All:
Like the author I live through the eight years of Schwarzenegger's
governorship. In the interest of full disclosure or I voted yes on the recall,
because I thought Gray Davis was going to be voted out anyway and voted Green
party to replace him. Where this column goes off the track is by neglecting six
of the eight years he was governor during which he was incredibly popular;
winning reelection in 2006 landslide against a corporate democrat. (An election
in which I also voted Green) unless you were a state employee most people
thought of Schwarzenegger as an able administrator. Arnold did not pander
nearly to the same extent that Trump has, and more importantly once he got into
office was ideologically moderate and sometimes bipartisan in his
administrative and judicial appointments – except for his loan appointment to
the state Supreme Court which I remember observers of the time saying even he
was surprised by how conservative she was (and is.)
Paul
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 24, 2016, at 11:55 AM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Is Trump the Sequel to Schwarzenegger?
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/is_trump_the_sequel_to_schwarzenegger_20
160223/
Posted on Feb 23, 2016
By Bill Blum
Truthdig
In a May 2011 Newsweek column, the late film critic Roger Ebert exposed the
bottom line behind Hollywood's unquenchable appetite for remakes and
sequels. "No movie executive has ever been fired for greenlighting a
sequel," he wrote. "Once a brand has been established in the marketplace, it
makes sound business sense to repeat the formula. . [N]othing is harder to
get financed than an original idea, or easier than a retread."
Although Ebert's musings are nearly 5 years old and were confined to the
cinema, they apply to politics today-especially to the campaign of GOP
front-runner Donald Trump. Far from being a unique candidate who has broken
all the traditional rules of electioneering, as he is often portrayed by the
mainstream media, Trump, too, is a remake.
Some commentators looking for historical antecedents have compared Trump
with corporate executive and failed 1940 Republican presidential nominee
Wendell Willkie. Others have likened him to Andrew Jackson, our intemperate
seventh president, and to the Louisiana demagogue Huey Long. Still others
have drawn parallels between Trump and Italian strongmen Benito Mussolini
and Silvio Berlusconi. Some have even asked if Trump is the new Reagan.
From my perspective, however, Trump is the sequel to none other than the
38th governor of the great state of California: Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I'm not the first observer to proffer a Trump-Schwarzenegger comparison.
Reporters such as Seema Mehta and Kaleb Horton, writing respectively for the
Los Angeles Times and Vanity Fair, have crafted earlier takes on the
subject. Their work is good journalism and well worth reading.
But as a longtime California resident and one who served as an
administrative law judge during Schwarzenegger's governorship, I have a more
personal understanding of the link between the two men that harkens back to
the political malaise that gripped the state in 2003 and paved the way for
Arnold's ascension.
In my research for this column, I came across a New York Times op-ed
published in late September of that year about the special election that had
been set for October as a result of a citizens' petition drive to recall
Schwarzenegger's predecessor, former Gov. Gray Davis, from office. The
election had been a hot topic among my colleagues ever since Schwarzenegger
announced over the summer-on "The Tonight Show"-that he would throw his hat
in the ring. Most of us thought the idea was laughable.
Todd Purdum, then the Times' Los Angeles bureau chief and now a senior
writer at Politico and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, cautioned
otherwise in the op-ed. The recall, in his view, was neither a laughing
matter nor some kind of idiosyncratic California affectation. Instead,
Purdum wrote, it was part of a ground-shifting trend sweeping the nation,
marked by widespread voter disaffection with economic stagnation, spiraling
budget deficits, crumbling industrial infrastructures and disillusionment
with feckless establishment politicians.
The column's headline asked: "As California Goes, So Goes the Country?" And
while Purdum carefully steered away from offering a definitive answer, he
leaned toward the affirmative, referring to the "germs" of dissatisfaction
and distrust that were "pulsing through the bloodstream of American
democracy."
Two weeks after the article's publication, Davis indeed was removed and
Schwarzenegger was chosen by a landslide margin to replace him. The
once-unthinkable had happened, as the muscle-bound seven-time Mr. Olympia,
serial misogynist and buffoonish action-movie star with no prior experience
in elected office suddenly became the leader of the nation's most populous
state, and in effect, my boss.
I have never laid eyes on Trump, but seeing his quest for the presidency
through the prism of Schwarzenegger's rise brings back painful memories, and
casts the likenesses between the two men and their pursuit of political
power in bold relief.
Although Trump was born in the U.S. of German-Scottish heritage and
Schwarzenegger immigrated here from Austria at age 21, they share strikingly
similar backgrounds, styles and outlooks.
Both were reared by tough, archly conservative fathers. Fred Trump was a
prominent New York real estate developer, whose company was sued by the
Justice Department in 1973 for discriminating against African-Americans in
apartment rentals. A 1927 New York Times article listed a "Fred Trump" as
among those arrested in a Memorial Day street brawl between police and the
Ku Klux Klan. In a 2015 interview with the Times, Donald branded the report
"totally false."
