Former governor gains fans abroad

The vibe had to feel familiar to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Crowds flocked to his nationwide tour. A head of state staged a joint photo op, then sat for a little policy chitchat over breakfast. “Buff, bronzed and presidential” one news site declared of California’s erstwhile governator, adding that he “has his sights set on the Oval Office.”

There’s no chance of that right now, owing to the constitutional ban on immigrants becoming president. Still, Schwarzenegger’s recent environmental tour reanimated, in a small way, the elation of 2003, when he swept into the governor’s office in an unprecedented recall election.

A lot of people back then embraced the idea that a political neophyte and movie action hero could straighten out the “girlie-men” in Sacramento he derided, and maybe, one day, remold the wastrels who labor along the Potomac as well.

But it was telling that, 10 years on, the adulation emanated far from home, during a three-day sojourn to Australia. In California, Schwarzenegger’s rehabilitation remains a work in progress, as he faces the legacy of his volatile adventure in Sacramento -- which left a mountain of debt -- and an outsized personal failure that destroyed his high-profile marriage.

Two years after leaving office, Schwarzenegger is hailed by climate-change activists who praise the groundbreaking work he did to limit California’s carbon emissions. Supporters say he set the standard for state and local governments to act when national leaders refuse. A group of U.N. correspondents last year named him “global advocate of the year.”

But he is strikingly absent from the political action of his home state -- unlike the two previous GOP governors -- and is a pariah to his state’s Republican Party. A move into academia -- via a $20-million pledge that created an institute in his name at USC -- has drawn praise but also skepticism and resentment on campus.

His divorce from Maria Shriver is expected to be finalized this summer. His last movie, which opened in January, limped to one of the worst openings ever for a Schwarzenegger vehicle.

At 65, the former governor is seeking to reinvent himself the way he has before, from bodybuilder to actor to governor: in a flurry of movement. He announced recently that he would again play the title role in the fifth “Terminator” movie, a franchise that has brought in more than $1 billion at the box office and, some in Hollywood believe, still packs a wallop.

He was in Brussels on Monday, where the European Union invited him to deliver a global warming speech to 1,500 European mayors. In Algeria on Tuesday, he signed an accord with the government to open an office of his nonprofit R20, which, among other things, hopes to shift the North African nation from trash burning to recycling.

“You look back at his life story, he’s someone you can’t ever count out,” said Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist and former White House advisor for President Bill Clinton, who staged the kind of comeback from personal scandal that Schwarzenegger hopes to emulate.

When he left office at the start of 2011, Schwarzenegger suffered among the lowest approval ratings ever recorded for a California governor. Confidence in his abilities had tanked as he and the state limped through a series of economic crises, triggered in part by the nationwide recession.

His reputation took a further drubbing after revelations that he had carried on an affair with his housekeeper -- which produced a son -- while living under the same roof as Shriver and their children. A Field Poll released in June 2011 found that three-quarters of registered voters had an unfavorable view of Schwarzenegger. Just 20% viewed him favorably.

A major component in Schwarzenegger’s hoped-for resurgence is the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy. Its namesake pledged to pay or raise the $20 million to fund the think tank. He spoke loftily at its September kickoff about advancing “post-partisanship” and pressing leaders to act courageously.

The institute hosted an April symposium on immigration reform -- drawing two U.S. senators and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, among others, to discuss the need to move a bill through Congress. Another conference brought in experts to discuss the implications of climate change.

Schwarzenegger’s former senior advisor and secretary of education, Bonnie Reiss, runs the institute day to day. Schwarzenegger has dropped in on a handful of classes. At a recent course on post-partisan problem solving, he showed up when students presented their final projects.

Jack Knott, who oversees the institute as dean of the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, said he has been “pleasantly surprised and pleased” by Schwarzenegger’s level of engagement. Others have been less impressed.

“Some colleagues were just plain flummoxed,” Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political scientist and longtime USC professor, said of Schwarzenegger’s prestigious appointment as the university’s Gov. Downey Professor of State and Global Policy. (John Downey, an Irish immigrant, was California’s first foreign-born governor.)

“There are people who have been working up to a full professorship for a very long time and have not gotten a named chair,” Jeffe said.

Schwarzenegger’s standing is also complicated by the fact that his policy achievements are not likely to make the history books, especially measured against the promise of his recall campaign. That has left him largely without a clear identity, save that of celebrity politician.

The exception is climate change, a subject in which his profile is international. He signed the state law that made California the first state in America to fight climate change by slapping caps on carbon dioxide and other emissions. And his R20 organization is working in many parts of the globe to foster renewable energy.

“Europeans look at California as their biggest global partner because of the work Schwarzenegger did,” said Andrew Light, a climate specialist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank. “It’s an absolutely critical area he has moved into.”

Yet Schwarzenegger’s position on that issue -- nationally the province of Democrats -- only alienated him from state Republicans.

Former GOP Govs. George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson -- an early and ardent Schwarzenegger supporter -- remain important counselors to potential California candidates, offering political guidance and support. But few seek out Schwarzenegger, even though he is the only Republican to win statewide since 1998.

“He’s just not much of a factor anymore in state politics,” said Ken Khachigian, a veteran GOP strategist who was at President Nixon’s side during his post-Watergate exile. “I just think people are resigned to think of him as that bodybuilder/action hero and now pretty much a failed husband.”

Schwarzenegger declined to be interviewed. But his spokesman, Adam Mendelsohn, said Khachigian and others knocking Schwarzenegger are part of a discredited GOP old guard.

“The new Republicans, who are eager to be successful and to change the party, are the ones who remain connected to Arnold Schwarzenegger and the ideas he fought for,” Mendelsohn said.

Characteristically, Schwarzenegger plunges ahead, paying little heed to criticism. He still raises money for an after-school program for underprivileged children that he started 20 years ago. He’s sold a scripted drama to Showtime about the bodybuilding scene in Venice Beach in the 1970s and is a producer on a series on climate change.

On his recent swing Down Under, commenting on the congressional immigration debate, the native Austrian said the first policy that needed to change was the one prohibiting people born outside the U.S. from being president.

He quickly insisted he was joking -- but not entirely.

“If it will be happening in my lifetime, I don’t know,” Schwarzenegger added. “But I think it needs to be changed.”

Any flickering presidential hopes were left unspoken.

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james.rainey@latimes.com

mark.barabak@latimes.com