IS ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER the recall Hamlet? To be or not to be a more conventional candidate: that is the question. Barring a last-minute charge of heart, The Terminator won’t be back in Walnut Creek for tonight’s candidate forum (if you don’t live in the San Francisco Bay area, you can catch it live on C-SPAN, beginning at 7 p.m. EDT). Schwarzenegger’s aides say he’ll participate in a September 17 debate that will air statewide. Otherwise, the star won’t be taking part in any other ensemble productions.
Arnold takes a risk by being a no-show tonight, but it’s the right gamble. For openers, the forum’s organizers set too low of a threshold for participants: a minimum of 4 percent in the latest Field Poll. That opens the door to Democratic lieutenant governor Cruz Bustamante, Republican state senator Tom McClintock, former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, Green party member Peter Camejo, and even columnist Arianna Huffington. Camejo and Huffington are recall gadflies who don’t siphon votes from either of the major parties and will be non-factors on October 7. Arnold’s right to expect a higher standard–like 6 percent–which would limit the debate to the big three.
Second, Arnold’s handlers are smart enough to know that if their guy were to attend, he’d be the main target because it’s the only way for the rest of the field to get noticed. Arnold would find himself in Bustamante’s and McClintock’s crosshairs–not to mention Gray Davis, who gets to speak before the recall candidates. Arnold would have Davis in his face and, even worse, Arianna in his lap.
THE BETTER QUESTION for Schwarzenegger isn’t why he’s skipping tonight’s forum, it’s how his campaign will or will not change in the remaining five weeks of this contest. Will Arnold, who tells Californians he wants to be the people’s governor, make more public appearances? Will he give reporters the access they crave or continue holding them at bay? Or does any of that matter when you’re a world-class celebrity, have millions on-hand to spend, and are banking on your charm and outsider status to carry you to victory?
To date, Arnold has approached recall the same way he handles product endorsements here in America: avoiding overexposure, so as not to cheapen his star power. On Monday, he was in Sacramento at the California state fair. He appeared in Huntington Beach on August 22 (that was two days after a press conference in Los Angeles, which was two weeks after his surprise announcement on “The Tonight Show”). Otherwise, it’s been a virtual campaign: a barrage of 60-second TV ads and a tour of California talk radio (yesterday, Schwarzenegger was a guest on Michael Medved’s show and the John and Ken Show in Los Angeles).
This defies campaign conventionality–even in an exercise as extraordinary as recall. Candidates don’t “go dark” for a majority of the Labor Day weekend, as Arnold did. In a 60-day election, they don’t miss any opportunity to get on the air–except for Arnold, who’s stayed behind closed doors for days at a time. With all due respect to my friends in the business, talk radio interviews aren’t showcase events–they’re what candidates do during their down time to maximize exposure. But Arnold has put them at the heart of his outreach to conservative voters.
Unusual it is. Then again, the strategy works beautifully with a star-stuck public: the less they see of Arnold, the more he whets their appetite. Adoring fans in his Sacramento and Huntington Beach appearances mobbed him. They like Arnold, and Arnold feeds off of their enthusiasm–shaking hands, signing autographs, and taking questions from the crowd. No other recall candidate creates the same buzz.
It’s reporters who have the problem–and they might decide to make it the candidate’s problem, if the trend continues. For as far as they’re concerned, less of Arnold isn’t more.
At Monday’s state fair appearance, Arnold threw himself into the crowds while reporters were kept at a distance. The few questions they did get in generally were met with stock answers. At one point, Schwarzenegger threw T-shirts to fans standing behind the press contingent. The symbolism of Arnold going over their heads wasn’t hard to miss–and it ties into a growing frustration. Since his press conference of two weeks ago, reporters have asked for interviews with Arnold. So far, they’ve been put on hold.
Naturally, that doesn’t sit well with them. Check out this September 1 post from Dan Weintraub, author of the “California Insider” blog: “[A]rnold clearly believes that he doesn’t need the press, and he doesn’t need to answer reporters’ questions. He gets on the television news whether his answers are on point or not, and he acts as if he doesn’t believe that many voters read newspapers. I still think he has created an unnecessary buzz around the campaign, a message that is repeated so often and so widely that it must be reaching the electorate: he is unwilling or unable to answer tough questions. By extension, the message is that he is unprepared to govern. And given that his greatest potential weakness is the voters’ sense that he’s not ready for prime time politics, his strategy only seems to feed that impression.”
Think of the upcoming days of Schwarzenegger’s campaign as the next scene in this production. What will be the focus of his next TV spot? Will it be biographical, issue-specific, or something unexpected? A friend of mine had a clever suggestion: Arnold should run excerpts from his August 20 press conference, where he was very much in command.
And will the candidate begin a more earnest dialogue with reporters or keep his distance through Election Day? Could media displeasure jaundice their coverage of Arnold, or is recall a different creature in which voters don’t need the media to form their own opinions?
These are worthy questions to debate–long after the candidates finish in Walnut Creek.
Bill Whalen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he follows California and national politics.
