Mark Morford: Hasta La Vista, California
Hasta La Vista, California
With Schwarzenegger as guv, the Golden State prepares to devolve into a
thick-necked, inarticulate joke
(By Mark Morford)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/10/03/notes100303.DTL&nl=fix
And you thought the Jesse Ventura bobblehead was bad.
All right, so a couple "major" polls recently showed the famous thick-necked slab of Austrian meat wielding a dangerous Conan-like lead over quivering not-as-bad-as-you-think Gray Davis.
And Schwarzenegger's bouncing around like a Hummer on meth, inflicting that weird maniacal grin and massive blocklike head all over the unsuspecting media, as pretty much the entire population of even slightly aware and intelligent people in California and in fact all over the nation go, oh holy Christ, please dear God no.
This is what's about to happen. We are on the verge of electing a new governor of the largest and most powerful state in the nation, the one with the fifth largest economy in the world and the most frighteningly intricate political infrastructure and infinitely complex and delicate network of water/energy/environment/immigrant/agriculture issues in existence, just one year after electing the last one.
And we are, apparently, if the polls are correct -- and you should right this minute pray they're not -- about to hand the reins over to a wildly mediocre semiarticulate muscle-bound power-hungry sexist actor with zero political experience and zero real-world awareness and zero communication of anything resembling detailed public policy, except for what much-loathed former guv Pete Wilson and his caveful of leering Bushites is feeding him.
Oh, what an absurd and dangerous hell we have wrought.
Of course the BushCo-ravaged economy's in shambles, the worst deficit in history and warmongering like a social disease and every state in the Union scraping for moneys just to keep basic services up and running, while still forking over their tithing fees for Dick Cheney's defibrillator batteries and Donny Rumsfeld's war-machine tune-ups and BushCo's tax cuts for Halliburton execs.
And California is no exception, suffering right along with the rest, CA's economic woes merely a subset of the country's -- though it must be noted that our state's job losses are actually less than the national average, and Davis is hardly solely to blame for the state's long-standing fiscal woes, and even Californians lose track of just which major debilitating decades-old issue is most important at any given moment.
It must be noted that the state's bitter GOP senators are at least as much (if not more) to blame as Davis for the sorry state of the state, for blocking any and all attempts to increase taxes on the super wealthy, for blocking all Demo budget initiatives and for deflecting the staggering deficit burden to future generations and for being just totally pissy and resentful that they lost the last state election by such a huge and painful margin.
And should we mention how we pretty much screwed ourselves with Prop. 13 back in '78, the infamous and mixed-blessing property-tax rollback that hamstrung the economy and signaled the long, slow death of California's schools and services? No?
And while Gray Davis is certainly no political prize, during his short tenure he's actually signed a relatively large amount of ground-breaking and first-in-the-nation legislation, including landmark laws protecting abortion rights, stem-cell research, air quality and immigrant rights.
But then our power gets shut off for a few days and tech jobs vanish and we have to pay more to register our cars and we get all panicky and furious and look for the scapegoat, and of course it's gotta be the guv.
And so some puling millionaire politico twit (hi, Mr. Issa!) picks up on the negative vibe and exploits CA's ridiculously easy recall laws and boom, suddenly we're all piss and vinegar and "Kick the bum out!"
But now. We are in deep trouble. We are in far worse danger than we imagine. We are so asking for it. And we are so about to screw ourselves silly. Again.
If Arnie does indeed win, we are inviting not only international ridicule and endless jokes about Terminators and inflated biceps and "Pumping Iron" and flagrant misogyny and "I'll be back." Would that it were so harmless and silly.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/10/02/national1244EDT0599.DTL&nl=fix
We are, in fact, inviting a seething and pro-corporate cadre of inbred GOP Arnie advisers not seen since, well, since the Rove/Cheney/Rummy team of war-happy corporate whoreslugs.
We are inviting political and fiscal chaos, the state's infrastructure already teetering and fragile, and Arnie's "team" would simply shove out hundreds of recently appointed department heads and replace them with more conservative GOP cronies -- all told, a sudden and massive influx of mediocrity and conservativism and pointless celebritydom into the state that needs it the very least.
But don't we all just love the idea of bringing in someone who's "not a politician"? Someone who's not part of the "corrupt" system and who can therefore promise a whole different set of values and really shake things up? Ooh, he's a big, famous actor! Ooh, he's not a part of the normal Washington scum pond! He's merely a part of the normal Hollywood scum pond! That's much better!
Besides, I've seen him blow up thousands of people and mangle city buses using only his thighs and kill icky scary alien creatures with his bare hands. I bet he can make a difference! Screw those crooked politicians! Arnie'll show 'em! Right.
Oh how we have become deluded and sad. Oh how we are apparently duped beyond our own comprehension. Is this really what we want?
Look. Let us be blatantly clear. The very last thing a massive and resource-rich state with a budget bigger than that of most European countries needs is a GOP cyborg with no political experience who gets his policy ideology from a sulky former governor and Republican shark, and who owns a fleet of Hummers and hasn't bought his own shoes in 20 years and whose glutes are far, far larger than his brain.
What we actually need is someone deeply versed in California politics, in coalition building, in immigration and the environment and water rights and abortion rights and energy and the insane and absurd intricacies of the gorgeous mess that is California.
We need an expert politician. A pro. Even a bland one, even Gray Davis. As appealing as it might be to "shake up" the status quo and hop on the Arnie novelty train, the basic rules still apply: You don't hire a sorority girl to run an international drug cartel, you don't hire a bass player to negotiate U.N. peace accords and, most of all, you don't hire a power-hungry egomaniacal actor whose monosyllabic ultraviolent movies have dumbed down the nation for the past two decades to run the most powerful state in the Union. Simple, really.
Look. Jesse Ventura was a nice novelty, the nation's most recent celeb governor and political footnote: can't screw the country up too badly and even if he tries Minnesota's not really one of the big powerhouse states, so let's all just watch as he launches yet another embarrassing sound bite and pisses off the establishment and drives his state's economy into a brick wall. Whee.
But this is much, much different. Arnie is to be the boorish Hollywood fake-grin governor, full of photo ops and Oprah appearances and big thick handshakes that mean nothing, of groped women and big corporate sponsorship and a quietly cheering squad of BushCo strategists behind the scenes, as the state gets quietly sucker punched.
Keep the bums in place. They're the best we've got. Because otherwise, we are facing something perhaps Mary Carey, the porn-star candidate, knows best of all: If Arnie gets in, we are about to get thoroughly, royally screwed.
