Something interesting is happening in California.
Arnold The Independent is seemingly “baaack.” The question: is he going to win independents “baaack?”
Not a week now goes by when there isn’t something in the newspaper showing how “Ahnold” is taking a position that doesn’t quite allow him to fit into a cookie-cutter Republican OR a cookie-cutter Democratic slot. He seems to be defying the national GOP — which, to be sure, changes its own position on a dime defending and depending on whatever the latest White House line is. Yet, perhaps not enough to lose his GOP support. But perhaps enough to regain some of his independent support. The key word here is PERHAPS.
Here’s the latest move by Schwarzenegger which is bound to upset (and outrage) some GOPers and some folks in the White House and could prove to be either a master stroke or political suicide, depending on your own viewpoint:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger turned down a Bush administration request this week to deploy an additional 1,500 California National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, the governor’s office said late yesterday.
Schwarzenegger press secretary Margita Thompson confirmed a report that the request, from the Pentagon’s National Guard Bureau, was to deploy California Guard to the international border along Arizona and New Mexico.
Earlier this month, the Republican governor agreed, after initial reluctance, to a request from the president to send Guard troops to assist the Border Patrol along the California stretch of the border.
Currently about 230 Guard troops are assigned to border duty in California. A Guard official on Wednesday said 500 troops would be at the border by the end of the month, with another 500 by the end of July.
Thompson yesterday said Schwarzenegger rejected the latest request because he is concerned it could take Guard troops away from training and could leave California less prepared for emergencies.
She also said the governor believes California is shouldering its fair share of the burden, and that other states need to do so as well.
Here’s how the story plays with the San Jose Mercury News:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that when he complied earlier this month with President Bush’s request to send California National Guard troops to the Mexican border, he was doing so reluctantly.
He meant it. Friday, the governor’s office confirmed that the Bush administration asked the governor this week to send an additional 1,500 Guard soldiers — and that Schwarzenegger told him no.
Having just returned from a visit to the border, the governor denied the request for three reasons, according to a representative:
• With the commitment to send 1,000 soldiers by July 31, he believed that sending 1,500 more would stretch the Guard too thin in an emergency or disaster.
• He felt it would be an unfair burden on the state.
• He was concerned that it would disrupt the Guard’s training schedule.
Schwarzenegger expressed concern when President Bush made his original request after a nationally televised address on immigration reform. He said he felt that California’s Guard personnel — many of whom have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan — deserved an opportunity to get back to their lives and their regular jobs.
For more than two weeks, the governor refused to honor the president’s request, saying he needed more information about how long troops would be deployed — and who would pay for it.
On June 1, Schwarzenegger ultimately consented when assured it would be a temporary deployment and that the federal government would pay for the cost. He committed to sending 1,000 soldiers by July 31; 250 of them already have been dispatched to the border.
The president has called for 6,000 Guard soldiers — from various states — to assist federal Border Patrol agents, mostly with logistical duties.
The National Guard Bureau, an arm of the Pentagon, asked for the 1,500 additional to fill recruiting shortfalls for the mission in New Mexico and Arizona.
Schwarzenegger is actually now operating on phase three in his term in office.
The first was as the independent who was in no one’s camp. That was what got him into office, with begrudging but steadfast (in the end) support from conservatives who felt he was the best option for the GOP to regain a foothold in California on a statewide level (If Schwarzenegger had run in a regular Republican primary, versus the open-ended recall election with a zillion candidates, he would have probably lost due to organized opposition from wary conservative Republicans).
The second was when he suddenly veered more strongly rightward and started to sound like any other member of the California Republican party (most of this was during the 2004 Presidential elections and afterwards).
And the third was after his total political humiliation on his ill-fated (and costly) initiatives he returned to his original incarnation — Arnold The Independent.
The question, in the longrun, is whether he’ll be trusted enough to win re-election…trusted by Republicans, trusted by Democrats (he got lots of Democratic votes last time)and trusted by independent voters.
