Something bothers me about this whole "Arnold the Groper" story and it's something that I guess bothers me about politicking in general these days. In most elections, we hear a lot about the "character" issue, meaning what kind of man is this person seeking the job? Is he honest, courageous, etc.? A lot of the vitriol against Clintons and Bushes has to do not with what they've done so much as what kind of human beings they supposedly are.
I would agree that a person's strength of character is important but I also don't think any of us have enough information to truly judge the character of most famous people. This is especially true of public figures who employ whole crews of public relations experts. One of the things that always bugged me about Clinton-bashing was when people who'd had little or no direct contact with Bill or Hillary would take a few third and fourth-hand nuggets of gossip and then purport to explain and analyze the intimate details of their marriage. They always reminded me of a line from one of my college professors who often said to a student who offered some theory, "You don't have sufficient information to formulate a worthwhile opinion."
During elections, we sometimes hear talk of a candidate "defining" his opponent. They said George Bush (the first one) did a good job of "defining" Michael Dukakis. What this concept suggests to me is that one candidate is able to formulate an unappealing caricature of his opponent and to get the public to accept it as accurate. Last presidential election, the Bush side was able to convince a lot of people that Al Gore's plans for Social Security and Defense were irrelevant; the problem was the man himself. He said goofy, untrustworthy things about inventing the Internet and having inspired the book, Love Story, and you don't want to vote for a guy like that. The Gore forces meanwhile tried to sell America on the notion that George W. was a drunken fratboy. Neither side was completely unsuccessful but they should have been. Those portraits were drastic oversimplifications of complex human beings, and they were formulated by taking a couple of anecdotes of questionable accuracy and then spinning them for additional impact.
I've worked with some pretty famous people and it always amazes me, first of all, to see people who know them less well than I do (or not at all) feel qualified to "judge" them in a manner I would never have attempted. It's not so much that the outsider's view is right or wrong but that it's based on almost nothing. Paul McCartney has spoken of his "pizza friends." These are people, he says, who once delivered a pizza to the Beatles, were in their presence for under sixty seconds, then went out and gave long interviews about what he, John, George and Ringo were really like, based on the observations of that minute. When I hear pundits speak about what kind of man Bill Clinton is…or Bush or Arnold or any of them…I often feel like I'm hearing from "pizza friends." We buy these accounts, especially if they conform to pre-existing prejudices, because we don't like to admit that we really don't know. And also, they're handy to bash or boost the people we want to bash or boost.
Did Arnold grope those women? Probably. Is he therefore the slimy, arrogant pig that some are making him out to be? I dunno. There may be a lot more to him (and those incidents) than we know or than we're ever going to know. As I mentioned earlier, to the extent I'd be concerned about someone who did that, it wouldn't be because of his attitude towards women, per se, but because of his attitude toward general decency when no force can make him behave. Ultimately though, I don't think it would be fair to presume that's true of Schwarzenegger and to not vote for him because of that. Instead, I'm not voting for him because I have no reason to think he's any more qualified than any randomly-selected person off the street, and also because it bugs me a little that someone would try to treat the governorship as an entry-level position into politics.
I think that's a valid reason. It's at least a reason based on something I know for certain. I don't buy the claims of his supporters that he has true leadership capabilities and the ability to get things done. Those claims are the public relations constructs. They come from the same kinds of p.r. campaigns that told us O.J. Simpson was a great role model, John Wayne was a war hero, Rock Hudson was a ladies' man, etc. Sometimes, the public image is true, at least to some extent but often, it isn't or it's woefully incomplete. I think in the long run, we all might be better off to assume we don't know for sure and to pick our officials based wholly on what they've actually, inarguably done and what they say they want to do. And if they haven't done anything or won't say what they want to do, don't pick them at all. Which is the main reason I'm not voting for Schwarzenegger.
