The Arnold Show

JOHN DECKER / SACRAMENTO BEE / ZUMA
DIRECT APPEAL: At a Stockton mall, the Governor in July asked voters to press for passage of his budget

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled up in an SUV outside Mule Creek State Prison in the Sierra foothills. The Governor was in combat mode. Of all the legacies of dysfunction he had inherited from his predecessor, Gray Davis, the situation in the prisons was one of the most flagrant. Big campaign donations from the prison guards' union to Davis had ensured that the guards in 2002 won 34% wage increases over five years, and with overtime many were earning fat salaries; one pulled in more than the state's attorney general. But the work practices of the guards lagged. They seemed unable to curb gang violence among the state's 164,000 inmates and were admonished by a judge for using mass lockdowns to segregate prisoners racially. Some were accused of instigating gladiator-style prizefights in the cell blocks.

Standing inside Mule Creek, Schwarzenegger declared the state's entire prison system "broken." He lashed out at the wall of silence that he said prevented guards from speaking out about abuses committed by their co-workers. "We won't stop until we tear down the whole wall and see it on the ground in a pile of rubble," he said.

The Gubernator's pugilistic performance was not over. As he walked around the facility during his August visit, he spotted a small replica of the long conference table that stands in his Sacramento office; the table itself was built in the prison's carpentry shop.

Schwarzenegger couldn't stop himself from bragging: "I am the only one in the Governor's office who can pick it up."

Californians have come to expect such antics from their Republican Governor. At a typical event, he comes crashing onstage, delivers a macho statement of intent, metaphorically flexes his muscles, then roars away. Nothing could be more different from the distinctly undynamic Davis, who ended up a hostage of Sacramento's lawmakers and lobbyists and who certainly couldn't lift the Governor's conference table. In his first year in office, Schwarzenegger has proved to be a rousing political one-man show. In a quip that partly mocked his old Saturday Night Live caricature, he branded Democratic legislators who were blocking his budget as "girlie men." Just last week he trash-talked a group of nurses protesting his decision to delay a planned increase in nurse hirings, saying they were among the special interests who "don't like me in Sacramento because I am always kicking their butts."

The public loves the performance. Schwarzenegger enjoys a fairly stable 65% approval rating. What's more, California's economy has improved under his leadership. At the end of the Davis administration, 76% of California voters said they believed the state was going in the wrong direction, according to the nonpartisan Field poll. Today the figure is 38%, and 46% think things are heading upward. "There is a new sense of optimism in the state, new energy flowing from the Governor," says Gavin Newsom, the Democratic mayor of San Francisco and no automatic supporter of Schwarzenegger, who frowned on Newsom's February decision to sanction same-sex weddings in his city hall in defiance of the state's law.

But despite the feel-good sentiments, Schwarzenegger, who came into office promising to balance the state's books, has yet to implement any major financial reforms, and the bills for past borrowings are coming due. He has tried to use his popularity to go around the Democrat-controlled legislature, but governing through ballot initiatives has its limits. "Arnold is the 'stop the bleeding' guy," says Joel Kotkin, a Schwarzenegger supporter who is an economic analyst at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington. "But I don't know if he is going to do the reconstructive surgery."

At the heart of Schwarzenegger's strategy has been careful deployment of his star power, which dwarfs the political power of individual members of the legislature. "He knows that for him to win, he has to use outside pressure, not inside deals," says Republican Congressman Dana Rohrbacher. When Democrats in the legislature balked at passing a $15 billion bond measure that Schwarzenegger put forward in November 2003 to prevent the state from going bankrupt, he appealed directly to the people in a special ballot last March. The bond measure passed easily. The Governor's spokesman, Rob Stutzman, is unapologetic about the end run. "The legislature is inherently not popular, the Governor is inherently popular, and we've shown we know how to use that, and will probably use it again," he says.