Celebrity status gave Schwarzenegger options

[cally]

Schwarzenegger met the press his way
Celebrity status changed media landscape


Santa Monica -- Arnold Schwarzenegger's dramatic announcement on "The Tonight Show" Aug. 6 that he was running for governor of California was, to all appearances, a bolt out of the blue. Jay Leno gasped and the Tonight Show audience erupted in applause. Schwarzenegger's advisers insisted he had made the decision at the last minute.

But, campaign officials now concede, preparations for his candidacy and especially for the remarkably successful strategy he would follow -- avoiding the traditional press and going straight to the entertainment media with vague messages and movie-style sound bites -- were laid as early as June, when they conducted a series of highly revealing focus groups.

The groups, put together in liberal San Francisco and the conservative San Fernando Valley, almost unanimously described Gov. Gray Davis as indecisive, remote and beholden to special interests. Schwarzenegger was seen in a much more positive light; the participants were generally aware of the actor's involvement with the Special Olympics and after school programs in California. They also expressed less interest in policies and more in "leadership" when asked what it took to govern.

The focus group findings gave birth to one of the most audacious media campaigns ever waged, in which the candidate made an end run around the establishment media -- newspapers and the more serious television news shows --

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/13/MN.DTL

[StClone]

1. If Arnold is in the hands of the Devil

That is the True Republican mindset he could do what ever he wanted because:

1) Californians are so "fed up" with Gray Davis and all "insider politicians" they will allow him any extravagance in this experiment.

2) People are so enamored with being protected by the "Terminator" that they will see anything he does as having some deep meaning and his actions are beyond their comprehension. Because, he comes forcefully from the future.

3) They will not want to admit how wrong they are, at least not at first. When it becomes obvious muscle men can be politically impotent, the embarrassment will be all to evident.

[AndyTiedye]

2. It Was All Planned Back in May 2001 at the Peninsula Hotel in LA

With Ken Lay and Michael Milken and a cast of other rogues.