Schwarzenegger's father was a small-town police chief. In the years leading
up to World War II, Gustav Schwarzenegger joined the Nazi Party and applied
for membership in the SA, the party's paramilitary wing. While Arnold has
never flirted with similar affiliations, he expressed admiration for
Hitler's oratorical and leadership abilities in the rough cut of the 1977
bodybuilding documentary, "Pumping Iron."
By all accounts, Schwarzenegger and Trump are fantastically wealthy, and
each has benefitted enormously from our bloated celebrity culture. Trump
paved his road to fortune and fame by expanding his father's real estate
empire and as a reality TV host on the hit series, "The Apprentice," which
morphed into "The Celebrity Apprentice."
Schwarzenegger, who became a household name playing Conan the Barbarian,
among other iconic roles, is slated to take over as MC of "Celebrity
Apprentice" later this year. Rumor has it that he'll replace Trump's
catchphrase-"You're fired"-with his own signature send-off: "You're
terminated."
Renowned for their dogged work ethics, Trump and Schwarzenegger have touted
their success in the private sector as assets for government service and as
proof of their independence from special interests. Because he had no need
to draw a taxpayer-funded paycheck, Schwarzenegger opted to serve as
governor without a salary. In kindred fashion, from the outset of his
presidential run, Trump has boasted that he alone among the candidates is
self-funded and beholden to no one.
The pair also share grandiose and famously narcissistic character traits. "I
knew I was a winner back in the late sixties," Schwarzenegger wrote in his
1977 biography, "The Education of a Bodybuilder." "I knew I was destined for
great things." On the stump in 2003, he promised every Californian "a
fantastic job." In his first State of the State address the following
January, he promised not simply to move what he called the "boxes" of the
state bureaucracy around, but to "blow them up."
One-upping Schwarzenegger, Trump has made "greatness" and "winning" the twin
pillars of his candidacy. In his official website, he's described as "the
very definition of the American success story, continually setting the
standards of excellence." Along the trail, he's promised to be the greatest
jobs president and the greatest commander in chief, and to hire only the
greatest minds to work in his administration.
Mixing a blend of populism and hard-right scapegoating, Schwarzenegger as
governor promoted moderate stands on the environment and gay marriage while
savaging state employees with unpaid furloughs and threatening pay cuts in a
failed effort to restore fiscal solvency and discipline. Trump, for his
part, has sounded almost liberal when he has spoken about his early
opposition to the Iraq War and his support for Social Security and Medicare,
even as he has viciously targeted illegal immigration and Muslims as the
cause of the country's many maladies.
Both men are also adept in the art of intimidation and delivering stinging
insults. During his storied bodybuilding career, Schwarzenegger was renowned
for practicing "psychological warfare" to best his competitors. Once
installed in Sacramento, he tried to employ the technique against his
Democratic opponents in the state Legislature, openly deriding them as
"girlie men." At one point in 2009, he sent the president pro tem of the
state Senate a metal sculpture of bull testicles to encourage him to fall in
line with proposed social-service spending cuts.
The fifth principle listed by Trump in his widely read book, "The Art of the
Deal," is "Use Your Leverage." "The worst thing you can possibly do in a
deal is seem desperate to make it," he wrote. "That makes the other guy
smell blood and then you're dead." Trump's legendary penchant for insulting
opponents and critics to gain leverage was cataloged in a recent edition of
"The Upshot," the New York Times data-crunching feature, titled, "The 199
People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter: A Complete
List."
But by far and away the most critical component of the Schwarzenegger/Trump
axis is their appeal to return state and country to a mythical yesteryear.
Schwarzenegger's principal 2003 campaign slogan was "Let's Bring California
Back." Trump's omnipresent 2016 slogan is "Make America Great Again."
In 2012, in a Truthdig column on the Supreme Court, I wrote about the
pernicious effect of such appeals that I believe holds even greater currency
now in the race for president:
For today's tea-party-dominated Republicans, the glorified past is steeped
in racial- and gender-based nostalgia. It is a vision of America drawn from
simplistic and distorted allusions to the wisdom of the Founding Fathers,
the infantile hyper-individualism of Ayn Rand and, on a more mundane level,
patriarchal 1950s sitcoms like "Leave It to Beaver." It is a vision in which
clean-cut, white, Christian men hold all positions of responsibility and
lead prosperous suburban lives with dutiful and well-coiffed spouses like
June Cleaver at their sides. It is a vision in which racial minorities, to
the extent that they are ever seen, happily accept their second-class
citizenship.
