Gubernatorial goldrush: why the terminator is no gipper

The answer says much about Reagan and how he governed. Reagan had an affinity for the out of doors since his boyhood in Dixon, Ill. He loved riding horseback on his California ranch. But these emotions were latent, like those he brought to his movie parts. They required a director, and in Sacramento that was Ike Livermore, Reagan's secretary of resources.

Reagan didn't actually choose Livermore. Tom Reed, Reagan's appointments secretary, did. Livermore worked for a timber company, but he also was an ardent outdoorsman and a friend of David Brower, an environmental icon. Reagan liked Livermore because he came from business and rode horseback. Livermore understood Reagan and how to appeal to his conservationist instincts.

To engage Reagan in the fight against the Sierra highway, for example, Livermore arranged a backpack trip on horseback to see the affected area. It didn't hurt that such projects were darlings of Reagan's predecessor, Edmund "Pat" Brown, a New Deal Democrat for whom progress was practically synonymous with concrete. Protecting nature became a happy offshoot of stopping Big Government.

So what about James Watt, Reagan's first interior secretary who never saw a prairie he didn't want to pave? Reagan didn't really choose Watt either; he came by way of Sen. Paul Laxalt of Nevada, a close advisor. Reagan did not set out to be a bulldozer man. He simply didn't pay a lot of attention, since he was more concerned with taxes and the Soviet Union, which fit directly into the larger ideological drama in which he saw himself cast.

Exercising power

At the personal level, Arnold Schwarzenegger is cut from different cloth. There is a hard, industrial quality to his ambition; he pumped his way to celebrity with chemicals and iron. Where Reagan came to Hollywood to be a star, with Schwarzenegger, power and money seem a larger part of the equation. He has a good business mind and does not hesitate to throw his weight around. His acting roles have been celebrity vehicles. Where Reagan found himself in parts, Schwarzenegger's parts find themselves in him.

Whatever else this means, I suspect that Schwarzenegger will be on top of things in a way that Reagan generally was not. Reagan wanted to preside; Schwarzenegger, I think, will enjoy the exercise of power. Less emotionally guarded with individuals, he has less of Reagan's ability to project himself emotionally into the popular psyche. More engaged in the day-to-day, he will have less ability to deflect criticism, though celebrity has Teflon of its own. And Arnold, for all his corporate boosting, just might be a little less gauzy-eyed about the market in the abstract. People who actually engage in business tend to be less romantic about it than are ideologues for whom it is a personal psychodrama.

The Great Inoculator

Cannon's Reagan was not a man to inflict pain or harm. It is impossible to imagine him making piggish advances towards women--or anyone else--as Arnold has done. Arnold is known in the movie business as someone who is charming to peers, but not always to folks who work "below the line." The Hitler talk in the campaign was desperate and silly. But since his days as a body-builder Arnold has shown a tendency to dominate and inflict humiliation that suggests a shadow region in his psyche that Reagan simply did not have.