Governor’s Political Spin on TV Twists History Out of Shape

It was a terrific performance by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. He was witty, entertaining, upbeat, creative.... Really creative -- to the point of trying to re-create history.

Schwarzenegger does have this tendency -- let’s put it gently -- to stretch the truth, to not let the facts get in the way of a good sales pitch. That is not so terrific, even if it makes for a terrific performance.

America’s new political star told “Meet the Press” moderator Tim Russert that, in governing, “the most important thing is honesty, to be honest ... with the people.”

But he also engaged in some history revision -- and not just trivial history, but history directly relevant to the current budget mess. This is history that offers a lesson for today’s inexperienced Sacramento politicians, especially the novice governor, but not as he contorted it.

Schwarzenegger was asked about former Govs. Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson raising taxes “when it came down to the crunch” to balance their budgets. Wouldn’t he do the same?

What followed wasn’t as much political spinning as outright truth-twisting:

“If we have an emergency and something unexpected happens, absolutely, I will raise the taxes. But I am not faced with those kind of emergencies at this point because, as you know, Pete Wilson, who was a great governor ... had a terrible time in the beginning.

“I mean, here this poor guy went in there with great enthusiasm trying to fix the state, and here the $14-billion debt -- right? -- that he inherited. And all of a sudden he’s hit with riots, with fires, with floods, with mudslides, with earthquakes, with one disaster after the other.

“So this is why he had to raise the taxes because here all of a sudden the bridges and freeways were collapsing, buildings were collapsing. So he had to come up quickly with the money to make up for those kind of damages.

“So, otherwise, he would have never raised the taxes.”

Schwarzenegger did get one thing right. Wilson faced a $14-billion deficit his first year as governor, 1991.

But if Schwarzenegger had the deficit figure pegged correctly, why is it that he had the rest of the story so wrong? The best that can be said for him is that he was just sloppy, maybe making it up as he spoke.

Wilson imposed the tax increases to help wipe out the budget deficit. Nothing else. No disasters. No collapsing bridges or buildings. No riot rations.

The Republican governor faced a devastating crop freeze and a lingering drought in his early months, but neither required huge reservoirs of state money. He signed the tax increase in July 1991 -- a $7-billion hit on practically everything taxable. (The other half of the deficit was eliminated with cuts and gimmicks.)

The first big disaster on Wilson’s watch -- the Oakland Hills firestorm -- didn’t occur until October 1991. The L.A. riots erupted in May 1992. Orange County had terrible mudslides in 1993. The Northridge earthquake hit in 1994. Killer floods came in 1997.

Wilson did battle one disaster after another. But the 1991 tax hike was about a deficit.

Early in the budget fight, he called on legislators to “have the guts to face the reality that this state has been papering over a deficit for many years.” He urged “a fine balance” between higher taxes and lower spending. Upon signing the budget, Wilson took a swipe at GOP conservatives: “It is the easiest thing in the world to simply hunker down and chant, ‘No new taxes.’ But that doesn’t close the [deficit] gap.”

Thirteen years and another economic downturn later -- aggravated by intervening political pressures for both higher spending and lower taxes -- Sacramento’s situation is similar. But this governor’s approach is not.

Wilson showed leadership -- as Reagan had a generation earlier -- by pushing through an unpopular, temporary tax increase to help right a sinking ship. Those governors believed in prudent pay-as-you-go financing. They borrowed long-term only to invest in the future. Highways. Parks. Schools.

Schwarzenegger also is leading, but in a different direction -- asking voters for permission to borrow into the future to finance today’s deficit spending.

The first part of Schwarz- enegger’s answer to Russert was especially puzzling: that he’d raise taxes in “an emergency,” but this budget hole -- $17 billion -- is not an emergency.

If it’s not an emergency, why then is he trying to borrow $15 billion over the next nine to 14 years -- at interest costs of $4 billion to $6.5 billion -- to cover current bills? Why has he warned voters of “Armageddon cuts” in state services if they reject his bond measure, Proposition 57?

The governor’s sales pitch for Props. 57 and 58 -- a budget-balancing requirement -- is riddled with truth-bending. One example: There’d be “no more deficit financing” -- politicians would have to “tear up the credit card and throw it away.” Actually, his own budget proposal for the next fiscal year calls for $2.6 billion in “other loans and borrowing,” according to the legislative analyst.

Schwarzenegger is likely to win passage of his ballot props and boost his political stock even higher. But he needs to be concerned about losing credibility if he isn’t more careful with his rhetoric.

No governor gets a creative license to rewrite history like it’s some movie script.

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com. Read previous columns at latimes.com/skelton.