A Fresh Wind in the Capitol, or Hot Air?

Finally, the week we’ve all been waiting for. After months of drama, chaos and anticipation, it’s time for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bar mitzvah.

The ceremony began Tuesday evening with the governor’s State of the State address.

Piece of cake. Schwarzenegger joked, he prodded, and he said he can create jobs, jobs, jobs by selling California to the world. If he can peddle tickets to movies like “Red Sonja” and “Last Action Hero,” he said, “you know I can sell just about anything.”

But delivering a warm, fuzzy and cliched State of the State speech is considerably easier than delivering a budget.

By Friday, the easy part of Schwarzenegger’s life -- leaving Austria and starting over in America, winning the Mr. Universe contest with women hanging off of him, becoming a box office legend and pounding nails into Gray Davis’ coffin -- will have ended, and he’ll have come eyeball to eyeball with his hairiest challenge ever:

Governing California.

GOP strategist Stu Spencer was on the money, as usual, when he reminded me recently that our epically sprawling, famously fractured, incorrigible state is ungovernable.

Schwarzenegger, unfortunately, has already made two unforgivable mistakes.

First, he claimed to have easy answers, which he didn’t bother sharing during his campaign.

Second, he got elected.

So come Friday, megawatt grins and trite references to his action-hero days will no longer sway even the truest believers.

He’s going to have to explain exactly how he’s going to plug a projected $14-billion hole in the budget, and then persuade us to vote for $15 billion worth of debt in March.

Assuming Schwarzenegger keeps a promise not to raise taxes, that means he’ll have to skin and filet any number of health and human services, if not education.

This will surely bring pain and suffering from Eureka to Escondido, an ugly scrum in the Legislature and bloody screams from those who voted for Schwarzenegger believing he could multiply loaves and fishes.

And by breaking campaign vows and raising special-interest money in sums that must be making Gray Davis drool on himself, Arnold has already strained the integrity of his claim that it’s a new day in California politics.

“The whole world is watching,” says Democratic strategist Darry Sragow, who notes that it isn’t just Schwarzenegger’s celebrity that will shine a spotlight on Sacramento.

California’s got the same problems as the rest of the nation, only more so. This isn’t just about balancing a budget. It’s about figuring out what kind of society we ought to be. It’s about who gets taken care of in times of gargantuan deficits, who gets left behind and what the long-term costs will be.

My guess is that among Arnold’s loyal army, very few folks were hoping for a state in which the schools don’t get better any time soon, the cops don’t get to the crime any faster, the traffic only gets worse and we put another $15 billion on the credit card.

But without some kind of tax boost or a miraculous and dazzling economic recovery, that’s what we’re looking at. And as for the economic recovery, there’s only so much a governor can do, even if he is an international celebrity.

“California’s economy does what California’s economy does,” says Fred Silva, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “It grows, and then it has downturns. A governor doesn’t have many levers, although workers’ comp is one, no doubt about it.”

And Schwarzenegger poked a cattle prod at legislators Tuesday, ordering them -- not asking -- to deliver a workers’ comp reform bill to him by March 1.

Reservations aside, Silva is hoping for the best from Arnold’s Sacramento.

“I think it’s just fine that there’s a fresh wind blowing through the place,” he said.

We find out Friday how much of it is hot air.

It’s crystal clear that Schwarzenegger’s plan is to stick up Indian casinos for a cut of their action, to bang on doors in Washington and demand a fair return on California’s federal tax dollars, and to take a cleaver to a host of services, hoping that a resurgent economy makes the most draconian cuts temporary.

We still have no idea whether Schwarzenegger can sell any of this to California, but I’ll tell you what.

You don’t hear too many people saying they miss Gray Davis.

*

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday and can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com. To read previous Lopez columns, go to latimes.com/lopez.