The Rookie of the Year

A year into the job, Arnold Schwarzenegger is well on his way to becoming an unusually effective governor of California. His main shortcoming is that his tenure has failed to live up to the outlandish expectations he himself created on the campaign trail. What’s remarkable is that people aren’t holding that against him.

Schwarzenegger has instead managed to extend his honeymoon with the people of the state, and he is having the time of his life. He gets boffo approval ratings. Most Californians believe the state is now headed in the right direction compared with where it was going under Gray Davis.

Schwarzenegger has that same Hollywood role-of-a-lifetime enthusiasm for the job that made Ronald Reagan irresistible even to a lot of people who didn’t agree with him. The governor still gushes, “I’m so excited every morning when I get up and know that I can make an impact on people ... and be the people’s governor, help everybody.” When Schwarzenegger took office with similar enthusiasm, Sacramento pols nodded wisely and said, “Let’s see how he is after he finds out what this is really all about.” But if Schwarzenegger has lost any zest for the job, it doesn’t show.

Schwarzenegger turned out to be far smarter and a far more skilled politician than cynics imagined. He wooed legislators, inviting them to share a cigar in his Capitol smoking tent. They loved the attention and gave the governor much of what he wanted.

Schwarzenegger, a declared Republican, defies the usual political labels. Although The Times opposed the recall, Schwarzenegger’s take-charge approach to governing is a welcome contrast to Davis, who dithered on big issues until they became crises.

So has Arnold been good for California? Absolutely, though many of his grandiose promises -- such as blowing up the boxes of the bureaucracy with a radical reorganization plan -- have not been realized. The state has not even begun to address its long-term fiscal problems, and it still faces a multibillion-dollar shortfall in the coming year. The prisons are still a mess. Schwarzenegger did try to renegotiate Davis’ giveaway labor contracts with prison guards but wound up giving away about as much as he gained. He promised to work for health insurance for every California child but submitted a budget that capped the number of kids in the Healthy Families program. Then he had to rescind the cap when legislators protested.

He promised to balance the budget with spending cuts but gradually restored most of those cuts and resorted to more fiscal gimmicks to keep the budget in balance. Though he promised sweeping campaign finance reform, key staff members exhibited an ethical lapse in accepting $44,105 in personal gifts during his first year.

Early on, Schwarzenegger scored popular, easy wins on campaign promises by repealing the Davis increase in the auto license fee and the law that allowed illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. He papered over $15 billion of state debt with a costly bond issue and won a so-called balanced budget deal from Democrats.

But there have been genuine, hard-won successes as well. He achieved some major environmental coups, including the creation of a Sierra Nevada conservancy. The economy is better, and even though that has less to do with the governor’s veto of “job-killing” bills cherished by Democratic leaders than with the natural swings of the economic cycle, his strong focus on making the state a more attractive place to do business is certain to pay dividends. As his recent trip to Japan made clear, no other state can claim as effective a salesman.

It’s been a mildly positive rookie year for the governor, if you look at actual accomplishments. What’s more encouraging is that the premise of a Schwarzenegger administration -- that a hugely charismatic, independent, socially moderate but fiscally conservative governor would have the power to fix some of Sacramento’s intractable problems -- seems more promising than ever.