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Jon Fleischman

From Hawaii: Noonan on CA; Interview with John Lewis

Commentary from Paradise: Day 2 on the Big Island (note photo!)

One of my favorite columnists to read is former Reagan speechwriter, Peggy Noonan.  She has a regularly featured column in the Wall Street Journal each Thursday (which you can always access under the ‘Columns’ menu at the top of the FlashReport).  

In her column, entitled "To Boldly Go…A peppery peep at the postelection players,"  Noonan references  California’s elections (as part of a  very lengthy column):

Warren Beatty has been all over the news as the leader of the anti-Schwarzenegger forces in California. He has emerged, and good for him. He’s been making heavily covered speeches and shadowing GOP rallies along with his wife, Annette Bening, a truly great actress. But Wednesday Beatty told reporters, "I don’t want to run for governor." Which left me scratching my head. This is politics, not showbiz. It has nothing to do with what you want. If you’re serious you move forward, whether you’re in the mood or not. You really don’t want it? Then get out of the way! Get off the stage, let someone else stand there. The Democrats of California need a leader, not a handsome fly buzzing ’round their heads.

Beatty is used to the rhythms of Hollywood, where you can ponder a movie for years. He’s famous for doing so. He was pondering making a movie about John Reed for more than a decade before he made "Reds." I got this from the just published biography of Beatty by Suzanne Finstad. It’s a good book and almost hilariously touching. Good because it takes a serious, fact-rich look at a serious artist, hilarious because in the writing of it the author obviously fell in love with her subject. At any rate she got spun like a top. She’s probably still spinning; she’s probably in the waters off Malibu causing tidal wives as we speak. But I digress. Beatty understands the showbiz-politics nexus but doesn’t understand the politics-politics nexus. In politics, opportunities suddenly present themselves. Pols gamble–it’s part of the game. They throw the dice, they don’t stand there holding them over the table and talking game theory.

Arnold Schwarzenegger continues to be lucky in his foes but unlucky in outcomes. (I know him slightly, like him personally, and once gave him small assistance, gratis, in a tribute to George H.W. Bush.) He’s a living illustration at the moment of How Quickly It All Changes. Two years ago when he was elected governor Chris Matthews spoke of seeing a young boy so dazzled at the sight of the Terminator and his then famous bus that the kid broke from a crowd, touched the bus with his hand, and danced away with excitement. That, said Matthews, is star power. It was.

But with each day a star is in politics he loses some of his star-glow, and if he doesn’t gain, each day, an equal amount of leader-glow he begins to experience a steady diminution of personal power. Ronald Reagan, as California governor, made the transit from star-glow to leader-glow. He did it by doing big things successfully. Schwarzenegger’s stuck. He just lost four ballot questions out of four. Being on local news every night can make your presence more brilliant or more banal. For Schwarzenegger right now it’s having the effect of kryptonite. (Mr. Beatty, please note.)

Read Peggy Noonan’s entire column here.

  • The featured story on this site today is an interview between myself and former State Senator John Lewis.  John won a tremendous victory locally in Orange County, and so while this column is mainly for the reading pleasure of FR’s "OC" readers, everyone should enjoy it.
  • Don’t miss the "San Diego Elections Winners & Losers" on the FR Blog page – as determined by our own Barry Jantz of the San Diego blog team.
  • Coming tomorrow:  Post-election analysis from FR friend and senior political analyst Ken Khachigian!

Aloha!