CA-GOV: Bully

For me, the most salient moment for Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Governor's debate, other than when he said that union busting and denying choice and shortchanging teachers were good ideas, was when he said about Phil Angelides "I feel like I'm having Thanksgiving dinner with my Uncle Teddy." Under the guise of a cute joke, it's extremely revelatory. First of all, it came out, not after discussion of taxes, which might make some perverse sense, but after Angelides talked about homeland security and first responder issues. Are we then to believe that protecting citizens and honoring firefighters and police is a big-spending liberal position? The point is that Arnold just wanted to get in that line, even though it was not appropriate to the discussion.

Takeaway: he's scripted.

He also wanted to make a mockery out of Angelides' positions, by using A MEMBER OF HIS FAMILY as a demonizing point of context. Arnold's been doing this for years. Here's a report from October 2004:

At a campaign appearance for a Republican candidate to the California Assembly, Schwarzenegger apologized for being a few minutes late, explaining that he had been pumpkin hunting with his children. Schwarzenegger is married to Maria Shriver, who is Kennedy's niece.

"My kids just brought home a beautiful pumpkin, but you know what? I'm going to return it because it's a Democratic pumpkin. It has the orange color of John Kerry's tan, and the roundness of Teddy Kennedy," said the Republican governor.

Later, Schwarzenegger made a few more jokes about Kennedy's weight when discussing California's $103 billion budget.

"That's a lot of money," he said. "Another way to think about it is if you take $100 bills and put them next to each other, they will go half way, truly half way around Teddy Kennedy's stomach."

As the audience guffawed, Schwarzenegger said, "I always like to make jokes about Teddy Kennedy. I think it's always fun to do that. He's one of my favorite relatives. He comes to my house and he eats away all the cake and all the desserts that we have."

Not only are Borscht Belt comedians everywhere committing sepukku out of guilt over what comedy hell they've wrought, this is an enlightening moment. Arnold thinks it's fun to ridicule his uncle in order to score political points.

Takeaway: he's a classic bully.

There were other bullying moments in the debate, but none combined the fake jocularity with the meanness and telegraphed bad acting to make it seem spontaneous.

What a wanker.