The governor’s new clothes

Arnold Schwarzenegger has become a girlie-man.

Now I have no problem with cross-dressing, as the traffic
cameras at Hollywood and Vine can attest. In life, it signifies a
charming complexity.

But in the context of politics, it’s a self-defeating act
of hiding one’s true ideological identity behind a phony
facade in order to fool.

We have enough of these Republican drags in Congress,
who’ve assumed the identity of Democrats when it comes to
spending.

Schwarzenegger had thus far resisted the temptation. His
supporters, whatever their specific disagreements, always admired
his conviction, whatever the pressure against him.

Not anymore. In his “state of the state” address, he
sacrificed this principled consistency in favor of cowardly
pandering and outright nonsense.

The most disappointing contradiction of the speech was when the
governor announced that he wants to teach the legislature fiscal
restraint by expanding their allowance. Opting for reverse
psychology, he proposed vast spending increases that will exceed
revenue by billions, even while admitting that “autopilot
spending will fly us into the ground” and that “we
still face a structural deficit that will soon
resurface.”

Indeed we do have a deficit, and it’s only being deepened
and pushed further into the future. To use my favorite metaphor for
disaster, let’s call this postponing the marriage.

There was, of course, a hearty dose of PTA pap.

“We made our schools healthier by becoming the only state
in the union to ban sodas and junk food from our schools,”
celebrated the kindergarten cop. “It’s great to fight
obesity. Let’s do it together.” Junk food is not nearly
as harmful to students as junk teachers, and obese students
aren’t nearly as harmful to society as an obese government.
Yet no specific reforms were offered for either.

Hitting the high note of nonsense, the governor stated his hope
to prevent “a Katrina-type disaster” in Sacramento
““ Sacramento! But nothing beats his duplicitous call for a
minimum-wage hike.

“I said that we could not afford an increase in the
minimum wage unless the economy bounced back. Well, the economy has
bounced back, so it is now time for those who often work the
hardest and earn the least to benefit from California’s
growth.” Here he admits that minimum-wage hikes are bad for
the economy, while saying that our economy has been so good we can
afford some badness.

As a student of the economist Milton Friedman, Schwarzenegger
knows the basic fact that artificial wage increases, aside from
harming efficiency, cost the jobs of many of those they are
supposed to help. Supporting any minimum-wage requires minimal
economic knowledge, and the average California legislator’s
grasp of Economics 101 maxes out at being able to count to 101.
Still, it’s the duty of a principled politician who knows
better to persuade, and gulp the necessary compromises with a sour
face, so as not to reinforce attitudes which he knows to be
wrong.

Take the attitude about education. The belief that funding the
foulest educational bureaucracy in the free world ““
California’s ““ is the same as improving education
defies logic and empirical evidence. By never challenging this
assumption, and even perpetuating it, Schwarzenegger set himself up
to be tarred when it came time to push for reform. It cost him the
special election.

I can’t speak for the people of California. I’ve got
no right, for one thing, and I lack the necessary lobotomy to pull
it off. But Shrivernegger is taking his special election defeat the
wrong way. Aside from his rhetorical suicide, he was outspent
heavily by his union enemies, who ran a deceitful ad campaign
trying to scare voters who don’t know any better. California
has one of the largest don’t-know-any-better constituencies
in the country.

The initiatives had nary a chance. Becoming a girlie-man is the
wrong reaction. Arnold should avoid the course of so many other
Republicans, who have destroyed fiscal conservatism by proudly
hijacking Democratic issues. Why not take away a Democratic issue
by pointing out how stupid it is?

Cross-dressing for a confused public might make winning an
election easier, but it also makes it pointless.

E-mail Mouhibian at [email protected]. Send general
comments to [email protected].