Tuesday, October 7, 2003
The Arnold, The Recall
Andrew Sullivan emerged from splendid seclusion to cry "Go Arnold" and the race was on. The recall has the surface appearance of a messy expression of the democratic will but is actually a prime example of special interest politics — a very rich man messing with a fair election he didn't like. The California recall has been a bad bet from the outset — a distraction from a dire fiscal crisis in the state with little indication there is any fix at hand from any of the candidates, including the incumbent.
The front runner, with only the insubstantiality of a celebrity aura and commercials that indicate Arnold's solution to California's problems will be "have an audit" and "stop all the crazy spending", has somehow energized people to give themselves over to him, wishing for a savior rather than a leader I suppose.
Davis, without presence or ideas, faced with a fiscal crisis he didn't create and which can't be served up as an indication of failed leadership, has been as ineffectual in his own defense as his opponents have been in making any case at all for themselves.
I am about as excited about this California recall as Glenn Reynolds. As spectacle, it was entertaining - fittingly surrealistic in these through the looking glass times.
There appears more to be concerned about with Arnold than his womanizing however:
In Arnold, Leigh persuasively portrays Schwarzenegger as a crude womanizer — perhaps a misogynist — of limited morals who has been given to expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and admiration for Hitler's ability to lead.
Citing the Berlin Document Center as a source of documents which have further been authenticated by the World Jewish Congress, Leigh reports that Schwarzenegger's father, Gustav, police chief of the Austrian village of Thal, applied for membership in the Nazi party in 1938 and was subsequently accepted. And she reminds readers of Arnold's public support of Kurt Waldheim, even after revelations of the Austrian president's Nazi past.
Leigh says that Gustav was an alcoholic who raised his two sons, Arnold and Meinhard, as bullies who delighted in publicly humiliating friends as well as rivals. She notes further that Schwarzenegger owes much of his success in bodybuilding contests to an expertly honed aptitude for undermining his opponents psychologically, as well as to the use, according to fellow bodybuilders she interviewed, of anabolic steroids for many years.
A penchant for bullying and humiliation - attempting to shut down any scrutiny - dubious behavior and attitudes - well, it doesn't sound good...can you believe the messenger? Are you willing to take the chance?