The Democrats are Girly Men

I never thought I would come to agree with Arnold Schwarzenegger, but now that he's bullied his way into the political sandbox, I am forced to admit he was right. The Democrats really are, as Arnold so astutely noted whilst stumping for Bush, Sr. in 1992, "a bunch of girly-men." The Democrats personify spinelessness*. While Arnold slipped into office on a campaign of media infatuation, the Democrats' strategy relied on charges of sexual misconduct and Nazi sympathies against Arnold. I don't mean to discount the seriousness of these charges, but I can't help pointing out that while the Democrats had scores of solid political issues at their disposal, they chose to run with sex and Hitler. As though they thought the people of California could not understand anything more complicated. A strange choice, given that playing the sex police has never been the Democratic Party's traditional role, despite the world of difference between Bill Clinton's ill-advised yet nevertheless consensual philandering and Arnold's non consensual groping.

Whereas, for example, they might have taken a look at the energy fiasco that made everyone so mad at Gray Davis. Which—surprise surprise—was the consequence of the deregulation overseen by Davis' Republican predecessor (and Arnold's political advisor) Pete Wilson. Democrat candidate and Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante is the lead plaintiff on behalf of Californians in a $9 billion lawsuit against Enron and the other energy companies that ripped the state off in 2001. This amount of money, incidentally, matches pretty closely with the current state deficit—another of the items everyone was so ticked off at Davis over. I never heard Bustamante talking about his efforts to get the state's money back. Not even when, 5 days before the election, reporter Greg Palast broke a story about a secret Enron meeting in a Los Angeles hotel room at the height of the energy scandal that was attended by Arnold and other prominent Republicans.

The recent California recall election brought back all-too-fresh memories of the Florida scandals in the 2000 presidential election. Then, as now, the Republicans resorted to foul play when they couldn't win an election fairly. Even if we forget, for a moment, all the hanging chads and the fact that Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the person responsible for making sure the election was fair, also just happened to be G.W. Bush's campaign manager, there was a mountain of evidence—available pointing to pre-election voter list tampering by a firm hired by Florida governor Jeb Bush. The Florida voter rolls were purged of "felons" (in other words, Afro American men, not exactly the Republican party's strongest supporters), Investigations found, however, that thousands of these "felons" were barred from voting for crimes that occurred...in the future! The story was already known while the election was still being contested, so why didn't Gore pick up this issue?

While the Democrats rolled over and played dead in California, the irregular circumstances of the recall election afforded us the rare pleasure of seeing Green Party candidate Peter Camejo and independent candidate Arianna Huffington taking part in the major debates. Enraged and engaging, these two just drove home Arnie's "girly-men" point. Really, who needs the Democrats at all?

The recall election also offered a rare situation in that the Democrats were faced with a candidate who had no public policy whatsoever. Schwarzenegger just kept saying that when he becomes governor "things will change," but he couldn't say how. He was so vague on the issues (in stark contrast to your average Republican candidate) that he refused to take part in live debates until they arranged one where he could know the questions in advance. Faced with a candidate who never should have been taken seriously, could the Democrats really do no better than attack his sexual misconduct?

The conclusion is obvious. Only one hope remains for the Democratic Party. To find a Hollywood actor of their own.

Alexander Bailey
26 October 2003

*Except for the wonderful Barbara Lee, who, by contrast, is the woman I would be if I were man enough. (Just trying to keep the spirit of Arnie's gender metaphors...).

What, you haven't had enough of this already? Well, what about this?

It's been claimed in the past that Americans, by and large, have an anti intellectual streak. While this sounds like rubbish to me, I've tried to align this with Arnold's election. I don't think it holds completely, because anti-intellectualism is one thing, whereas embracing Arnold Schwarzenegger is quite another. In the popular consciousness Arnie has never even registered on the intellectual scale at all: the entire appeal of his acting is that he always seems so adorably dumb. Arnold doesn't seem smart enough to play characters: he simply always plays "Arnold" in every film, regardless of what the script might call him. His persistent Austrian accent only contributes to his image as perennial dumbbell lifter. Please bear in mind here, that I have nothing against foreign accents, in fact, quite the opposite. Bear in mind, also, that it is extremely difficult for an adult to lose a foreign accent, or even a regional accent for that matter, and I wouldn't normally take the stubbornness of a person's accent as an indicator of low intelligence. But Arnold is a special case. Presuming that the CIA opts for native speakers, I can think of just two occupations in which an individual would be expected to overcome all accents. One is newscasting, at the national level. And the other is acting. Of course, Hollywood gets all the best accent coaches, so just what is one to presume about a fellow like Arnold? Especially when he's on the advisory board of the reactionary U.S. English, Inc? (an English-only advocacy group which appears to be only a step or two removed from the KKK).  -A.B.