In 2003, California voters made a horrible mistake electing Schwarzenegger,
thinking he could return them to glory. Instead of restoring the state's
lost luster, he wrecked its finances, leaving it with a $28 billion budget
deficit and skulking out of office in 2011 and back to Hollywood with an
approval rating of 23 percent.
As president, would Trump do the same for the nation as a whole?
Undoubtedly, but only if we allow him to write his own Hollywood ending and
elect him in the first place.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
Is Trump the Sequel to Schwarzenegger?
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/is_trump_the_sequel_to_schwarzenegger_20
160223/
Posted on Feb 23, 2016
By Bill Blum
Truthdig
In a May 2011 Newsweek column, the late film critic Roger Ebert exposed the
bottom line behind Hollywood's unquenchable appetite for remakes and
sequels. "No movie executive has ever been fired for greenlighting a
sequel," he wrote. "Once a brand has been established in the marketplace, it
makes sound business sense to repeat the formula. . [N]othing is harder to
get financed than an original idea, or easier than a retread."
Although Ebert's musings are nearly 5 years old and were confined to the
cinema, they apply to politics today-especially to the campaign of GOP
front-runner Donald Trump. Far from being a unique candidate who has broken
all the traditional rules of electioneering, as he is often portrayed by the
mainstream media, Trump, too, is a remake.
Some commentators looking for historical antecedents have compared Trump
with corporate executive and failed 1940 Republican presidential nominee
Wendell Willkie. Others have likened him to Andrew Jackson, our intemperate
seventh president, and to the Louisiana demagogue Huey Long. Still others
have drawn parallels between Trump and Italian strongmen Benito Mussolini
and Silvio Berlusconi. Some have even asked if Trump is the new Reagan.
From my perspective, however, Trump is the sequel to none other than the
38th governor of the great state of California: Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I'm not the first observer to proffer a Trump-Schwarzenegger comparison.
Reporters such as Seema Mehta and Kaleb Horton, writing respectively for the
Los Angeles Times and Vanity Fair, have crafted earlier takes on the
subject. Their work is good journalism and well worth reading.
But as a longtime California resident and one who served as an
administrative law judge during Schwarzenegger's governorship, I have a more
personal understanding of the link between the two men that harkens back to
the political malaise that gripped the state in 2003 and paved the way for
Arnold's ascension.
In my research for this column, I came across a New York Times op-ed
published in late September of that year about the special election that had
been set for October as a result of a citizens' petition drive to recall
Schwarzenegger's predecessor, former Gov. Gray Davis, from office. The
election had been a hot topic among my colleagues ever since Schwarzenegger
announced over the summer-on "The Tonight Show"-that he would throw his hat
in the ring. Most of us thought the idea was laughable.
Todd Purdum, then the Times' Los Angeles bureau chief and now a senior
writer at Politico and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, cautioned
otherwise in the op-ed. The recall, in his view, was neither a laughing
matter nor some kind of idiosyncratic California affectation. Instead,
Purdum wrote, it was part of a ground-shifting trend sweeping the nation,
marked by widespread voter disaffection with economic stagnation, spiraling
budget deficits, crumbling industrial infrastructures and disillusionment
with feckless establishment politicians.
The column's headline asked: "As California Goes, So Goes the Country?" And
while Purdum carefully steered away from offering a definitive answer, he
leaned toward the affirmative, referring to the "germs" of dissatisfaction
and distrust that were "pulsing through the bloodstream of American
democracy."
Two weeks after the article's publication, Davis indeed was removed and
Schwarzenegger was chosen by a landslide margin to replace him. The
once-unthinkable had happened, as the muscle-bound seven-time Mr. Olympia,
serial misogynist and buffoonish action-movie star with no prior experience
in elected office suddenly became the leader of the nation's most populous
state, and in effect, my boss.
I have never laid eyes on Trump, but seeing his quest for the presidency
through the prism of Schwarzenegger's rise brings back painful memories, and
casts the likenesses between the two men and their pursuit of political
power in bold relief.
Although Trump was born in the U.S. of German-Scottish heritage and
Schwarzenegger immigrated here from Austria at age 21, they share strikingly
similar backgrounds, styles and outlooks.
Both were reared by tough, archly conservative fathers. Fred Trump was a
prominent New York real estate developer, whose company was sued by the
Justice Department in 1973 for discriminating against African-Americans in
apartment rentals. A 1927 New York Times article listed a "Fred Trump" as
among those arrested in a Memorial Day street brawl between police and the
Ku Klux Klan. In a 2015 interview with the Times, Donald branded the report
"totally false."
Schwarzenegger's father was a small-town police chief. In the years leading
up to World War II, Gustav Schwarzenegger joined the Nazi Party and applied
for membership in the SA, the party's paramilitary wing. While Arnold has
never flirted with similar affiliations, he expressed admiration for
Hitler's oratorical and leadership abilities in the rough cut of the 1977
bodybuilding documentary, "Pumping Iron."
