It's too bad there's not an Academy Award for head fakes. As Arnold Schwarzenegger prepared to step onto the Tonight Show stage last week, Jay Leno asked him how he was going to make the expected announcement that he was not going to run for Governor of California. Schwarzenegger murmured, "I am bowing out." And that's what everyone was expecting to hear. In fact, top adviser George Gorton stood at the edge of the set, holding the official statement that began, "I am not running for Governor..." When Gorton offered one last word of regret over the campaign that wasn't to be, the former Mr. Universe threw a muscular arm around his shoulder and said, "Let's go do it."
He did it, all right. A few moments into the show's afternoon taping, Schwarzenegger declared to a squealing studio audience, "I am going to run for Governor of the state of California." It took Gorton until after the commercial break to figure out that Schwarzenegger wasn't joking; the crumpled statement was still in Gorton's hand as stagehands ejected him from the studio for using his cell phone to begin alerting Schwarzenegger's other clueless advisers.
As a political debut, it was dazzling stagecraft. But even before Schwarzenegger was introduced into the equation with his rallying cry to "clean house in Sacramento," California's Oct. 7 vote on whether to kick Gray Davis out of the Governor's office was shaping up to be the most surreal spectacle since the 2000 Florida recount. Now it's must-see politics, a reality show for the cable news channels, in which the prize is a budget mess to clean up and 34 million ungovernable Californians to lead. As the final deadline for entering the race passed Saturday evening, Conan the Candidate was one of several dozen vying for that responsibility. Among the others on the ballot: socialite turned populist cable pundit Arianna Huffington, ex--baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, pornographer Larry Flynt and porn star Mary Carey. Representing the et tu, Brute wing of Davis' party is his Lieutenant Governor, Cruz Bustamante.
The only prediction that seems safe to make at this point is that the recall election will get weirder. In the latest TIME/CNN poll, only 35% of registered voters say they would vote to keep Davis, which will be the first question on the ballot. At the same time, Californians will be asked who should replace him. In a field this jammed with candidates, the next Governor could conceivably be a candidate who is the choice of 5% or even less. It's entirely possible that 49% could vote to keep Davis as Governor--he needs more than 50% to defeat the recall--only to see him give up his office to someone who gets a far lower share in the subsequent balloting.