SULLIVAN:
POSEUR ALERT: "The Kennedys are like that, too: loved for their love of attention, which they gather by dispensing an altruistic other kind of love. Sometimes the love backfires and they behave badly, are seen to be grabbing too much. So, too, did Arnold grope. When speaking of his California, he is sometimes verklempt and inarticulate, the way people get when they talk about their folks getting old. Other times he is grabby." - Hank Stuever, dowding it up, Washington Post, today.
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One of the Family
Schwarzenegger's Win Shows His Adopted Home Has Welcomed Him In
By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 9, 2003; Page C01
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 8
Triumphant on his night of nights, California Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger stood on a stage in the Century Plaza Hotel's main ballroom late Tuesday and motioned to some 200 supporters arranged on bleachers behind him like a class reunion photo.
"These are all Shrivers," he said in jest, but he was almost correct.
His wife's family long ago became his own -- the only family he's got left -- and since they are Kennedys, they go on forever. In a way, the California recall was itself analogous to a squabble among related peoples over things that always split families: money, trust, who said what to whom. On the morning after, there is nothing but talk about putting it all behind us. Dianne Feinstein wants to make up. In his conciliatory speech, Gov. Gray Davis urges everyone in the state to be nice, to say you're sorry to your brother and sister. The leadership in the state legislature is making similar overtures; California is just trying to be a family after all.
Such is the balm of a Hyannis-style show of support: Kennedy mystique has no logical place crowding onto the stage of a Republican revolution, but the theme of family runs strong. Kennedys stand for one another, and especially like to stand with a winner, so how could they not be there for their muscle-bound in-law, who has been with them for nearly 20 years now?
As weird as he is, he is one of them, and talks a little like one of them:
He says he only wants to serve.
"What better proof could there be that America really is a nation of immigrants?" asked the family's patriarchal figure, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), in a statement released by his office Wednesday regarding the Schwarzenegger victory. "The Kennedy family has its own big tent policy. I look forward very much to working with him on the many issues where we agree, especially in improving the quality of education and expanding opportunities for all our people."
Schwarzenegger is one of those rare politicians who comes to his electorate without a kooky family from back home in tow. Gustav, the father who served in the Nazi army and then worked as a police chief, died in 1972. Arnold's disciplinarian mother, Aurelia, died in 1998 of a heart attack, while visiting Gustav's grave. (She'd been to La-La Land several times to visit her son, held his arm down her share of red carpets, and even contributed her apple strudel recipe to her son's restaurant venture, Planet Hollywood. But she always stayed in Graz, the family's Austrian home town, and when she died, Arnold told reporters, "[My] world has fallen to pieces. She was my first and foremost love. I will miss her terribly.") His only sibling, his brother, Meinhard, was killed in a car wreck in 1971.
This was something to think about during the eight weeks of watching Schwarzenegger ravenously greet his public. In Hollywood, he will always be a cartoon character, not really part of the true craft. But out in the world, he could only be loved like a big brother. He could only speak of California as the homeland he sought deliberately, and its people as the family he adopted. The pictures of him campaigning usually showed him in a constant, open-mouthed glee.
Other politicians have been as loved, but they played it cool.
Schwarzenegger always played it, and will probably play it still, like every appearance is the greatest appearance. He is one of the rare humans who sees a strobe flash as the truest sign of acceptance and endearment.
The Kennedys are like that, too: loved for their love of attention, which they gather by dispensing an altruistic other kind of love. Sometimes the love backfires and they behave badly, are seen to be grabbing too much. So, too, did Arnold grope. When speaking of his California, he is sometimes verklempt and inarticulate, the way people get when they talk about their folks getting old. Other times he is grabby.
Now comes the test for the family of 35 million. Back at the Century Plaza Hotel on Wednesday afternoon, Arnold gathered his other family -- the media -- to get down to the questions of what his regime is going to look like. Like a brother, he playfully repeated himself and didn't answer too many of the questions. He doesn't yet know if he'll live in Sacramento. He doesn't yet know where the money will come from, or where it will go. He does know that when he woke up this morning, his daughter, Katherine, was waiting for him with fresh coffee, and he was surrounded by a feeling he'd no doubt sought all his life. He was, in a way, home.
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