Dan Walters: Schwarzenegger flip-flops like Jerry Brown

By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com

When Jerry Brown was serving his first stint as governor 30 years ago – but perhaps not his last – he gained a well-deserved reputation for changing positions as easily as most folks change their socks.

The most striking manifestation of Brownian motion was when he denounced Proposition 13, the landmark property tax measure, as "a ripoff" before the 1978 election and then declared himself to be a "born-again tax cutter" afterward and slashed state taxes.

Brown shrugged off criticism of his political pirouettes, once saying, "Nothing in life is so rigid that there aren't developments. That's true in politics. That's true in theology. That's true in personal relations. And for those small minds that slavishly adhere to foolish consistency, their irrelevance is their best reward."

Nevertheless, as his second term neared its close, he flip-flopped one last time and paid the ultimate political price – voter rejection. Brown had refused to order spraying when the state was infested with Mediterranean fruit flies, saying, "I'm getting a bit bugged by this bug," but then, faced with pressure from farmers and the Legislature, he flipped 180 degrees and ordered spraying.

A year later, voters soundly rejected Brown's bid for a U.S. Senate seat and he left office with a final – and quite accurate – observation, to wit: "I think people got tired of my voice. They got tired of seeing me on television … and frankly, I got a little tired of it."

Given that history, there's more than a little irony in a recent press release from Brown, now the state attorney general and a likely candidate for governor in 2010, announcing he had sued an importer for not treating produce from India to prevent an Oriental fruit fly infestation.

The politician who should be paying attention to Brown's history, however, is Arnold Schwarzenegger, because he's traveling the same path that made his predecessor a laughingstock – demonstrating by word and deed that he has few, if any, bedrock beliefs and is willing to shift positions instantaneously, depending on which way the wind is blowing.

Schwarzenegger came into the governorship nearly five years ago promising "action, action, action" on the state's pressing problems, especially its immense budget deficit. But in an interview on ABC-TV's "This Week" political program, Schwarzenegger finally revealed himself as a Brown-like will-o'-the-wisp.

"Flip-flopping is getting a bad rap, because I think it is great," Schwarzenegger said. "Someone has made a mistake, I mean someone has, for 20 or 30 years, been in the wrong place with his idea and his ideology and says, 'You know something? I changed my mind. I am now for this.' As long as he's honest or she's honest, I think that is a wonderful thing."

"I have changed my mind on things, and there is nothing wrong with it," he added later.

He's right. There is nothing wrong with changing one's mind if the facts warrant; it's even commendable. But that's different from betraying principles or reneging on promises, which is how Schwarzenegger is now seen.

Nobody knows where he is on anything. That not only thwarts governance – the deficit-ridden budget is one example – but angers Californians who didn't elect and re-elect him to spend his days jetting from one contrived, meaningless media event to another.

How angry? A new Field Poll of registered voters finds that Schwarzenegger's popularity, 60 percent in December, now stands at 40 percent.

Whatever Schwarzenegger is doing these days isn't winning much affection. Jerry Brown paid the price for indecisive governance in 1982. His one-time aide, Gray Davis, paid the same price for shirking his duty in 2003 by being recalled. Voters elected Schwarzenegger to get the job done, not play semantic games.