Posted on 08/08/2010 9:26:32 AM PDT by SmithL
Arnold Schwarzenegger came into the governorship seven years ago believing that he could succeed where his predecessors had failed in dealing with California's thorniest issues.
He'll leave office in a few months, having learned the hard way that California is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to govern.
Its ever-expanding economic and cultural complexity collides with a politics so ossified and diffused, with so many officeholders and institutions sharing authority, that no one is truly accountable for outcomes.
Schwarzenegger offered his take on that dysfunction during a presentation in Fresno the other day, a truncated version of which follows:
"There is no one in the state that tries to derail the state or state government, but over the years, with the initiative process and with the legislators … laws were created that made it somewhat dysfunctional …
"You have a governor that is being elected by the people where the people say, 'Terminator, you go to Sacramento and you clean house.'
"But then they give you … a controller that is a Democrat. Then they give you a treasurer that is a Democrat. Then they give you Jack O'Connell, who is in charge of education, who is a Democrat. Then they give you a secretary of state that is a Democrat. So they surround you with people that have a totally different interest than you have. So how are you going to win?
"Then the initiative process makes it very challenging, when you go and say 'OK, we are not going to spend any more money.' But you can have some person go out there and pass an initiative that makes the state obligated to spend another $5 billion.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
RINO idiot needs to be publicly flogged....but that is just my take... =.=
Exactly! Same here. I talked him down until I was blue in the face, but NOBODY would listen. All thought he was some sort of miracle worker.
It didn’t help having that jerk whatzisname talk radio doing his “Arnold can win, McClintock can’t win” crap either.
TERMINATOR FAIL
Almost all the people that elected Reagan have left the state in the intervening years, having seen the writing on the wall.
“Don’t care how he goes,as long as he is gone.”
That damn Kennedy wife of his ruined him,I sure hope that they don’t decide to come to Ohio.
Translation: its an ever-expanding group of leaches who are addicted to goods and services purchased with other peoples money. That along with a group of moonbat environmentalists desperately trying to stop the productive. What could go wrong.
All of the points in the article are true, but Arnold’s big problem was that he still wanted to be liked in Hollywood. Had he taken a Chris Christie-style approach and used all of his considerable fame to cast the teachers union as Public Enemy #1 (which they are) he might have made some progress.
It would be better to elect Brown and hasten it's ultimate demise.
Between the Unions, gerrymandering and identity politics...only a "tear it down and start over" approach will work.
Until this state fails, the white middle class will continue to vote dim.
Arnold’s taste for sponsoring boutique after-school programs (Prop 49) was a major red flag in 2002 and should have given any conservative pause. Although, CA being CA, it seems the strongest opposition came from other libs who didn’t want any money extracted from their ricebowls.
His blind enthusiasm for Prop 71 in 2004, throwing several billions at embryonic stem cell research and the sketchy characters that ran that racket, was another thumb-in-the-eye to conservatives.
He made some ambitious attempts at reform early on, and, once he found it would be harder than he thought, he gave it up completely.
One can only conjecture on the effect of Maria’s pillowtalk but the fact that he dare not cheat on her no doubt made the Lysistrata factor a powerful one for a man like him.
Put me in there with you. The sheeple won't listen. No way a true conservative could get elected was their mantra so they threw Tom M. aside. Now fellow (R)s doncha think it would have been better to have fought for a TRUE conservative with a good chance of winning or put this puke in that probably set any type of (R) win back 2 elections? Now you want Meg!! To do what? Waffle like AS, tell different stories to different groups & suck up to RINOs. I say put Brown in & make it ALL (D)s. Let them fight among themselves & make the state so inhabitable that just maybe the people will take up arms & lynch the whole bunch in Sacramento.
For good or bad, the guy had tremendous popularity when he first came to office. His request for support for that first bond fund displayed what he could have done.
If he had taken his message to the public and made a clear concise case for change, he would have slaughtered the Left.
Instead he decided to play the ‘girly man’ role. And here we are today, the worst administration in California history.
What an ass-hat clown.
That’s what gets me. Coming out of the gate, he tried to push too much, too fast, against a massive and determined opposition, and predictably got his fingers burnt.
Instead of learning his lesson and spending a year or two patiently using his massive popularity and megaphone to work the bully pulpit and travel the state selling his policies to the electorate he simply gave up and spent the rest of his time in office dithering with petty issues and playing the celebrity politico in his smoking tent.
He coulda been a contendah.
Couldn’t agree more. Considering some of his leftist nonsense though, perhaps we were lucky he didn’t go super-sonic. What a wasted period, at any rate.
This is just what one can expect when you have men with more money than God, who’ve made their way to the tippy-top of the business world and want to have fun with their money doing something besides charitable work.
Bloomerg? Corzine? Arnold? Campaign finance “reform” killed the unspoken American taboo against rich men buying public office directly and made the “self-funded” candidate the choice of both parties at the state and local levels.
I empathize with his rat fatigue. However, he changed his principles after he lost initiative battle, providing support for his rat enemies. He should have held to his principles rather than opting for reelection as an almost rat.
I have no sympathy for his rabid environmentalist zealotry. He is no different that his rat enemies on this front. Even now in the face of a terrible recession on a once prosperous state, he continues environmental obstructionism.
I cannot understand how a many running by far the largest state of the union would have time to be in a movie? What am I missing?
It is eventually going to be self correcting.
The state is and has been bankrupt.
Crunch time is coming and nobody can stop it.
Obama and crew can attempt a bail out but that won’t fix anything, only delay it a little longer.
Then you have a $21B deficit when it costs $20B in this state to maintain illegal aliens here who know how to milk the system like prostitutes.
He instead tried to create a legacy of Mr. “green”. In the process wasted billions of dollars while at the same time encouraging more businesses to leave the state and the tax revenue they generate to avoid his madness.
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