California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a plan for the future. Friends say the Austrian-born actor is looking for an “entity” to help him push for changing the nativity provision of the U.S. Constitution so he can run for president. Two ideas are under study. One is to work with Congress to change the law barring foreign-born American citizens from becoming president, then to sell it to states. Another is bolder and riskier: creating a third party to push his idea, a move that may lose him Republican support.
How about a plan for governing California? Schwarzenegger hasn’t managed to keep any of his campaign promises, instead relying on hackneyed punchlines from decade-old movies to mask his utter failure to even surpass the meager performance of his predecessor, Gray Davis.
Movie stars and politicians have big egos that need stroking. Schwarzenegger is both, and as such has a bigger ego than most. But California is billions of dollars in debt, has traffic, education, health care, immigration, environmental, correctional, and energy problems the scope of which is hard to fathom. Whomever is in charge should be spending every waking second solving the problems that face the state that elected and pays him. Negotiating with members of congress and/or starting a new political party is for someone without the responsibility of running the fifth largest economy in the world.
California isn’t the place, and governor isn’t the job for ego masturbation.