As a former resident of California, I’m offering my thoughts on Mr. Brown’s July 27 column about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. While it’s humorous that my feeble frame would come to the aid of such a buff individual as Schwarzenegger, I hope to raise two serious points.

Firstly, Schwarzenegger was more than just the millionaire’s choice for governor. Even though Darryl Issa, a wealthy politician, bankrolled the gathering of signatures for the recall, the 8,978,545 Californians that voted in the recall election were responsible for putting him into office.

The news outlets called the results as soon as the polls closed, and the people’s mandate is clear.

Secondly, both parties came to an agreement about the budget. Schwarzenegger’s behavior during the impasse means that if legislators continue to squabble, there will be someone in the governor’s mansion who will hold them accountable, whether in Sacramento or in a food court. Simply look how much attention he drew to something as boring as the budget.

It’s in the best interest of the new governor that the bickering and free-spending days of the California government change. If he can’t solve the challenges that he agreed to take on, Californians will remove him from office as surely as they did Gray Davis.

When Schwarzenegger took office last year, Democrats spun the results as the ousting of a spendocrat for the people’s choice. They hope to take this message into the upcoming presidential election. But recently they’ve noticed his shortcomings.

Perhaps the lesson is that the politicians that promise to fix everything can rarely do it, because in the words of a certain president, “Government is not the solution to our problem.”

Samuel S. Berbano

Sophomore

Pre-Journalism and Mass Communication