How is Mr Olympia doing ?

[livi]

I was a big fan of Arnold S. as a bodybuilder. Rather enjoyed his acting career to. When he was elected Gove of California I think a lot of people here in Europe were impressed by his move up the ladder coming from Austria. I think we also were a little amused. Only in America...

But how would you living in Ca. value him ? What are your impression of him in his present occupation ?

I bet if he was born American he would be your next President. IMO would be an improvement...

[scottmandue]

Originally posted by livi
But how would you living in Ca. value him ? What are your impression of him in his present occupation ?

I bet if he was born American he would be your next President. IMO would be an improvement...

I found him interesting as bodybuilder and an actor but as a politician he sucks big time.

A better president? Krypto the wonder dog would make a better president but Arnold... I don't think so...

[Tyson Schmidt]

I think Arnold took on an impossible job. There's no one in the world who could've inherited this situation and come out with a high approval rating.

I think he has made a few key errors in public relations, but considering what he had to work with, he's not doing too badly.

When your state is spending more than it takes in, you've either got to cut spending, or raise taxes. So you're either going to piss off the Dems or the Repubs. I think he made too many promises during the campaign that just couldn't possibly happen,

[stevepaa]

We elect people to handle the government through the political process.
I dislike him for his appeal to voters for special elections. I also dislike having measures on the ballot that the Legislature put on there because they don't have the cohones to do their job.

[jyl]

He won the election thanks to his Hollywood star power, voter anger at Gray Davis, lots of money, and a heaping load of ridiculously unrealistic campaign promises, bordering on lies. For example, telling the voters that he could balance the state's budget simply by "cutting fraud and waste", which is totally false.

As Governor, his main accomplishment so far has been to apply some huge bandaids to the state's budget, in the form of massive bond issues that simply postpone the big financial crunch by a couple of years.

Some of the thngs he is trying to accomplish make a lot of sense, in my opinion. Having an independent commission determine legislative districts will prevent gerrymandering by party in power (currently, the Democrats) and should lead to genuinely contested legislative races and more centrist legislators. Reducing the power of public employee unions will remove some of the obstacles to reform of our educational system. I hope he gets his way on many of his priorities, and I plan to vote that way in the special election (if we have one).

However, I don't see him tackling our basic budget imbalance. In addition to the band-aids mentioned above, he's been taking money from local governments so that our cities are struggling to keep libraries and fire stations open. He may insist that higher taxes are not an option, but in the end taxes are being raised anyway - local sales and parcel taxes - by the cities that can afford it. Other, poorer cities are simply losing their public services. Many school districts have been eliminating their sports, arts, music, after-school, etc programs.

He's been surprisingly bad at public relations, for a Hollywood actor and a very smart businessman. It seems like he's relied simply on his star power, and now he needs to get smarter.

Basically, I'd give him a C+ grade.