By all accounts, Schwarzenegger and Trump are fantastically wealthy, and
each has benefitted enormously from our bloated celebrity culture. Trump
paved his road to fortune and fame by expanding his father's real estate
empire and as a reality TV host on the hit series, "The Apprentice," which
morphed into "The Celebrity Apprentice."
Schwarzenegger, who became a household name playing Conan the Barbarian,
among other iconic roles, is slated to take over as MC of "Celebrity
Apprentice" later this year. Rumor has it that he'll replace Trump's
catchphrase-"You're fired"-with his own signature send-off: "You're
terminated."
Renowned for their dogged work ethics, Trump and Schwarzenegger have touted
their success in the private sector as assets for government service and as
proof of their independence from special interests. Because he had no need
to draw a taxpayer-funded paycheck, Schwarzenegger opted to serve as
governor without a salary. In kindred fashion, from the outset of his
presidential run, Trump has boasted that he alone among the candidates is
self-funded and beholden to no one.
The pair also share grandiose and famously narcissistic character traits. "I
knew I was a winner back in the late sixties," Schwarzenegger wrote in his
1977 biography, "The Education of a Bodybuilder." "I knew I was destined for
great things." On the stump in 2003, he promised every Californian "a
fantastic job." In his first State of the State address the following
January, he promised not simply to move what he called the "boxes" of the
state bureaucracy around, but to "blow them up."
One-upping Schwarzenegger, Trump has made "greatness" and "winning" the twin
pillars of his candidacy. In his official website, he's described as "the
very definition of the American success story, continually setting the
standards of excellence." Along the trail, he's promised to be the greatest
jobs president and the greatest commander in chief, and to hire only the
greatest minds to work in his administration.
Mixing a blend of populism and hard-right scapegoating, Schwarzenegger as
governor promoted moderate stands on the environment and gay marriage while
savaging state employees with unpaid furloughs and threatening pay cuts in a
failed effort to restore fiscal solvency and discipline. Trump, for his
part, has sounded almost liberal when he has spoken about his early
opposition to the Iraq War and his support for Social Security and Medicare,
even as he has viciously targeted illegal immigration and Muslims as the
cause of the country's many maladies.
Both men are also adept in the art of intimidation and delivering stinging
insults. During his storied bodybuilding career, Schwarzenegger was renowned
for practicing "psychological warfare" to best his competitors. Once
installed in Sacramento, he tried to employ the technique against his
Democratic opponents in the state Legislature, openly deriding them as
"girlie men." At one point in 2009, he sent the president pro tem of the
state Senate a metal sculpture of bull testicles to encourage him to fall in
line with proposed social-service spending cuts.
The fifth principle listed by Trump in his widely read book, "The Art of the
Deal," is "Use Your Leverage." "The worst thing you can possibly do in a
deal is seem desperate to make it," he wrote. "That makes the other guy
smell blood and then you're dead." Trump's legendary penchant for insulting
opponents and critics to gain leverage was cataloged in a recent edition of
"The Upshot," the New York Times data-crunching feature, titled, "The 199
People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter: A Complete
List."
But by far and away the most critical component of the Schwarzenegger/Trump
axis is their appeal to return state and country to a mythical yesteryear.
Schwarzenegger's principal 2003 campaign slogan was "Let's Bring California
Back." Trump's omnipresent 2016 slogan is "Make America Great Again."
In 2012, in a Truthdig column on the Supreme Court, I wrote about the
pernicious effect of such appeals that I believe holds even greater currency
now in the race for president:
For today's tea-party-dominated Republicans, the glorified past is steeped
in racial- and gender-based nostalgia. It is a vision of America drawn from
simplistic and distorted allusions to the wisdom of the Founding Fathers,
the infantile hyper-individualism of Ayn Rand and, on a more mundane level,
patriarchal 1950s sitcoms like "Leave It to Beaver." It is a vision in which
clean-cut, white, Christian men hold all positions of responsibility and
lead prosperous suburban lives with dutiful and well-coiffed spouses like
June Cleaver at their sides. It is a vision in which racial minorities, to
the extent that they are ever seen, happily accept their second-class
citizenship.
In 2003, California voters made a horrible mistake electing Schwarzenegger,
thinking he could return them to glory. Instead of restoring the state's
lost luster, he wrecked its finances, leaving it with a $28 billion budget
deficit and skulking out of office in 2011 and back to Hollywood with an
approval rating of 23 percent.
As president, would Trump do the same for the nation as a whole?
Undoubtedly, but only if we allow him to write his own Hollywood ending and
elect him in the first place.
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/donald_trump_supporters_supposedly_over
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