In New Role, Governor Doesn’t Get to Write the Whole Script

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agrees with William Shakespeare that “all the world’s a stage.” But he seems to part from the Bard’s next line: “And all the men and women merely players.”

Schwarzenegger clearly views California politics as a stage. But, more than that, he sees it as a sort of Hollywood movie knockoff with a script casting him as the superhero. Definitely not a mere player.

The governor has been talking that way lately.

In the past, Schwarzenegger has told me that I sometimes take his utterances too seriously. So perhaps his latest self-revealing comments should be ignored.

Naw. They say too much about him.

Let me first back up: Last summer, when he was calling legislators “girlie men,” and I wrote that this language was unbecoming a governor -- especially one professing a desire “to bring people together” -- Schwarzenegger cautioned me: “Don’t take it seriously. It’s just a good line.”

He probably thought “losers” and “stooges” and “kicking butt” were good lines too.

In March, the governor appeared on MSNBC’s “Hardball With Chris Mathews” at Stanford University and flatly declared: “I am not a politician and never will be a politician.... I want to be the outsider, just an ordinary citizen, or a guy that was from the action movies or from bodybuilding, whatever, but ... not a politician.”

After I wrote that the governor absolutely was a politician -- this was the business he had chosen, to paraphrase a famous movie line -- he asked me: “How can you be so literal about the whole thing?” and added: “You’re too serious and too intense about all this stuff.”

Yes, governors are taken seriously, not only by reporters, but legislators and anyone interested in state government. That includes nurses, teachers, firefighters, the elderly poor -- all of them now Schwarzenegger’s adversaries -- and every taxpayer. A California governor wields awesome power, so we do tend to listen up, especially when he drops clues about the workings of his mind.

Like on Sunday with his comment about politics resembling a movie script. In this script, it seems, Schwarzenegger is again the action hero who is ripped apart by enemies but survives and triumphs over evil. It’s his destiny based on the script.

Never mind that in a democracy, script-writing is shared. No single elected official gets to write the entire story of political combat and public policy. This was the system set up by our founding producers.

Here’s what Schwarzenegger told Chris Wallace of “Fox News Sunday” when asked about his plummeting popularity: “This is like a script in a movie. You start the hero [at] the top. Then you take him down so the people [are] rooting for you. And then you take him up again. And then there’s an end to this arc.

“This [current politics] is it. It’s the perfect script.”

As for having to retool or tear up his flawed ballot initiatives: “Exactly the way you rewrite your script.... The same as we do in the movies. You do take two, take three, take four. That’s exactly what we’re doing.”

That’s exactly what Schwarzenegger did with schools. In “take one,” the new governor and education officials cut a deal: He’d “borrow” $2 billion on the condition it would be repaid the next year. In “take two,” that promise didn’t work with his other vow not to raise taxes. So he broke his word to schools. Script rewritten.

Making a movie is not the same as making public policy. A good or bad scene can be the difference of a star or two in a critic’s review. But a successful or failed policy can change opportunity and lifestyles for a generation or two of real people.

Schwarzenegger seemed to acknowledge that later in the Wallace interview: “This politics has a part that is show business, that is all about how you stage events.... At the same time ... it’s a much more serious subject, because you’re dealing with people’s lives.”

But he operates as a showman -- elaborately staging and nimbly rewriting.

In writing script lines, it’s enough just to bounce ideas around a table. In developing public policy, details should be researched and tested -- and vetted to see how they play politically. Schwarzenegger did not bother with any of that in adopting his “reform” agenda.

For some time, Schwarzenegger has been talking like his head is still back in Hollywood, and that is his frame of reference for governing.

He recently told reporters: “People always ask me, ‘Governor ... what’s the difference between being ... in politics vs. show business?’

“I say, well, there are great similarities.... In both cases, you see great drama. I mean, when I was reading the scripts, there was great drama. Now, reading the paper, there is always great drama. But that’s just what it is. It’s just great drama. And you like to go and take someone down and build them up again, and talk about the initiatives and how disastrous this is and how great this is....

“So have a good time with all the great drama.... And I’ll enjoy reading it.”

It’s all a show -- with the governor as action hero and legislators as supporting characters who, in Schwarzenegger’s script, are ultimately whipped into submission.

Maybe. Maybe not. In real life, there are no reliable scripts. Scenes change. Endings aren’t always happy.

Politics isn’t a movie.

Shakespeare continued on that life’s players all “have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”

It’s Schwarzenegger’s moment to play a governor -- a heroic politician.

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.