Sharing Quality Time With the Gov.

The governor brought the cigars.

His midnight-black Ford Excursion pulled up to Smooth’s Sports Grille in downtown Long Beach, just after his get-together with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. I guess he saved the best for last.

Gov. Schwarzenegger stepped out of the car with a celebrity smile, gave a wave to patrons and hiked up the stairs to a rooftop bar.

We shook hands, he handed me a stogie, and we lit up.

It all began very cordially, with chitchat about family, the movie business, guy stuff. I told him about filching my dad’s cigars as a kid and he told me about having his first smoke with Maria’s father in Hyannis Port. Our get-together was arranged by Adam Mendelsohn, Schwarzenegger’s new communications director, who thought it was time for us to get to know each other a little better.

But I had a butterfly or two.

I have not gone easy on the governor the last three years, roughing him up for his flip-flops and his photo-ops. I wondered if, at some point, the former Mr. Universe might lift me out of my chair and dangle me from the roof by my toes.

So I decided to jump right in and ask how he felt about my taking batting practice on him.

“I don’t dwell on it,” he insisted, leveling his gaze at me and blowing smoke.

Just the same, I suggested he get even by taking his best swings at me.

Not necessary, the governor said. When I write what he considers a [blank] column -- rhymes with witty -- he blames his staff, not me.

“I always say if Steve does not know what our true intentions are, obviously someone in our office has failed to get the message out there,” Schwarzenegger said.

The governor said he doesn’t consider himself a shoo-in for reelection despite polls that show him leading Democrat Phil Angelides. But my guess is that he really thinks things are breaking his way again after his disastrous special election last fall. He said he’s learned from his early mistakes that he can’t alienate the very people he ought to be working with to solve problems.

The governor said he probably wouldn’t be running for reelection if he’d accomplished all his goals, although he took credit for helping turn the economy around, pumping up education funding with billions in new revenues, reforming workers’ compensation and several other things. The job’s far from done, said the guv. I’m not ready to jump on his bandwagon, but as he staked out his goals, he struck me as someone who has grown more thoughtful and seasoned as a politician.

Still, he has a lot to answer for. I told him that in my humble opinion, he took two great opportunities to Sacramento and dropped the ball on both.

The first was a chance to use his landslide mandate and moderate positions to lead from the middle, whipping the Legislature’s bickering, partisan do-nothings into shape. The second was to follow up on his campaign vow to get the money and special interests out of the politics game.

He admitted he stumbled on bipartisanship after a relatively good start, but he flinched at my suggestion that he “really blew it” on getting money out of politics, making former Gov. Gray Davis look like a junior leaguer when it comes to bellying up to the special-interest trough.

I suggested that to save face, Schwarzenegger ought to endorse Proposition 89 or come up with some other meaningful campaign finance reform.

Prop. 89 would finance public elections with a 0.2% increase in the corporate income tax rate, and Schwarzenegger said there’s no way he’s going to raise taxes, period, after working so hard to prevent companies from fleeing the state because of an unfriendly climate.

It would be nice if he were as concerned about sticking the rest of us -- and our children -- with the bill for his unprecedented borrowing binges. There’s not much difference between raising taxes and sticking citizens with the bill for years of debt service, and to make it all the more outrageous, this is the man who promised to tear up the state’s credit card.

But Schwarzenegger’s bigger offense is the way he’s constantly scavenged for donations and turned campaigns into record-setting fundraising contests, with most of the money funneled into TV ads that turn off voters and shame the political process.

“You’re mistaking money and selling out,” Schwarzenegger said. “You can have all the money in the world in politics, but if you sell out -- if you take money and you do favors in return -- that’s where the evil is. The evil’s not in the money.”

It isn’t? You’ve got the business community paying bazillions to get the ear of Schwarzenegger and the Republicans, and you’ve got unions matching them on the other side, working the Democrats. It’s a public policy bidding war that never ends.

The governor insisted he’s never been influenced by a donation, but as I tried to explain, his donors aren’t writing checks for the fun of it. Besides, his record is fairly consistent with the wishes of developers, financial institutions, insurance companies, oil companies and other players, just as the Democrats always seem to come through for union bosses who throw money around like confetti.

I don’t think I gained much ground with the governor, who insisted the far bigger problem in California is the way political districts are carved up to benefit the most partisan candidates. He’s working on that, he said, and with the skills he’s learned in the last 2 1/2 years, he thinks he’s got a chance to make it happen.

The conversation lasted for an hour, and so did the cigar, and the governor invited me up to Sacramento to continue the conversation.

I told him I’d bring the smokes, and he said not to bother. He knows what he likes.

OK then, I said, I’ll pick up the tab here for the bottled water and the few snacks he ordered.

Schwarzenegger looked me square in the eye.

“It’s about time,” he said.