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Acting
to High Office
August
14, 2003
By Michael Wensky
It's official. Arnold Schwarzenegger has officially filed
the paperwork to run for governor of California in the recall
election on October 7. Arnold was greeted with predictable
cheers and shrieks when he came to the courthouse to file
the paperwork, despite being chastised in front of TV cameras
by Arianna Huffington for driving an SUV. Huffington, who
is also running for governor and who just happened to arrive
at the same time as Schwarzenegger, also "accidentally" knocked
down the microphone stand before Arnold could speak. Luckily
for her, the Terminator was not in search and destroy mode.
Ever since Schwarzenegger's announcement on The Tonight
Show, California GOP leadership has worked overtime to clear
the field for him, with some success. The day after the announcement,
a weeping Darrell Issa dropped out of the race for governor.
Issa, a conservative congressman from San Diego, who has spent
millions of dollars of his own money for the recall effort,
claimed that he planned all along to leave the race as soon
as there are other "qualified" candidates on the ballot. Other
potential heavyweights, like former Los Angeles mayor Richard
Riordan, also bowed out. However, bumbling businessman Bill
Simon, the man who lost to Davis just ten months ago, remained
on the ballot.
It may seem strange that the socially liberal bodybuilder
from Austria was able to jump into the race as the Republican
frontrunner. The Republican Party didn't exactly have a warm
relationship with celebrities. It just a couple of months
ago when Republicans were busy chastising Sean Penn, Sheryl
Crow, and the Dixie Chicks for giving their two cents about
the war against Iraq, insisting that being famous doesn't
give one any credibility to speak out on serious issues.
However, the truth is that the Republican Party has a history
of running inexperienced entertainers as candidates for high
office. Our 40th president Ronald Reagan had exactly the same
amount of political experience as Arnold when he ran for governor
of California in 1968, which is none. Fred Thompson, an actor
who represented the great state of Tennessee from 1994 to
2000, was a complete political neophyte when he won his senate
seat. Sonny Bono was voted the Mayor of Palm Springs, California
- a small but important resort city - with no previous administrative
experience.
To be sure, there are liberal celebrities who sought public
office. However, as much as progressive voters may identify
with the politics of self-described pornographer Larry Flynt
or daytime talk show host Jerry Springer, they have never
accepted these candidates are mainstream. Even though the
vast majority of politically active actors and singers are
progressive, there has been no movement to draft any liberal
celebrity into political races. The liberal celebrity candidates
who were successful in seeking high office, like Senators
Hillary Clinton and John Glenn, were not entertainers.
The right's infatuation with know-nothing celebrity candidates
can best be explained by its anti-intellectual culture. As
the historian Richard Hofstadter explained in his book Anti-intellectualism
in American Life, the fundamentalist mind is "essentially
Manichean; it looks upon the world as an arena for conflict
between absolute good and absolute evil, and accordingly it
scorns compromises (who would compromise with Satan?)." In
such a world view, Hofstadter added, "The issues of actual
world are hence transformed into a spiritual Armegeddon, an
ultimate reality, in which any reference to day-by-day actualities
has the character of an allegorical illustration, and not
of the empirical evidence that ordinary men offer for ordinary
conclusions." Therefore, a fundamentalist would not assess
a leader by his actual political behavior. What he would do
instead is to decide where this leader lie in the realm of
moral and spiritual values, which for him was infinitely more
real.
It is natural for entertainers to thrive in a political
culture that values a leader's private morals more than his
stand on issues, that focuses more on his public image more
than his qualifications. After all, entertainers made their
living by promoting a particular public persona that may have
nothing to do with reality. Years of presenting themselves
in front of large groups of people gave them poise and articulation.
They're also experienced in reading out loud with while coming
across with sincerity. They are the perfect spokespeople for
a political movement build on compact sound bites.
The inexperience of celebrity candidates has not been a
liability at all. In fact, it can be turned into an asset.
Conservative voters are known to be derisive, rather than
appreciative, of knowledge. Remember that after the second
presidential debate between Bush and Gore, Al Gore was lambasted
by the media punditocracy for using the names of the sponsors
of the Patients' Bill of Rights, Dingell-Norwood, to distinguish
the bill he supported from the one Bush was advocating. The
right wants candidates who don't pepper their speeches with
annoying foreign names, boring technical jargons, and - god
forbid - any accounting or math.
The main trait that right wing voters believe to best qualify
a candidate for high office is not education, political experience,
or knowledge. It is wealth. They're not really particular
about how the candidates made money, as long as they made
a bundle of it. You can become a millionaire through insider
trading and running companies created by your daddy's business
partners, like the current president, or you can get your
millions from the simple expedient of being born in the right
home, like Steve Forbes. As long as you made a serious amount
of money you are automatically assumed to possess high marks
from the school of hard knocks, assumed to possess the wisdom
and common sense needed to take on the responsibility of public
office.
When a new candidate emerges, a typical progressive voter's
first question is on what has he done, while a right wing
voter is more likely to ask questions pertaining to the candidate's
character. Once the right winger is convinced that the candidate
possess the right character traits, he is willing to overlook
even significant deviations from conservative orthodoxy. That
is why the Republican Party, which is made up of such disparate
elements as economic supply-siders to anti-abortion activists,
can seem to move in lock step. Orrin Hatch's support of stem-cell
study cost him almost no political price, while a Democratic
senator who voted for the partial abortion ban would suffer
fundraising losses and even draw protests.
Liberals shouldn't be distressed that they do not have their
own Arnolds and Ronalds. Liberals want perspective, context,
and nuance, not red meat and foaming mouths. On so-called
"liberal" radio stations like NPR and Pacifica, you don't
have and will never have shows that consist of one guy ranting
about the virtues of one party and the horrors of another
for two hours. Liberal talk shows always have guests. Liberal
callers would never call themselves "dittoheads." That format
would not appeal to the fastest growing segment of Democratic
voters, professionals with college and advance degrees.
Developments in the mainstream media will unfortunately
create more viewers and listeners who think like fundamentalists.
A media that overreports Kobe Bryant and Laci Peterson while
underreporting the facts of the Iraq war and the Bush tax
cut encourages its consumers to be interested in private scandals,
superficial personal biographies, and to be averse to details
and facts. A voter who is used to a media market where stations
show thirty minutes of world news and two hours of local petty
crimes and unsanitary restaurants a day is not likely to concern
himself with the effect of the budget deficit, the dynamics
of Middle East peace, and various proposals at corporate reform.
Well-meaning but nonpolitical citizens who want news outlets
that promote thinking, deliberation, and perspective are hard
pressed to find them.
However, people are not as dumb as some politicians like
to think. Arnold Schwarzenegger may think he has a good chance
of winning because he's running in California, the home of
Hollywood. However, he should be worried that he's
running in California. Through the endless cycles of voter
initiatives and propositions, the people of California were
forced to learn government issues like property tax, the energy
market, worker's compensation, and healthcare. As a group
they're a better educated and more politically aware than
voters of other states; when they start to ask the tough questions,
Arnold had better come up with answers of more than five words.
Catchphrases and slogans may be good enough for the voters
who signed the recall petition, but the rest need more than
"I'll pump up Sacramento" to circle Schwarzenegger's name.
Michael Wensky is a writer based in Houston, Texas.
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