"You can't satirize this."

Like Larry Gelbart, the comedy writer from whom that quote comes, I'm not even going to try to crack a joke about the latest development in California politics. As Gelbart tells the New York Times, the headlines are already way ahead of any comedian's imagination. Let's leave to the Guardian to sum up the present situation before a brief comment and then a batch of links for those inclined to wallow in the high hilarity:

He is the son of a Nazi police chief who once declared his love for the noted UN secretary general and war criminal, Kurt Waldheim, and who still talks as if he has just arrived on Austrian Airlines. His rise to fame owes more to steroids than charm, and he is best known for impersonating a robot. Meanwhile, his crude remarks about women have not helped him counter persistent allegations of groping.

It is not the most promising record on which to build your first campaign for American public office, but the fact is that Arnold Schwarzenegger has every chance of being elected governor of California on October 7.

For more on "Arnold's Nazi Problem," by the way, see Timothy Noah's "little refresher course" in Slate - which, we might as well go ahead and add, has quite a package on the whole mess California is in, including Ed Finn's recall FAQ, especially helpful since the "unorthodox process has also confused Californians and spectators alike"; Mickey Kaus's ongoing, frantic, reckless (yet fun) exclamations; and, most pertinent to this blog, a rerun of Virginia Heffernan's sympathetic review of Pumping Iron on its 25th anniversary: "But what most people... can't forget, are the horrible-wonderful scenes of mental conflict between the swaggering, comically vain Schwarzenegger - 'I was always dreaming about very powerful people, dictators, people like Jesus, being remembered for thousands of years' - and the guileless Ferrigno, a hearing-impaired former sheet-metal worker under the thumb of his carping dad Matty." Clearly another prime candidate for a release on DVD.

But before wading into more linkage, the brief comment: It's all too perfect. It may be absurd, it may be beyond satire, but it's all too, too perfect.

California is the global capital of instant gratification. Only Californians could take Americans' favorite form of instant gratification - shopping - and dream up a way make it more instantly gratifying. The dotcom economy was all about not even having to leave your home to do it. What's more, anyone in the country could bet that that's precisely what we all wanted by buying a piece of Yahoo! or Netscape and then lean back and watch that piece breed free money. The big, happy feedback loop was, as Jay Leno said of Schwarzenegger's story Wednesday night, "like the American Dream," only multiplied, then squared, then cubed... then popped.

And we don't even need to begin waxing poetic on this latest coalescence of Hollywood, America's "Dream Factory," and its politics. There'll be enough of that, if there isn't already. Just imagine what'll happen if Reagan slips this mortal coil during all this.

As Paul Krugman so succinctly reminded us days before Schwarzenegger announced, California has persistently led the American way of "I want mine and I want it now!" policy-making, be it domestic or foreign: "Proposition 13, the 1978 cap on property taxes, led to a progressive starvation of California's once-lauded public schools. By 1994, the state had the largest class sizes in the nation; its reading scores were on a par with Mississippi's."

Prop 13 was a loud and clear forerunner to Reaganomics, which, if you'll remember, drove deficits higher than America had ever seen them before. But a bizarre formulation was in the air: When the world goes bad, it's time to think about me. Peter Finch's nutsoid anchorman turned it into a slogan in 1976 in Network: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Echoed, of course, by Schwarzenegger on The Tonight Show. It's his slogan now.

A lot of Californians don't really care how their state became the nation's economic basket case (or that a bunch of bamboozlers from my own home state, Texas, had such a helping hand in creating the crisis; Enron, after all, is so pre-9/11). Krugman can write, "Replacing Gray Davis with someone more likable isn't going to pay the bills," but his words will most likely fall on deaf ears by the time they reach the left coast. What Schwarzenegger offers is instant name recognition and that persona: the fixer, the man-machine terminating his way towards a smash-up resolution. You can't even claim "towards the sunset," because fears that America has become a "cowboy nation" aren't the half of it. The phrase itself is an insult to cowboys. This is the era, as Neal Gabler has written, of Pax Schwarzenegger.

Anyway, to the bits for those who want to click on. First, a mighty rant from Ed Champion, who places as much blame on the Democrats as on the Republicans "one of the most undemocratic election scams in national history."

Then there's the Los Angeles Times, predicting that this campaign will be "the Ultimate Reality Show:

"It will be wall-to-wall," Marty Kaplan, associate dean of USC's Annenberg School for Communication, said of the campaign's TV coverage.

"It's entertaining. It's exciting. The circus has come to town. That's good for ratings."

The San Francisco Chronicle has had the good sense to have their movie critic, Mick LaSalle, chime in:

His has been a career built on incongruousness. Take the big lug and put him in a classroom (Kindergarten Cop). Take the big lug and make him pregnant (Junior). Take the big lug and make him a Southern sheriff, even though he has an Austrian accent (Raw Deal). Audiences have come to enjoy the presence of Schwarzenegger in unexpected situations, while his self-deprecating humor has always made it clear: He's in on the joke.

The point is, the audience is primed, and if "Gov. Schwarzenegger" sounds strange, well, strangeness is this actor's best friend. In fact, it's practically typecasting: Take the big lug and make him governor.

As for Schwarzenegger's actual chances, the New York Times wrings its hands in its lead editorial:

Candidates like this offer a particular challenge for the voters, who have to get past the screen persona and decide how much substance there is to the candidate himself. Unfortunately, this particular election seems custom-built to make that as difficult as possible. It frequently takes several months for a colorful newcomer to wilt under public scrutiny - remember how good Ross Perot looked at first?

The Guardian's lead editorial warns:

[I]t is important not to be too pompous about Mr Schwarzenegger's ambition for public office, as Democrats like senator Dianne Feinstein (who has decided not to run) and Mr Davis's campaign aides are in danger of being. The movie star's candidacy brings with it the sort of excitement and glamour - and sex appeal - that is routinely lacking in US (and British) politics.

Over at the New Republic site, instant analyst Josh Benson hits that point harder:

[T]he snickering from the rest of the country about the land of "fruits and nuts" is sure to reach a deafening level. But if Democrats laugh too easily about the nascent Schwarzenegger candidacy, the joke will be on them - and they'll cede the statehouse to the GOP for the rest of the decade.

Posted by dwhudson at August 8, 2003 10:01 AM