Tom Fudge: It's been four years since a recall vote sent California Governor Gray Davis packing and sent movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger to Sacramento. Schwarzenegger's years as the state's Republican governor have had their ups and downs, their successes and failures. It seems to have taken a few years for Arnold to decide what kind of governor he wanted to be.
The defining moment for him may have been the 2005 special election, in which he and his whole string of initiatives were shot down by voters. The governor took on Democrats and public employee unions in that election, and he was beaten badly. Afterwards, he told the voters, "message received," and went on to work with the opposition to create a whole new agenda. That agenda included battling global warming and trying to create a system of universal health care.
You could say that confronting the political opposition is no longer the governor's style. But perhaps it never really was. Schwarzenegger himself has used the expression, post-partisanship, to describe his style of governing. The Sacramento Bee columnist Daniel Weintraub has written a book about this side of Schwarzenegger. The book is called Party of One: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of the Independent Voter.
Guest
- Daniel Weintraub , public affairs columnist for The Sacramento Bee and author of Party of One: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of the Independent Voter .
