If Voters Want a Movie Star ...

Now that there’s blood in the water in Sacramento, some California Democrats are beginning to wonder whether the sharks circling Gov. Schwarzenegger are big enough.

The two fish in the tank are Phil Angelides and Steve Westly, who are roughly as well known as the members of the Dodger infield. One is the state treasurer and one is the state controller, but what’s the difference and which is which? As with the Dodgers, it would help if they had names on their backs.

Joe Cerrell, a Democratic operative in Los Angeles, doesn’t have a problem with Angelides (he’s the treasurer) or Westly (he’s the controller). But he said they would both lose a name recognition contest with some of the usual suspects on the Democratic bench.

I have a sure-fire solution to the anonymity problem, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The suspects Cerrell is talking about are pols like ex-Gov. Jerry Brown, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, none of whom has a hat in the ring, and one of whom -- Brown -- is running for attorney general. But their names are being mentioned by people who’d like to see them jump in, Cerrell said.

“It’s ‘Oh, wait a minute. Maybe they’ve got a chance after all,’ ” Cerrell said.

This may be a lot of wishful thinking. Republican strategist Ken Khachigian, for one, isn’t trembling at the Democratic lineup of recycled maybes and unvarnished wannabes.

“If he runs again, I think he wins,” Khachigian said of Schwarzenegger, particularly if the governor wakes up, works with the Legislature to fix the budget mess and other problems and doesn’t repeat the blockheaded mistake of turning teachers, nurses, cops and firefighters into adversaries.

“You can’t beat somebody with nobody,” Khachigian said. “You just have a bunch of [Democrats] who don’t make the grade.”

Maybe so, but for those who hadn’t noticed, the wheels have come off Arnold’s California Recovery Express.

We’ve got crazed fundraising by the governor, shameless cozying up to special interests, huge budget deficits, mountains of debt from borrowing, rolling blackouts in Los Angeles, a wildly unpopular special election that Arnold is ramming down our throats and a poll that says 57% of California’s registered voters wouldn’t return him to office if he ran again in 2006.

Gray Davis must be home in front of a mirror, flexing his puny biceps.

A recent Field Poll indicated that either Angelides or Westly would narrowly beat Schwarzenegger, but Cerrell still sounds a little nervous. He thinks voters were giving Schwarzenegger a good backhand rather than giving Angelides and Westly a pat on the back.

“If you had a name ID contest,” Cerrell said, “I think Angelides and Westly would come in behind Newsom, Lockyer and Brown. [Rob] Reiner and [Warren] Beatty would do well too.”

So might Cruz Bustamante, but authorities have called off the search for the lieutenant governor, who has been missing since laying an egg in the recall election.

It was the mention of Reiner and Beatty that planted the germ of an idea in my head.

Hollywood liberals love to think they ought to be dictating the course of public affairs, but their money doesn’t always get the job done, as Sen. John Kerry’s flop proved. There’s another way for Hollywood to play the game, though, and I think it could be particularly effective in the state that has elected two movie stars as governor.

If Beatty and Reiner are game, all they’ve got to do is use their considerable connections to land a few choice movie roles for Angelides or Westly.

That’s right, make them stars. Put them in “Terminator 7” and “Matrix 9,” or whatever the numbers are. If they don’t break out in a high-concept blockbuster or two, we run the risk of having Brown make another run for governor.

The lesson of Schwarzenegger’s rise is obvious. Californians might have been voting against Davis, but they certainly couldn’t have been voting for Schwarzenegger’s policy proposals, because they were scant few and offered up without so much as a hint of detail.

“They voted for the Terminator,” Cerrell agreed. “They weren’t voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

I know what you’re thinking: Angelides and Westly have no acting experience.

So what? Have you been to the movies lately? Schwarzenegger himself has admitted he was no Sir Laurence Olivier.

Sure, it’s a bit of a stretch to imagine the lanky and bespectacled Angelides as an action hero. Then again, just as in politics, the movies are about creating illusions.

I got ahold of Reiner spokesman Ben Austin, who expressed doubt about whether Reiner could simply stick Angelides in his next movie.

The problem, we agreed, is that Reiner makes romantic comedies and, with all due respect to Angelides, we couldn’t quite imagine a lighthearted romp in which Phil gets the girl and the audience weeps with delight.

Austin suggested I work on Beatty.

So I called the Oscar winner, who was in “Bugsy” and “Bonnie and Clyde,” not to mention “Bulworth,” a fantasy about a politician who habitually speaks the truth. And then there was “Shampoo.”

It’s high time for a sequel, and with the right coaching and a complete makeover, couldn’t Angelides play an everyman bon vivant and hairdresser to the stars?

Unfortunately I didn’t get to make the pitch, because Beatty -- who said he still doesn’t want to run for governor but is philosophically opposed to making a commitment one way or another -- was too busy talking about the death of representational government, the pitfalls of the initiative process, the Athenian principle of devotion to common good, the folly of shortchanging teachers and students, the wisdom of taxing the rich and changing the way Proposition 13 applies to corporations, the dishonesty of President Bush’s “stay the course” message on Iraq, the intersection of politics and entertainment, several dozen policy issues I’ve now forgotten about and Beatty’s belief that either the like-minded Angelides or Westly would make a better governor than Schwarzenegger, as, of course, would Beatty.

All I’m trying to do is get Angelides into a movie, I said when he finally came up for air. Or Westly, for that matter.

I think Beatty may need to sleep on it, but Angelides is ready for the silver screen, and he’s practically written his own script about a crusading do-gooder.

“It wouldn’t be one of the big action movies with sound and fury and car explosions, when you leave the theater and realize there was no plot and not much of it made sense,” Angelides said. “I’d rather be in a sleeper, an independent film that’s carefully plotted, smart and has a good ending.”

Come on, Phil, baby. Work with me. You’re trying to win an election, not the Sundance Film Festival.

Give me a cyborg, a barbarian, a kindergarten cop.

Are you ready for your close-up or not?