Great Communicator, Mr Terminator

What is past is not necessarily precedential, but that didn8217;t keep one analyst after another from quickly springing from Arnold8217;s announcement to Ronald8217;s example.

But is the comparison apt? Aside from their party registration and the hours spent reciting improbable dialogue in front of cameras, Schwarzenegger and Reagan share one quality: a deep, almost instinctual understanding of the interplay between media and politics.

But both are just as profoundly men of their time, and that interplay has changed dramatically in the nearly 40 years since Reagan began his ascent to the Oval Office. Looking back 8212; and is there any exercise more secure? 8212; it now is possible to see much of the former president8217;s career as an extended apprenticeship in electoral office-holding.

First of all, Reagan was a product of the now-vanished studio system and was trained, virtually from the moment he entered the film industry, to listen to others8217; expert advice and, more important, to trust others with the management of important parts of his own life.

That experience was one of the things that later allowed him to benefit from the counsel of wealthy businessmen and lawyers who formed his 8216;8216;kitchen cabinet8217;8217; and to follow the advice of the shrewd Republican political operatives who gathered around him.

Reagan8217;s last private-sector job, corporate pitchman for General Electric Corp, amounted to a kind of electoral finishing school. Former Los Angeles Times political reporter and city editor Bill Boyarsky described it this way in his still-essential 1981 biography, Ronald Reagan: His Life and Rise to the Presidency.

8216;8216;In 1954, the General Electric Corp was looking for a host for its new half-hour television series 8212; a man who could act, sell General Electric products, help build the company8217;s corporate image and visit GE plants to improve employee morale.8217;8217; Reagan was hired and 8216;8216;GE was delighted, for Reagan was a superb television salesman. There was a joke in Hollywood about someone who watched him delivering an institutional advertisement fo GE8217;s nuclear submarine and remarked, 8216;I really didn8217;t need a submarine, but I8217;ve got one now.8217; 8217;8217;

These experiences, plus his activism in the GOP8217;s post-Goldwater politics, made for a deep connection with the increasingly alienated suburban voters who were about to reshape American politics.

8216;8216;Even in 1967, the estrangement from liberal government 8230; could be seen in the white middle-class suburbs of California, the heart of the Reagan constituency8217;,8217; Boyarsky wrote. 8216;8216;By 1980, the resentment had spread around the country 8230; When that happened, Reagan became their spokesman and their president.8217;8217; He was by then what his experience had made him: 8216;8216;The Great Communicator8217;8217;.

And what has Schwarzenegger8217;s experience made him? Well, as reports of how his announcement stunned even his aides demonstrate, the entrepreneurial, lone-wolf culture of contemporary Hollywood has made him a guy who keeps his own counsel and doesn8217;t delegate.

Perhaps his greatest advantage is that the recall allows him to dispense with the inconvenience of winning his party8217;s primary. As a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control candidate 8212;what he is widely assumed to be 8212; Arnold wouldn8217;t stand much of a chance in any election in which all the voters were registered Republicans.

But now, unlike the era of Reagan8217;s rise, California no longer has normative electoral politics in which candidates work to make their ideas known. Today, what matters is money and campaign technology.

Watch for major events of the Schwarzenegger campaign to be advance screenings of high-concept, low-content TV commercials his considerable personal fortune will buy. But don8217;t look for him to morph into a contemporary version of the Great Communicator.

As Karal Ann Marling, professor of popular culture at the University of Minnesota told The New York Times, 8216;8216;If I was running his campaign, I8217;d have him say nothing. A 60-day election is a popularity contest. And in today8217;s society, Arnold is a winner.8217;8217;

Perhaps we all should keep in mind the Nietzchean admonition that blazed across the screen in the opening moments of that Schwarzeneggean classic, Conan the Barbarian. That which does not kill us makes us stronger. LAT-WP