Waiting for Arnold to deliver a message

JOSEPH N. BELL

The recall circus has stumbled into its final month, and the fringe

players have mostly disappeared into the wings. One major player,

Peter Ueberroth -- despite leading the candidates in campaign

contributions from Newport-Mesa -- joined them yesterday. Meanwhile,

as the remaining supporting cast in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new movie

struggle to beef up their roles, parallels continue to be drawn

between the long ago candidacy of Ronald Reagan for the governor’s

job in California and that of Schwarzenegger today.

The correlations are superficial, at best. Both men are

professional actors. Neither had ever run for political office or had

political experience before seeking the governorship. Both ran as

Republicans and offered instant name recognition to a great majority

of voters who also went to the movies. But the differences in both

the men and the way they went about this mission are profound, and

should be considered carefully by those voters who kid themselves

that they will be getting another Reagan.

Although my experience with Reagan was brief and limited, I caught

him at both ends of his long political cycle. I reported his first

campaign for governor for a national newspaper, and I was in the

audience for one of his first speeches after he completed his

presidency. The contrasts in his performance were enormous. But so

were the similarities -- and therein lies a strength Schwarzenegger

has yet to show: the commitment to and carry-over of specific basic

views.

When ex-President Reagan spoke to the Orange County Business

Council, I read an advance copy of his speech. It was full of cliches

and banalities that lacked any of the special insights a retiring

president -- Dwight Eisenhower comes to mind -- might usefully leave

behind. Yet, when Reagan delivered this turkey word-for-written-word,

I was totally engaged and understood for the first time the grip he

had on this nation. He made banalities seem fresh and evocative by

the earnest way he delivered them, his grasp of the material and his

conviction in it.

He had only mastered some of these tools when he approached his

first campaign for governor, almost 20 years earlier. Reagan had the

conviction, then, but not the grasp. That came slowly, but it came

steadily because Reagan went to school for many months to learn his

political trade. His mentor was Bill Roberts, who with his partner,

Stu Spencer, were pioneers in the field of political management. I

interviewed both of them -- along with their candidate -- while they

were assembling and directing the team that created the political

Ronald Reagan.

It went like this. When Barry Goldwater was smashed by Lyndon

Johnson in the 1964 presidential election, the only visible Goldwater

supporter who came through with image intact was Reagan, who made a

speech supporting Goldwater that was widely reproduced and effusively

admired. So when the sugar daddies of conservative Republicanism in

California began looking around for a candidate to put up against

Gov. Pat Brown, Reagan was the only image in focus. That’s when they

hired Spencer-Roberts -- by then well known and respected -- to make

a study of Reagan’s chances.

The political managers talked with Reagan and were impressed with

his general philosophical views, but not his knowledge of state

affairs. So they brought in several dozen experts on water problems,

education, public finance and other basic state problems to brief

him, then shopped Reagan to grass-roots audiences. The questions that

came up repeatedly in those pre-campaign sessions became the issues

on the cards Reagan spoke from in all of his later campaign speeches.

When Roberts gave Reagan high marks as a candidate, his firm was

hired to manage Reagan’s campaign for governor. And for the next

several months, under Roberts’ direction, the candidate explored in

considerable detail the same subjects on which he had earlier been

given a crash course. Roberts knew that Reagan had to be prepared to

deal with such issues in depth under questioning that might well be

unfriendly.

As a result, when Reagan came down from the mountain, he was armed

for the political wars. He was accessible to the toughest reporters

and didn’t dodge public debate. He articulated firm positions that

could certainly be challenged, but were mostly clear and unambiguous.

Bill Roberts told me at that time: “You can build an image for a

candidate, but if the basic material isn’t sound, it will come out.

In the end, the candidate is out front all alone.”

Well, not all of the candidates this time. With the Davis recall

election only four weeks away, we’re still waiting for Schwarzenegger

to show up out front all alone. It is a considerable irony that the

dismal debate performance by Ueberroth, who did show up, was a factor

in his withdrawal. But while Ueberroth put himself on the line,

Schwarzenegger has avoided political reporters, stressed breadth

rather than depth in campaign rhetoric, and appeared mostly before

hand-picked groups. His absence at the candidate debates has shown

contempt for the voters. Yet, the contrast between his movie

Terminator image and his avoidance of the rough-and-tumble of

partisan politics, which speaks volumes about his handlers’ lack of

confidence in his ability to perform well out front, all alone,

hasn’t seemed to deter his fans.

But we’re not casting a movie here. What we’re doing is, first,

finding out whether money can buy a desired result as well as a new

election in our democratic society. And, second -- if it can and does

-- whether we are going to treat it as a movie and cast the most

experienced actor or as a serious effort to replace Davis with

someone who has some inkling of how to run a state more complex than

most nations in the world.

Reagan came to this job short on experience but long on an expert

and pragmatic political education, and deeply rooted in his own

convictions. If Arnold Schwarzenegger can demonstrate these same

qualities in the public arena of political debate and discourse, we

sure as hell haven’t heard it yet. Nor will we if the only debate he

enters provides him with the questions in advance, a luxury he won’t

enjoy in the real world of governing.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.