From The Mixed Up World of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Remember that book?  From the Mixed-up World of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler?  Maybe that’s a better metaphor for Schwarzenegger’s administration than anything from Hollywood.

Item One: Governing by statecraft. Actually, it's hard to know if this is really news.  Schwarzenegger holds a staged media event and all the media point out how fake it is.  Oh well, at least they have a Danny Elfman soundtrack.  Carla Marinucci wrote about if for the SF Chronicle and reports:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was playing leading man in a new piece of political theatre when he took the stage to the theme from "Beverly Hills Cop" Wednesday in Menlo Park: what his handlers call town hall meetings.

The term suggests real discussions, in a real town hall, or at least a place where doors are thrown open to real people. But in his most recent "Conversations with Californians" on Wednesday, Schwarzenegger's appearance before an invited crowd of 150 company employees at Sun Microsystems again appeared more relevant to a movie set than any town hall.

Item 2: The California Nurses Association put Arnold Schwarzenegger for sale on eBay.  Why should the corporations have all the fun?  Kate Folmar wrote about it for the Mercury News.

Item 3: Schwarzenegger, and his special election, and most of his initiatives are still strikingly unpopular.  I'll say it again--when you're Governor of California, it's bad news when George Bush has a higher approval rating than you.  Harrison Shepard in the LA Daily News carries this story.  He writes:

With just six weeks before the special election, California voters remain unimpressed with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's reform measures and would rather not go to the polls this fall, a survey released today says.

A majority of California voters opposed all three of Schwarzenegger's special-election measures, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, and continue to strongly disapprove of his performance as governor.

p>Los Angeles residents take the dimmest view of his performance among respondents polled in all regions of the state.

The event was carefully staged, complete with props (a 1982 Sun computer and a 2005 model), advertising (posters proclaiming Reform/Rebuild California), invited guests (mostly by company VP's), soundtrack (catchy disco-style theme song) and a carefully rehearsed script ('They sent the Terminator up to Sacramento to fix those problems").