California Politics: Schwarzenegger Turns Back the Clock

Gov. Schwarzenegger's journalistic fan Daniel Weintraub offers a realistic assessment of where the new governor is after his first few weeks in office.

Hollywood ending still eludes our action hero Sacramento Bee 12/21/03

The governor, for all his bravado, has succeeded so far only in turning back the clock to June. The car tax is lower, the government's deficit is ballooning and the state is on the verge of borrowing billions of dollars to balance its books. We have seen all of this before.

Reversing time, one could argue, is exactly what the voters elected Schwarzenegger to accomplish. They wanted him to undo damage done by former Gov. Gray Davis, especially in his final days in office. In that Schwarzenegger has succeeded.

But now the new governor is facing the same problem as the old governor: how to balance the budget while inflicting the least pain on others and as little political damage on himself as possible. And Schwarzenegger's first moves don't suggest he has any better idea of how to do that than did his less telegenic predecessor.

The only real difference between Schwarzenegger's budget situation and Gray Davis' is that Schwarzenegger has widened the annual budget gap by an additional $4 billion by reducing the car tax. The $15 billion bond still has to be approved by the voters in March.

When Weintraub refers to Schwarzenegger succeeding in reversing Davis' "damage," presumably he means the reduction of the car license tax (which looks to me like more damage) and the repeal of the undocumented-residents' drivers license law (which Schwarzenegger has allegedly agreed to re-enact with changes next year). Weintraub really is a fan.

And Schwarzenegger's plans to use initiatives to achieve his goals means that he will continue to have a frantic fundraising schedule. While using initiatives is superficially democratic, in practice in means that Schwarzenegger will have his hands out for more and more special interest money, to an extent that Davis - who was rightly criticized for his "pay to play" style - never did.