California Politics: Schwarzenegger's Two-Week Drama - And Its Ambiguous Results

One advantage of actors in politics is that they have particularly approppriate experience for the dramatic aspects of governance.

I haven't seen any polling data, but I'm guessing that Gov. Schwarzenegger has succeeded in using drama to establish an image of integrity and credibility with a lot of his supporters. He fulfilled one of his key campaign promises, rescinding the vehicle license fee increase, on his first day in office. He called an immediate special session of the legislature, which focused public attention on state issues. He's close to a deal on repealing the law allowing undocumented immigrants to get drivers licenses. And he's pushing forward with proposals for a "spending cap."

But dramatically focusing the public's attention on state government so quickly after the unusual recall election and his inauguration has some down sides for him. His team is new, and he's new to the process. His new finance chief, Donna Arduin, snubbed legislators by walking out of a budget hearing. Within hours of taking the oath of office, he was appearing before a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in his honor, telling the assembled businesspeople that he would be asking them for even more campaign money for a raft of initiatives. His first week, he appeared at the car dealership of one of his large contributors to hawk cars: "Go out there. Buy cars. Buy new cars. Buy used cars."

And he couldn't avoid scrutiny of his actual proposals for budget cuts. He sidestepped that during the campaign with phony talk about going after "waste," while Davis had just been battered by having to go through the difficult process of working out actual cuts and tax increases with the legislature. So now Schwarzenegger has started proposing cuts in state assistance to elderly people, the disabled, welfare mothers and universities. And that's just in the short run. Arduin just this week began projecting the cuts they want for the next budget year, including reduction for K-12 (kindergarten to 12th grade) education and universities. And she suggested that privatization of prisons would be examined.

Promising affluent California voters that we could have good public services without having to pay for them worked fine in the campaign. Now he has to face some cold realities of California's state budget.