Author: John Wildermuth

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is seriously testing that
old Hollywood adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

But while you wouldn’t know it from the nationwide flood of
overheated Page 1 stories, "I told you so" columns and tsk-tsking editorials,
the most ignored word in the whole scandal coverage is the one that opens this
piece: "Former."

Since January, Jerry Brown has been California’s governor
and Arnold Schwarzenegger has been a one-time politician and current
out-of-work actor.

While that distinction doesn’t matter to the supermarket
tabloids, TMZ.com’s and People magazines of the world, it should make a
difference to the much-maligned mainstream media, which prides itself on taking
a serious approach to the important issues facing the country and the world.

Unless, of course, there’s a sex scandal with a headline
name involved.

You want to kill a project like high-speed rail? Just let
the Green Eyeshade Brigade start working on it.

On Tuesday, Mac Taylor and his Legislative Analyst’s Office put out a report that treated
the 15-year-old effort to tie the state together with a 200-plus mph train as
something nasty that needed to be wiped off his shoe.

You might remember that plan. It’s the one that 6.6 million
California voters agreed to support with $9 billion in state bond money when
they passed Prop. 1A back in 2008.

It’s also the one that has collected around $3.5 billion in
federal funds even as President Obama has announced a six-year, $53 million
plan to expand high-speed rail, including $8 billion in next year’s budget.

You know Jerry Brown still has better than three years left
in his term as governor if he’s willing to take time off for surgery. And admit
it.

Sure, it was just a low-rent, low-risk skin cancer the
governor had removed from his nose last week. And there are plenty of people
who would rather undergo surgery than spend a weekend at the state Democratic
Convention.

But when you’re 73, the oldest man ever to hold California’s
top job and at least looking at the possibility of winning a second (or fourth)
term in office come 2014, you can be forgiven if you’d rather stay in seclusion
for a few days to avoid those inevitable photos of a man looking bandaged,
hurting and, just possibly, old.

Despite
all the complaining California
Republicans are doing about the latest Los Angeles Times/USC poll on
taxes and the state budget, they might want to take a look at a small question
near the end of the survey to see where their real problem lies.

That’s
the part where 40 percent of the Latino voters surveyed identify themselves as
conservatives. You know, the same political identification that dominates the
state GOP.

Yet
a March
survey done by a GOP pollster and a Republican consultant found that only
26 percent of Latinos surveyed had a favorable opinion of the Republican Party,
compared to 62 percent who thought the Democrats were just swell.

President Barack Obama’s Wednesday afternoon visit
to Facebook, the grandfather of the social networking biz, showed that his
team has grasped political truism that has eluded many California campaigns:
Bucks ain’t ballots.

Now it’s true the president reportedly plans to raise a
breathtaking $1 billion for his effort to win four more years in the White
House and yes, that’s billion with a "b."

And since no one in the campaign business has ever suggested
that "Big Daddy" Jesse Unruh’s observation that "money is the mother’s milk of
politics" is any less valid now than when the former Assembly speaker made it
in 1966, the $35,800-a-napkin dinner he had with 60 of his closest friends
Wednesday night in San Francisco was a pleasant reminder of why it’s good to be
the president.

When Gavin Newsom announced last week that he’s joining with
MC Hammer in an April 17 "Hands Across California" event to support community
colleges, it raised a question.

"There’s MC Hammer and Gavin Newsom. I wonder what Newsom’s
doing these days?"

Then there’s the two guys a San Francisco Chronicle reporter
overheard
last week on a brief flight Newsom was taking with Richard Branson, founder
of Virgin America airlines, to join Mayor Ed Lee in dedicating a new terminal
at San Francisco International:

"San
Francisco Mayor Ed Lee?" asked one Virgin America employee as former Mayor
Gavin Newsom sat three rows ahead.

What California needs are a few politicians.

Oh, the state’s got plenty of people who are in politics, holding office, casting votes, giving speeches and collecting their per diems in the Legislature. What we’re short of, though, are real politicians, men and women who pride themselves not so much on getting elected, but on getting things done, things they believe will leave California a better place.

There are plenty of names out there, mostly drawn from years gone by: Democrats like Jesse Unruh, Willie Brown and, more recently, Darrell Steinberg. Or Republicans like Bill Campbell, Ken Maddy and Jim Brulte. Any Sacramento veteran could probably come up with another dozen names or more.

This isn’t some misty walk down Memory Lane, yearning for some Golden Age of bipartisanship – or post-partisanship — that never was and never should be. No, the best politicians are strong partisans who aren’t afraid to work with strong partisans on the other side, each looking to make the absolute best deal for their side.

You can’t have a game when only one team wants to play.

Since the Republicans don’t want to play in the effort to build a realistic state budget, Gov. Jerry Brown Tuesday called off the game.

That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who was paying attention Friday evening when Republicans released their list of requests/demands for what they needed before they would give Gov. Jerry Brown the votes to put his tax extension plan on the June ballot.

It was a Christmas list that included every proposal California Republicans have dreamed of for the past decade, along with changes they wanted made to the list of painful spending cuts Brown had browbeaten his unhappy fellow Democrats into passing.

If, as Emerson said, "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin
of little minds," Gov. Jerry Brown won’t have to worry about hobgoblins.

After weeks of insisting that no way, no how was he ever
going to put a tax extension on the ballot without some support – i.e., votes –
from GOP legislators, the governor said at a Sacramento labor dinner Monday
night that "one way or another" Californians will have a chance to vote on his
proposal for some $14 billion in tax and revenue extensions to balance next
year’s budget.

When reporters
corralled the governor at the dinner and asked him if that meant he was
willing to go it alone on the ballot measure, Brown gave a classic non-denial
denial, answering instead that he was "not prepared to cease negotiating in
good faith" with Republicans and that while he remains hopeful, "I do recognize
that time is running out."

Pop quiz: Find the word "no" anywhere in that statement.