Arnold Schwarzenegger Is President of 12 Percent of Us
The only way Arnold Schwarzenegger has changed since he became governor of California is that he’s gotten even bigger. As big as his huge, embattled, impossible state. Big enough to lead the nation into a new kind of politics
It was funny. What Arnold said at the meeting of the advocates -- it was funny. He didn’t laugh; he hardly ever does when he says something funny. He only laughs when someone says something funny to him, and then he opens that big androidal mouth, and you feel a little bit like a lion tamer, if you’re close enough -- you’re in the position of counting on his goodwill. He likes people who make him laugh. But because he doesn’t laugh at his own jokes, you can’t be sure if he’s joking or not. That’s the way it was at the meeting of the advocates. He didn’t laugh and neither did they. But that doesn’t mean what he said wasn’t funny. It had to be, or else he never would have gotten away with it.
He had gotten away with it his entire life, you see -- he’d gotten away with the imposition of his will. What he had in excess was one of the things the world had historically found unpalatable -- the Teutonic will -- and his genius had been to cast that will as a comic invention, and therefore an American one. He never had to hide his will or his ambition; he simply had to make his will and ambition an essential part of being Arnold, and then turn being Arnold into the performance of his lifetime.
You’ve heard of free will, of course. Well, with Arnold, there was freed will, and he used it, in the words of his chief of staff, “to visualize success in a way that doesn’t visualize obstacles.” Hell, when he came to the United States in ‘68, he didn’t speak any English, and visualization was what he had, a talent for seeing the next thing. He visualized success in bodybuilding and then attained it by bending his body and then the entire sport to his will. And then he saw the next thing: “I heard that Charles Bronson was making a million dollars a movie,” he told me. “That was a very big deal to an immigrant -- a million dollars a movie. So I went to see a Charles Bronson movie. And I said, I can do that. And people said, No you can’t -- have you ever heard yourself? And I said, I can do that. And then I made a million dollars a movie, so the next thing became keeping the million. And that’s how I got into business.”
And that’s pretty much how he became the governor of California as well. “I knew the time would come, and when the [Gray Davis] recall happened, it was handed to me. It was like God said, Hey, you want to circumvent the Republican primaries, because you’re not conservative enough for them? Here’s the recall. I was absolutely convinced that I would become governor, no matter what. And so I jumped in there. And I had the will to do it. When I campaigned in 2003, people said, You don’t have the experience. I said, There’s a storehouse of experience up in Sacramento and look at the shape the state is in. So it couldn’t be experience that makes the state in good shape. What it needs is the will. The will to go and make tough decisions and the right decisions. I have the will, is what I told the people. And that’s exactly what I have. I have the will.”
...
In celebration of Christmas, there was a potluck lunch at the capitol. Members of Arnold’s staff cooked for one another, and then -- because they were members of Arnold’s staff -- judged one another, rating each dish. It was a celebration and a competition, and when Arnold stood up to speak after being introduced by Susan Kennedy as “the greatest governor in the history of California,” he said he liked the annual event because it was a competition: “I like it when there are winners, and I especially like it when there are losers.“
And then he called an aide to his side and whispered a question in his ear: “What is his name?”
“Johnny Masterson,” the aide answered. And then Arnold called Johnny Masterson to come up and stand with him near the Christmas tree, introducing him as “my new cochief of staff. Johnny’s my buddy, because he is working out. Would you do something for us, Johnny? Would you flex for us for just a second. . . .”
Johnny was a small man with dark hair, a mail-room employee with Down’s syndrome. Gamely and shyly, he flexed, and then, in an impulsive gesture, he threw his arms around his boss. But he wasn’t big enough to hold him, his arms weren’t long enough to encompass him, and Arnold suddenly looked huge, with Johnny’s small hands clutching at the wings of his shoulders and Johnny’s face pressed against his chest. And I thought: Okay, he’s gotten away with this, too. He’s gotten away with not knowing Johnny’s name, he’s gotten away with pretending he did, he’s gotten away with the performance of compassion, and this was why he was good at politics. And then I looked at him, and I looked at them, and realized he’d gotten away with nothing. The disparity of scale he experienced with Johnny Masterson was what he experienced with just about everyone his entire life. It wasn’t what made him transcendent; it was what he had to transcend, and now that’s exactly what he went about doing, with the sheer size of his embrace.
The Skull and Bones/Totenkopf belt buckle makes another appearance.
Posted by: ce399 | 14 March 2009 at 15:36