Who do I choose--Tweedledum or Tweedledee?I've been meaning to write a post on California politics, but I've been stuck trying to figure out what I want to say here. Let's take the California governors race--it is a disaster! On the left side, we've got your consummate politician, State Treasurer Phil Angelides running on the Democratic ticket. On the right sidek, you've got The Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger running on the Republican ticket. And I feel like I'm stuck with a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
So first let's get into this Los Angeles Times story:
MONTEREY — State Treasurer Phil Angelides has failed to narrow Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's double-digit lead in the contest for governor, and Californians are leaning toward approval of all but one of the $43 billion in bond measures on the state's Nov. 7 ballot, according to a poll released Wednesday.
The findings by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California came as Schwarzenegger campaigned for the bond issues in Monterey, the Santa Barbara area and San Pedro, while Angelides lashed out at the governor outside a fire station in Sacramento.
[....]
In the race for governor, the poll found Schwarzenegger leading Angelides by 48% to 30% — statistically unchanged from the institute's survey last month.
Angelides continues to suffer from lackluster support among Democrats despite his recent moves to spur enthusiasm among voters in his own party, according to the poll.
He has pledged to demand the return of California National Guard troops from the war in Iraq. He has hammered Schwarzenegger for supporting President Bush's reelection in 2004. And he has run a TV ad telling viewers he was inspired to enter politics by the drive to dump another Republican president, Richard Nixon.
Yet the poll found that just 57% of Democrats back Angelides. Even in the Bay Area, the state's most solidly Democratic stronghold, Schwarzenegger has pulled slightly ahead of his challenger.
This is a major problem that I have for supporting Angelides--I just don't care for the guy. When I look at Angelides and I see another Democratic politician here--Gray Davis. Gray Davis was also a consummate politician, who was certainly well qualified for the governorship. But the problem with Davis was that he was boring. Davis really had no vision for California. In fact, you could say that Gray Davis was a caretaker--not a leader. Now we come to Phil Angelides. Angelides is certainly intelligent, competent, and qualified for the California governor's mansion. But Angelides is also boring and uninspiring. I have not heard of anything in terms of a vision for California from the Angelides camp. The political commercials I've seen are mainly attack ads showing Schwarzenegger giving "George W. Bush" campaign rally speech in Ohio. But what is so funny is that I already know that Schwarzenegger is linked to George W. Bush--I don't need a political attack ad to remind me of that. So I'm still stuck as to deciding why I should cast my vote for Phil Angelides--and Phil Angelides hasn't given me a reason why I should vote for him.
Now we come to Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger. We do have the Governator's record to look at here. Schwarzenegger came into power here on a recall election which threw out Democratic governor Gray Davis in 2003. Schwarzenegger came into the Governator's mansion promising to sweep out the corruption of California politics; however he left his broom in LA. Schwarzenegger started pushing is big "special election" ballot initiatives designed to strip power away from both the Democratic Party and the Democratic-controlled legislature in favor of the Governor and the Republicans. Schwarzenegger's job approval ratings dropped down to 37 percent as he personally campaigned for the special election initiatives. In the end, the special election initiatives failed miserably. Since the, the Governator has moved towards the center. Schwarzenegger hired former Gray Davis aid Susan Kennedy to be his chief of staff. He has signed a $37 billion bond proposal for rebuilding California's infrastructure. Schwarzenegger signed a minimum wage bill which increased California's minimum wage to $8.00 an hour--even after he vetoed two previous minimum wage bills in 2004 and 2005.
So Schwarzenegger has learned one valuable lesson in politics--it does pay to compromise with a Democratic-controlled legislature for getting bills through for the good of the state. And I will admit that I do like divided government at times--when one political party controls the legislature and the other political party controls the executive office, then it becomes difficult for a single political party to stuff its own extreme political ideology down the other political party's throat. Divided government appears to work--unlike the current governmental disaster we have in Washington. Does that mean I want to vote for Schwarzenegger? Not really--I certainly can't forgive him for the mess he made with the special election initiatives. But if Schwarzenegger continues to govern from the center, and doesn't try to push any extreme right-wing crap on us, then I could begrudingly accept him for four years as a lame-duck governor--even if I refuse to vote for him.
So that is the situation that I'm stuck with--having to choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I might have been interested in Steve Westly for governor, but Westly lost to Angelides in the California primary. So I'm stuck here.
Maybe I should just vote Green....
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