Richard, Arnold, And Maria

How did Arnold Schwarzenegger choose a political party? Richard Nixon (who would've been 99 today) was the one:

I heard Nixon speak [during the 1968 campaign]. He was talking about free enterprise, getting government off your back, lowering taxes and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air. I said to my friend, "What party is he?" My friend said, "He's a Republican." I said, "Then I am a Republican!”

They met for the first time at the Nixon library in November 1991, after the future governor of California arrived by chopper from a movie set to attend a reception in 37's honor. As library director, I introduced them, not that they didn't recognize one other already. I was on a flight with Nixon in the 1980s when he ran into Maria Shriver and huddled with her for 20 minutes, sharing stories about politics and their respective political clans (this was before she married Schwarzenegger, with whom, it's rumored, she may be reconciling). I also met Bruce Springsteen because of Nixon, but that's another story.

The Most Devastating Ad Of The Year

"Echo"

The Illogical Twins

An LA Times editorial lets California's GOP gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman, off the hook for employing an undocumented worker but chides her for her illogical immigration position.

And yet as Cathleen Decker's recent Times analysis demonstrated, almost nobody's immigration position is logical, especially Republicans'. The party's whipsawed between those who want to militarize the borders and a Main St. cohort whose members depend on undocumented workers. The former seem to predominate among party elites, which is why it's a miracle Whitman got nominated after coming out against Arizona's relatively draconian law. That move may prove to the smartest of the year, since Whitman still seems to be doing far better among Latinos than Sheriff Fiorina in her U.S. Senate race against Barbara Boxer.

As for Whitman's opponent, Democrat Jerry Brown's policy on the budget is just as illogical as Whitman's on immigration. He says he wouldn't raise taxes without voter approval. Gov. Schwarzenegger tried that and got schooled. What magic formula does Brown have in mind for fixing the state's structural deficit, except breaking his promise?

Boring Old Process Arguments Again

Veteran California political observer George Skelton, though an opponent of Prop. 8, says Gov. Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Brown should defend it in court since it expresses the will of the people.

What a sissy! Reminds me of people who stick up for the mosque in lower Manhattan just because freedom of religion happens to be in the Constitution.

Poorly Chosen Words

As Jack Pitney shows, Gov. Schwarzenegger's staff obviously has some time on their hands, the state's fiscal crisis notwithstanding.

Those Crazy Nixonian German Socialists

At AEI, Steven F. Hayward wishes he had seen Arnold Schwarzenegger's Nixon-like sellout of conservative orthodoxy coming five years ago:

In his prime-time speech to the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004, he went where no Republican has dared to go for the last generation: He offered enthusiastic praise for Richard Nixon. Newly arrived in the U.S. in 1968 as an aspiring bodybuilder, Schwarzenegger said, he found Nixon's views more compelling than Hubert Humphrey's "socialism" because Nixon "was talking about free enterprise, getting government off your back, lowering taxes, and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air." It was Nixon, never mistaken for a girly-man, who made him a Republican.

At the time I admired Arnold's moxie in embracing Nixon, whom most other Republicans have shoved down the same memory hole as Herbert Hoover. But perhaps we should have seen this as a portent of trouble ahead. After all, it was Nixon who proclaimed, "I am a Keynesian in economics" before slapping on wage and price controls and letting domestic social spending shoot up faster than it had under Lyndon Johnson. Like Nixon (and George W. Bush), in fiscal matters Arnold has governed more like a Keynesian than a Friedmanite; in regulatory affairs, he governs more like a German socialist than an Austrian-school liberal.

The Deficit Non-Terminator

Opposing spending cuts at any level of government in the teeth of the recession, Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Krugman awards the booby prize to budget-cutting governors, especially California's:

Arnold Schwarzenegger, in particular, deserves some jeers. He became governor in the first place because voters were outraged over his predecessor’s budget problems, but he did nothing to secure the state’s fiscal future — and he now faces a projected budget deficit bigger than the one that did in Gray Davis.