Michael Lewis did an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger about his stint as the governor of my state. Here's the quote that a lot of blogs are noting…
If there had not been a popular movement to remove sitting governor Gray Davis and the chance to run for governor without having to endure a party primary, he never would have bothered. "The recall happens and people are asking me, 'What are you going to do?'" he says, dodging vagrants and joggers along the beach bike path. "I thought about it but decided I wasn't going to do it. I told Maria I wasn't running. I told everyone I wasn't running. I wasn't running." Then, in the middle of the recall madness, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines opened. As the movie's leading machine, he was expected to appear on The Tonight Show to promote it. En route he experienced a familiar impulse — the impulse to do something out of the ordinary. "I just thought, This will freak everyone out," he says. "It'll be so funny. I'll announce that I am running. I told Leno I was running. And two months later I was governor." He looks over at me, pedaling as fast as I can to keep up with him, and laughs. "What the fuck is that?"
I still find it hard to believe that Arnold ran and that he won…twice. His campaign, at least the first time, was incredibly lame. When he wasn't quoting famous lines from his movies, he was saying two things. One was that he would lower the cost of registering an automobile in California — which he did and which everyone, including Schwarzenegger, later realized was a mistake. The other was to address the financial crisis in the state by saying, "Let's open the books," which was utterly meaningless. Somehow, the name recognition got him into office…and he wound up being no better than the governor who was recalled and replaced. It all seems now like a bad dream…apparently even to him.