Dan Walters, the on-target columnist from the Sacramento Bee, sees Schwarzenegger’s political moves as part of a triangulation strategy — akin to the same kind of political nimbleness that helped elect and re-elect Bill Clinton and that some think New York Senator Hillary Clinton is now doing as well. It’s worth “fisking” a big chunk of his provocative column:
As he seeks re-election, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is triangulating like crazy, sailing a zigzag course of actions and pronouncements designed to keep fellow Republicans on his side in a showdown with Democrat Phil Angelides, while building support from the independents and moderates who will be critical to his re-election hopes.
And this column was written BEFORE Schwarzenegger turned down Bush on the troops:
His moves on illegal immigration are a very good case in point: he has rolled back driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, opposed a Democratic plan to dramatically expand health care to illegal immigrants and toured the California-Mexico border to denounce “the failure of the federal government to secure our borders” and worry aloud about “the flow of undocumented immigrants . . . the flow of the human trafficking, the drug smuggling, and also the potential of terrorists coming across this border.”
At the same time, he has budgeted more money for local health programs that don’t ask children about their immigration status _ drawing outrage from conservatives.
“There is absolutely nothing _ I mean nothing _ that would lead the governor’s office to logically conclude Republicans would support such an expenditure,” conservative blogger Karen Hanretty opined, “so why on earth propose it in the first place and make it a condition for approval?”
Schwarzenegger often infuriates those on the right, but he’s betting that conservatives will vote for him rather than see the governorship go to the unabashedly liberal Angelides. Nor is Schwarzenegger trying to please liberals; he knows that his pro-business, anti-tax increase policies will always make him a pariah to union leaders and environmental and consumer activists.
You can see this on many weblogs as well: many blogs on the left clearly detest him; many blogs on the right are raising their eyebrows. It’s just a matter of time before someone calls him a RINO. AND:
The governor seeks a Clintonian coalition of loyalists in his own party, moderate independents and a few disaffected members of the other party _ the third side of the political triangle. And so far it appears to be working. What happened during the primary election implied that groans from the right, such as Hanretty’s, are unlikely to affect Schwarzenegger’s Republican support; he received just a handful fewer votes than state Sen. Tom McClintock, GOP candidate for lieutenant governor and a hero to conservatives.
Polls, meanwhile, indicate that independents, who will likely be about 20 percent of November’s voters, are returning to Schwarzenegger after helping him win in 2003, then deserting him during his ill-fated “year of reform” ballot measure crusade.
Independents cherish, perhaps naively, the belief that politicians should cooperate and compromise for the common good. The governor’s drive for infrastructure improvements, which included much bipartisan cooperation from the Legislature, has been a big boost as Schwarzenegger tries to peel off the right-wing label planted by his foes last year and regain the image of a pragmatic centrist.
That truly is it in a nutshell. Schwarzenegger is moving to the center (because his quick move to the right was such a political debacle). Perhaps as some think in a suspect way (perhaps not — he is, after all married to a member of the Kennedy family). But he’s making all of the right correct moves to show that he is not lockstep in anyone’s camp.
And he may be helped in his re-eelction bid by two things. Walters notes one:
Angelides’ fellow Democratic politicians, meanwhile, are helping Schwarzenegger with independents by showering him with public praise….With friends like that, Angelides doesn’t need enemies.
The other is the fact that Arnold is proving to be not just someone who had a name but someone who does have some political skills.
He often uses upbeat words like “terrific” as much as White House political maven Karl Rove uses “cut and run” to describe Democrats. He exploits his celebrity to get big crowds and, in carefully controlled events, visits small ones with plenty of cameras recording his every move and accented syllable.
Still, he has stubbed his toe so often since getting in office that it may have to be amputated. No one calling him the new Ronald Reagan in terms of political skills anymore. Nor do you hear much anymore about a big drive to change the constitution so someone born in another country can be President.
But if you had to place money in Vegas, you’d be being hasty to bet that Arnold’s political career is over.
He seems to be on the rebound — doing it in a way that will not please Democrats (particularly those who are working to get rid of Joe Lieberman from their party) and will not please lockstep Republicans who define Republicanism as whatever President George Bush, Karl Rove and the White House want or assert, even if it conflicts with what Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Ronald Reagan and other leading Republicans said Republicanism represented.
So the big story of 2006 (if this continues) may be that triangulation is alive and well — if not in New York state, then in California state.
UPDATE: Here’s a different analysis of Schwarzenegger’s moves from Jonathan Singer.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, writes a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.