Jill Stewart and Daniel Weintraub. The two columnists you can trust on California politics.
The Muscular Middle
Meet Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican's problem solver.
BY JILL STEWART
WSJ.com
The media have largely missed the import of who and what Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is. It's tough for journalists to see past their own conventional wisdom--so you'll hear plenty about how surprised pundits are that a global superstar has become a highly effective governor, and plenty about how his liberal-to-moderate social views are giving his conservative party ulcers.
Neither of these predigested storylines is incorrect, of course. Wall Street is so approving of the governor's steady hand (he switched off the autopilot left on by Gray Davis and the long-ruling Democrats in the California Legislature, slashing expected spending for 2004-05 by $8 billion), that Standard & Poor's has just upgraded California's credit rating from triple-B to A-minus stable, the third upgrade from a rating agency in four months. Moreover, Mr. Schwarzenegger is pushing an unprecedented effort to force performance measures upon the state's moribund, 325,000-strong bureaucracy. And he's endearing himself to Californians by moving to keep a series of campaign promises, from rolling back a terrorist-friendly law that handed unrestricted driver's licenses to illegal aliens, to wresting away the corrupt workman's compensation system from the doctors, lawyers and uninjured workers who milked the state dry.
Mr. Schwarzenegger has done all this while failing to toe the GOP line on issues including abortion and the environment--and boy, does that bother the media! In a teleconference last month, the national media peppered his staff with disingenuous questions about how he gets away with being pro-choice. The precooked überstory, which journalists are determined to tell, is that Mr. Schwarzenegger is a facade for George W. Bush, painted onto the podium in New York last week to lure moderate voters to the polls and obscure the party's true troglodyte nature.
The real story, however, is that Mr. Schwarzenegger is the new face of moderate, mixed-bag, political-mutt America--the great Muscular Middle, as it were. And he's riding the crest of a big-tent movement in the Republican Party that threatens to leave the increasingly ossified Democratic Party behind. It's no coincidence that four moderate Republicans--Mr. Schwarzenegger, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Colin Powell--are the most popular political figures in America. The Democrats can point to no corollary Big Moderates with that level of authority. Each of these superstars is first and foremost a pragmatic problem-solver who can't be bought and speaks his mind. The Democrats must dig deep into their ranks to find the same.
Why is this intriguing leadership emerging from the Republicans? Well, as Mr. Schwarzenegger says, "the political action in the future--it's all going to be in the middle, because that's where most people in the country today are."
As a Republican with a passion for economic theory, Mr. Schwarzenegger understands that most Americans aren't blind backers of big labor, and embrace the capitalist system that creates jobs and growth. But unlike traditional Republican leaders, Mr. Schwarzenegger also realizes that most Americans are environmentalists. Even Republican voters strongly support the environment in polls, though you wouldn't know it from media coverage that ignores voters and focuses on Republican leadership.
Thus free-marketeer Schwarzenegger is pushing to remove unwarranted regulations, while at the same time nudging his party toward environmental innovations that hearken to the days when President Nixon ushered in the Clean Water Act--the first sweeping federal protection of the environment. Mr. Schwarzenegger not only personally believes that the economy can boom amid dramatic environmental initiatives, but he's aware that most American children are committed environmentalists due to classroom force-feeding on the dangers of landfills and pollution. Like it or not, those are the future voters.
Similarly, his moderate take on abortion-with-restrictions is far more in tune with what most Americans--including Republican voters--actually believe. Zogby and other polls show that Republican voters do not rank abortion at, or even near, the top of issues that influence their vote. This reality is somewhat stunning, given that the media harp on abortion in races for most local statehouses and Congress.
Mr. Schwarzenegger gets what's going on, perhaps better than other top Republican moderates, and certainly better than Democratic ones. Both parties have allowed huge special interests to become the tails wagging their dogs, but the California governor is staking out the radical center. And he's been richly rewarded for it. The Field Poll and others show that he enjoys a high-flying 65% approval rating in California. He has broad support from Schwarzenegger Democrats who put him in office, and almost unanimous support from Republicans. Importantly, his poll numbers ticked upward after he dubbed California's Democrat lawmakers "girlie men" for being so deeply beholden to special interests that they fought cuts in California's deficit-ridden budget.
The California political media blew that story, naturally. Reporters helped promote top Democrats' claims that the governor's "girlie man" comment was homophobic or antigirl. Mr. Schwarzenegger could barely keep a straight face as he good-naturedly swatted away the whiners. He was speaking past the media and directly to the vast middle. Even if voters can't articulate their unease, they're sick of gutless politicians who, in California's case, serve public-employee unions that underwrite their campaigns, while enacting laws which batter the small businesses that drive the state's economy.
It's no surprise that Mr. Schwarzenegger's loudest critics are not on the religious right, which begrudgingly accepts him, but on the left. The Socialism Lite faction that controls the California Legislature includes the influential Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus and the powerful Latino Caucus. Their fight to maintain a broken system for running California government stands in stark contrast to the increasingly expansive approach taken by California Republicans--continually prodded forward by Mr. Schwarzenegger.
While the Democrats hew to narrow ideology on tax relief, education, immigration, business and other key issues, Republicans are pushing broader ideas. For us political mutts, it's fascinating to watch Mr. Schwarzenegger shrug off the worst of both parties and offer up tent-broadening proposals.
Most Americans describe themselves as "moderates," and many are still surprisingly soft on their choice for president--not nearly as "polarized" as the crisis-driven media like to maintain. Against this backdrop, Mr. Schwarzenegger is leading a movement that could grow well beyond California, as voters elsewhere begin to move to the Muscular Middle and demand similar leaders who embrace nonideological problem-solving.
Ms. Stewart writes about California politics in her syndicated column, "Capitol Punishment." |
