I think there’s a good possibility that Schwarzenegger may never be taken seriously as a politician

Earlier this afternoon I learned that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the thirty-eighth and freshly former governor of California and the star of Jingle All the Way, will be appearing at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on the twenty-sixth as part of a Canadian speaking tour. Which is good news, I suppose, because if nothing else, he’s a remarkable human being. But it made me realize, once and for all, that he will never really be taken seriously as a politician.

Maybe that sounds obvious, but hear me out. For two terms spanning over seven years, the man ran America’s most populous state – larger than all but eight of the world’s nations and accounting for fully thirteen percent of the country’s GDP. And what’s more, he did it with what can only be described in context as a remarkably low number of deaths and explosions.

If you’re old enough to remember Terminator 2, then you’re old enough to remember the Los Angeles riots. Any student of history could be forgiven for thinking that violence of such an “action movie” magnitude would have erupted on Schwarzenegger’s watch. But they’d be wrong, because the riots occurred while some guy named Pete Wilson was in the governor’s office. Way to beat the odds like the odds were the Predator, Schwarzenegger!

Let’s also not forget that Schwarzenegger is easily one of the most progressive members of the Republican Party. I know that’s like saying he’s the Wall Street banker who got the least billions of dollars as a bonus for ruining the fewest lives, but it’s still something.

Is it enough, though? Is any of it really enough? Could any of it ever be enough when you’re dealing with a guy like Arnold? Sadly, the answer is probably “Hasta la vista, no.”

If you’re an actor, and you decide to go into politics, then your success and your legacy depend on achieving more in office than you did in Hollywood. People ridiculed fellow former California governor Ronald Reagan for being an actor, for example, but you’d better believe they shut their damned mouths after he served two presidential terms and single-handedly defeated communism. And even that wouldn’t have seemed as impressive if his movies hadn’t been so negligible.

Meanwhile, nobody ever calls Clint Eastwood a politician, despite the little-known fact that he was once the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea. And you know why? Because Clint Eastwood is one of the greatest entertainment icons in American history, and Carmel-by-the-Sea is a town so dull and insignificant that the harrowing experience of being its mayor made Eastwood reject the very notion of public office for the rest of his otherwise amazing, amazing life.

So how’s the greatest action star in the world supposed to surpass his Hollywood achievements in the realm of American politics? Only by becoming the first president who wasn’t born in the United States, by my reckoning, and I’m afraid that job’s already been taken.

And that, in a nutshell, is why when I learned today that Arnold Schwarzenegger would soon be speaking at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, my knee-jerk assumption was that his speech would amount to little more than him shouting “Get to the chopper!”

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