Posted on 09/25/2003 4:47:03 PM PDT by blam
Terminator's crass humour backfires as candidates clash
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
26 September 2003
He came. He spouted statistics. He let loose his one-liners. With less than two weeks to go before California's extraordinary gubernatorial recall election, a hitherto absent Arnold Schwarzenegger at last agreed to debate with his rivals in the race to succeed the unpopular Gray Davis. It didn't kill him, but it probably did him few favours.
For 90 minutes, the action star was jumped on, savaged, patronised and, for long stretches, simply ignored. He may not have been demolished but the challenge proved a lot harder than the muscle-flexing competitions of his youth.
The four others who gathered in Sacramento on Wednesday night - Democrat Cruz Bustamante (the current front-runner), rival Republican Tom McClintock, the Green Party's Peter Camejo and the gadfly columnist Arianna Huffington - were predisposed to jump all over the Terminator since he snubbed the chance to participate in their two previous debates. He preferred to schmooze with showbiz pals on talk shows rather than argue the finer points of budget discipline, worker's compensation insurance and state versus local government spending. (Details, details.)
With everything to prove, Schwarzenegger came out fighting, bemoaning "the worst business climate" in California and telling his rivals already working in Sacramento, the state capital: "You guys have an addiction problem." An addiction to spending, that is.
Ms Huffington, however, was determined to match his aggression, ridiculing his analysis of the state economy as "simply untrue" and denouncing his platform for being "all over the map" - a mishmash of empty populist slogans designed as a front for the powerful Republican interests behind his candidacy, she claimed.
When he tried to talk over her for the umpteenth time, she snapped at him: "This is the way you treat women, we know that." That was a below-the-belt reference to multiple press reports of boorish behaviour around the opposite sex, and the coarse language Schwarzenegger has used to talk about women in magazine interviews.
Schwarzenegger, making a stab at humour, countered that he had the perfect role for Ms Huffington in the as yet unmade Terminator 4. The humour backfired, however, since it seemed Schwarzenegger was referring to his much-reported desire to thrust the head of a female Terminator robot into a toilet bowl.
Ms Huffington, whose own campaign has failed to take off, apparently decided to be the kamikaze candidate - going down in flames of deliberately obnoxious rhetoric but taking as many others as possible down with her. She landed just as many zingers on Mr Bustamante, the current Lieutenant Governor, who found himself agreeing that the state was a mess while maintaining he and his party had nothing to do with the catalogue of bad decisions that prompted the call for Governor Davis's removal.
By far the most impressive were two men who stand little or no chance of winning: Mr McClintock, a forceful, straight conservative, and Mr Camejo, who embarrassed the two tax-averse Republicans by pointing out the richest Californians actually pay a lower income tax rate than everyone else.
Mr Schwarzenegger, by contrast, sounded shallow and over-rehearsed, like a new kid on the block trying a touch too hard to impress the big boys.
The proceedings may actually have helped Governor Davis defeat the recall altogether and keep his job.
Maybe to a Poofster like Andrew Gumbel.
By Oliver Poole in Los Angeles
(Filed: 26/09/2003)
The Telegraph (UK)
Arnold Schwarzenegger finally faced his political opponents on a public stage yesterday and found himself trading insults with a former London socialite turned Californian multi-millionairess.
In the only debate of his campaign for the governorship of California, the film star and former bodybuilder was subjected to a bruising assault from the other four leading candidates for his lack of grasp of policy detail and his political inexperience.
Much of the fire came from Arianna Huffington, a former president of the Cambridge Union who went on to marry and divorce an oil billionaire.
At one point Schwarzenegger interrupted her and Ms Huffington retorted: "This is the way you treat women, we know that." The remark was a reference to recent allegations that the film star treats women disrespectfully.
"I just realised I have the perfect part for you in Terminator 4," Schwarzenegger shot back, which Ms Huffington, standing as an independent candidate, later claimed referred to a scene in his current film Terminator 3, in which his character thrusts the head of a female robot into a lavatory.
But despite often talking in generalisations about the need for more jobs and a more beneficial business climate, Schwarzenegger did show he had a grasp of the main issues and was able to parry most of the barbs against him.
The other candidates present - Schwarzenegger's fellow Republican, Tom McClintock, the Democrat Cruz Bustamante, and Peter Camejo, a Green - did not emerge unscathed either.
Mr Bustamante, who is at present leading in the polls, was attacked for taking millions of dollars from Native American tribes that run casinos. Mr McClintock was told he had the facts backwards on the economy, and Schwarzenegger accused Miss Huffington of using loopholes to avoid paying income tax.
Schwarzenegger, who had been criticised for refusing to take part in three other debates, only agreed to appear as the questions were known in advance. His strategy has been to appear on the television shows of friends in the entertainment industry, where he can reach a large audience without being subjected to hostile questions.
With 12 days to polling day, Schwarzenegger has the support of 26 per cent of voters, trailing to Mr Bustamante's 28 per cent, with Mr McClintock on 14 per cent.
Errrrr.... yeah that quip about Arrianna's taxes was obviously rehearsed. . . .
Only some of the elite talking head numbskulls are saying this. Polls of the voters (whose opinion is the only one that really counts), are saying the debate helped Arnold and he won it.
Do the people in Britain really give a rat's behind what happens in California?
It must have been a slow news day; nothing to slam Tony Blair/Britain's involvement in the Iraq war.
-SoFo
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