August 10, 2003 Only Arnie can save California Politics is on LSD on the West Coast - Schwarzenegger to the rescue! By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor
Forget Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or Imam what's-his-name in Iran. It's frighteningly clear the greatest threat now facing the United States is coming from that most roguish of rogue states - California.
Over the past few months, America's most important state, the world's fifth largest economy, has plunged into West African-style politico-financial craziness.
If ever there was a case for President George "Bring 'em on" Bush's new doctrine of pre-emptive attacks on dangerous malefactors that threaten U.S. security, this is it.
U.S. troops should immediately liberate California from the evil Democrats, Hollywood sodomites and anti-war pinkos who turned this once great state into a political Liberia and social Gomorrah. Too bad half the U.S. Army is tied down liberating Iraq. There may not be enough troops available to liberate Topanga Canyon and Mussel Shoals. Maybe Bush's pal Tony Blair can send some of his Gurkhas.
Then California must be reconstructed - by Republican firms, like Halliburton and Bechtel, then guided to true democracy by Attorney General John Ashcroft, that saintly and brilliant visionary who slashed anti-terrorism spending just before 9/11, and apparently believes drinkers, dancers, fornicators and Muslims belong in jail.
As of this writing, La-La Land has gone kamikaze. The Democratic governor, Gray Davis, who saddled the state with a $38 billion US deficit, has been recalled by enraged Californians. Davis has the personality and skin tone of a frozen leg of mutton. He favours cheap shirts with collars far too big for his scrawny neck. His hair seems sprayed on by a roofing contractor. Gray is even greyer than his name implies, a lugubrious creature more fitted to a role in Six Feet Under than the governor's mansion.
Apres Gray, le deluge. A bizarre collection of 500 or so gubernatorial candidates from central casting seek to replace him. To run for governor, all you need is 65 signatures and a $3,500 deposit. Welcome to politics on LSD. And what a bad trip it is.
California's respected senator, Diane Feinstein, won't run. That leaves the field to a vertically challenged African-American child actor, a buxom stripper and a former car thief turned millionaire. He just quit in tears. Plus Richard Riordan, former Los Angeles mayor; Leon Panetta, who is not something you chop up and put into pasta but a former aide to Bill Clinton, that titan of civic and financial rectitude; and a Latino politico, Cruz Bustamante, the state's little-known and less loved lieutenant governor.
Political Vesuvius
On Wednesday, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that he, too, will run for governor. This political Vesuvius shook the nation. If anyone could save Californians from themselves, it's Arnie. I've watched his splendid film, Predator, at least 15 times and love every minute of it. If Arnie can whack that beyond-hideous monster, think what the slimy state legislature and surly unions are in for.
I usually rate actors even below lawyers and religious revivalists, but I've met Schwarzenegger and found him to be a true gentleman - civilized, intelligent, quietly forceful. His brain has not been bent by steroids. I vote for Arnie to save California.
Right after Schwarzenegger's bombshell, columnist and self-proclaimed Christian moralist Ariana Huffington threw her broomstick into the ring, offering to save California from decadence and corruption. She knows these evils first hand: her millionaire ex-hubby, after blowing some $32 million of his personal money on a farcical, failed political race, escaped the shrill Ariana by eloping with another man.
Each time I've met Huffington, I wondered if she was not somehow the long-lost daughter of Madame Nicolai Ceaucescu, or a genetic cross between Martha Stewart and Count Dracula. Had this Greek-born harpy lived in medieval times, she would have been sewn up in a bag with a rooster and two snakes and thrown into the nearest river.
Still, hats off to the great USA for having a key political race that includes an Austrian and Greek-Americans.
Le Mal de Malibu
As California's dementia continues, financial collapse nears. If California does a meltdown, America, then the world, could be infected with Le Mal de Malibu. That's why U.S., and maybe UN troops, are urgently needed. While the U.S. troops swat irksome Muslims halfway around the globe, a crumbling California could even be re-occupied by Mexico, from which it was "liberated" in the 19th century.
Officials in front of the fabled Golden Gate Bridge have been begging motorists for money to help repair the fraying edifice. This, while George Bush spends $4.5 billion US per month in Iraq and Afghanistan and just gave his mentor, Ariel Sharon, another cool billion. No money for La-La Land. Let them eat tacos!
First Clinton's fly. Then hanging chads. Then a fake war in Iraq. Now chaos in movieland. Is America cursed? Did the fall of the Roman Empire begin this way?
Must run. I'm off to enter my name in the California race. I want to get on the ballot ahead of "Surfer" Saddam and "OJ" bin Laden from lovely, downtown Pasadena.
