By encouraging facile comparisons with Reagan, Schwarzenegger's candidacy will seem to validate the dismissive assessments of Reagan as an empty suit whose smile was his political philosophy. In fact, Schwarzenegger could hardly be less like Reagan, a ``conviction politician" who ran for governor in 1966 after having honed his political thinking over more than a decade of constant public advocacy.
Schwarzenegger will have to take a position on the Racial Privacy Initiative -- also on the Oct. 7 ballot -- that would disrupt the racial spoils system by preventing the state from gathering most racial information from citizens. Will Schwarzenegger say that is good or bad for ``the children''?
``Every cook has to learn how to govern the state,'' said Lenin when he was still pretending to believe what Marx said about the state withering away. Gov. Gray Davis, under whom California's government has waxed, is a political lifer who started out as Gov. Jerry Brown's chief of staff. Davis is emblematic of today's careerism: last year The New Republic reported that 131 members of Congress -- almost one in four -- began as staffers. Davis has given ``experience'' a bad name.
And Schwarzenegger is intelligent enough to be a successful entrepreneur and to be bored making silly movies. He is intelligent enough to be governor. But Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon -- and Lenin, for that mater -- were intelligent.
Truly conservative Californians -- you few know who you are -- will vote against the recall to protest its plebiscitary cynicism. And as a precaution they will take the time required to find in the lottery-determined listing of names the name of a conservative candidate.
However, if in a few weeks Davis seems a certain loser, muscular Democratic interests, none of which are tied to him by cords of affection, might successfully pressure him to resign. Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who is a candidate to succeed him, would become governor, the recall would deflate and the Democratic Party's condign punishment probably would be to continue wrestling with the problems it has created or exacerbated.