The Graying Of Arnold

It has been 25 years since Reagan won the Presidential election that signaled a major right turn for the country. Unfortunately, too many people have forgotten why he was elected and how he won in a landslide in 1984.

From Investors Business Daily:

Posted 12/2/2005
California: Did the governor miss the point of his special-election disaster? He's wooing the opposition when he should be reconnecting with his own party.

But first he needs to figure out what party he really belongs to. We say that only half in jest. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a prime-time star of the 2004 GOP convention, now shows all the signs of a political identity crisis.

Ever since voters scuttled his four reform initiatives in November, he's been lurching every which way but to the right. A few days after the election debacle, he started floating the idea of a $50 billion bond issue to fund public works.

His model here is Pat Brown, the Democratic governor mainly remembered as a great builder of roads, waterways and university campuses. Brown also spent the state into a deep hole and was defeated in 1966 by Ronald Reagan. Schwarzenegger's mega-bond would invite the same fate, but there may be no new Reagan in the wings to save the state.

More recently, Schwarzenegger has started to retrace the path of another Democratic governor — none other than Gray Davis, the man he defeated in the 2003 recall. Last week, he announced that he was appointing Susan Kennedy, a veteran liberal activist and a former top Davis aide, as his new chief of staff.

Schwarzenegger says he and Kennedy are a good fit. She's socially liberal and openly lesbian. But to be fair, the governor never claimed to be a social conservative. Kennedy also was known for taking businesses' side while serving on the state's public utilities commission. She says she even supported all the governor's failed ballot measures.

So maybe Kennedy is not your typical Democrat. But neither is Schwarzenegger acting like a mainstream Republican. Two fish out of water don't make much of a school, and Schwarzenegger isn't going to build a constituency by recruiting a somewhat unorthodox Democrat. Loyal Democrats won't follow him; they'll insist on the real thing. Republicans will follow him only reluctantly — and in dwindling numbers.

This brings us to the lesson that Schwarzenegger should have learned, but apparently didn't, from the special election. As the turnout data made clear, his reform measures lost not only because the unions and Democrats got their people to the polls, but because many Republicans simply didn't vote.

Turnouts in Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties, all GOP strongholds, were several percentage points below the statewide average. Turnouts were above average in heavily Democratic regions such as the San Francisco Bay area.

Schwarzenegger just wasn't getting through to many of the people who should have been voting his way. Now he's alienating them even further. He may be marching to the political center, as he defines it, but he may find it a lonely place when he gets there.