© 2007 Wesley Pruden

Insight (Our Columnists)

 Arnold Ahlert
 Mitch Albom
 Michael Barone
  Dave Barry
 Tony Blankley
 Andy Borowitz
 David Broder
 Stratfor Briefing
 Mona Charen
 Linda Chavez
 Ann Coulter
 Greg Crosby
 Larry Elder
 Suzanne Fields
 John Fund
 Frank J. Gaffney
 Lloyd Garver
 Jonah Goldberg
 Julia Gorin
 Jonathan Gurwitz
 Paul Greenberg
 Lewis Grossberger
 Victor Davis Hanson
 Betsy Hart
 Nat Hentoff
 David Horowitz
 Laura Ingraham
 Cheri Jacobus
Jeff Jacoby
 Paul Johnson
 Jack Kelly
 Ed Koch
 Ch. Krauthammer
 Michael Ledeen
 John Leo
 David Limbaugh
 Kathryn Lopez
 Rich Lowry
 Michelle Malkin
 Jackie Mason
 Dick Morris
 Bill O'Reilly
 Jim Mullen
 Clarence Page
 Kathleen Parker
 Dennis Prager
 Wesley Pruden
 Tom Purcell
 Jonathan Rauch
 Celia Rivenbark
 Robert Robb
 Cokie & Steve Roberts
 Pat Sajak
 Debra J. Saunders
 Culture Shlock
 Roger Simon
 Michael Smerconish
 Thomas Sowell
 Mark Steyn
 John Stossel
 Cal Thomas
 Bob Tyrrell
 Diana West
 Dave Weinbaum
 George Will
 Walter Williams
 Byron York
 Mort Zuckerman

'Toons
 Robert Arial
 Chuck Asay
 Baloo
 Chip Bok
 Dry Bones
  Lisa Benson
 John Branch
 Gary Brookins
 John Cole
 J. D. Crowe
 John Deering
 Brian Duffy
 Everything's Relative
 Mallard Fillmore
 Jake Fuller
 Bob Gorrel
 Joe Heller
 David Hitch
 Jerry Holber
 Steve Kelley
 Jeff Koterba
 Dick Locher
 Chan Lowe
 Ranan R. Lurie
 Jimmy Margulies
 Rick McKee
 Michael Ramirez
 Kevin Siers
 Jeff Stahler
 Ed Stein
 Danna Summers
 John Trever
 Gary Varvel
 Kirk Walters

Lifestyles
 How 2
 Lori Borgman
 The Savvy Consumer
 Elder matters
 Fixit
 Dr. Peter Gott
 GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
 Richard Lederer
 Tech Maven
 Every Monday Matters
 Nutrition Myths
 Bookmark These
 Bruce Williams
 How Stuff Works