The Corpse Bride
October 13, 2005

It looks like the honeymoon is over. No, not for Ben and Jen, or Renee and Kenny, or Britney and whoever.

I'm talking Arnold and George.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the self-appointed Golden Boy of California politics, the Governor who would be King. He has spent three years positioning himself like, well, a bodybuilder at the Mr. Universe competition, to be the Future of the Republican Party.

So it was a split of truly Brad-and-Jen proportions when Arnold told the San Francisco Chronicle recently that he hoped George W. Bush would re-think (okay, sorry, that his handlers would re-think) the plan to bring the president to California for a Republican Party fundraiser later this month. Oh, sure, the Gov cited "donor fatigue," the fear that wealthy white Republicans would dish out so much of their filthy lucre on the Bush event, there wouldn't be enough to spare for Arnold's precious special election initiatives in November. (Wishful thinking for the rest of us, who know just how depressingly deep wealthy white Republican pockets can be.)

But rumor mongers are all abuzz. Even though the Gov swears that he and Bush are still close, the union appears to be in trouble. They don't talk any more. They don't attend the same parties. When Bush was in town last summer, Arnold declined his offer to go joyriding on Air Force One and make nice for the paparrazzi. Now that Bush is occupied 3000 miles away, trying to shoehorn his personal lawyer onto the Supreme Court, Arnold is thinking of changing the locks on his California doors. He's done everything but issue a restraining order.

Sometimes, boys and girls, people simply drift apart, grow up and evolve at different rates. Change happens. It's nobody's fault. But that's not the case here. Arnold has very specific political reasons for closing up that Golden Gate when the Bush people start sniffing around. It's starting to dawn on him what most of us Californians (and thinking people worldwide) have known for five years:

Bush is an embarrassment.

Worse than a nagging spouse, or a dimbulb girlfriend who talks too much, or an obnoxious date who gets plastered and hurls all over the hostess' dahlias, Bush is someone Arnold no longer wants to be seen with in public. Bush's performance in office (when he can be bothered to show up) over these last few months has been marked by such staggering ineptitude, callous indifference to human suffering, and transparent venality and corruption, that even a Republican poster boy like Arnold, who still has plenty to gain from the party, is trying to distance himself. And now that Bush is a lame-duck president (instead of merely lame), party bigwigs are desperately trying to find ways to, you know, just stopper him up for a couple more years, before he explodes all over their fancy $6000 suits and ruins everything.

It's not that Bush's antics in office have gotten any worse than usual; it's just that more people are finally starting to notice. As the bloody ongoing boondoggle in Iraq just drags on and on, more Americans are demanding some kind of resolution. Meanwhile, to mounting horror, Bush fast-tracked violently anti-choice candidate John Roberts onto the Supreme Court, anointing him Chief Justice-to-be before he was even confirmed to sit on the Court. For these and so many other reasons, Bush's popularity rating has been nosediving for months. And now that Governor Universe has positioned himself in opposition to California teachers, nurses, firefighters, unions, and civil libertarians, with his special election initiatives and gay marriage veto, Arnold isn't exactly the belle of the ball any more in the polls, either.
Their political marriage is no longer convenient, and Arnold is looking for a way to weasel out of his pre-nuptial vows before Bush's blood-stained hand shoots out of the ground like the Corpse Bride to drag Arnold down to the murky chamber of Hell reserved for political suicides.

And he's not the only one. Concerned party handlers' attempts to whisk Bush off to the ranch for a summer time-out were dogged by the spectre of Cindy Sheehan and her supporters seeking answers for the death of her son (and thousands of other sons) in Iraq. Bush was busy ignoring Sheehan, playing golf, and delivering soundbites drumming up support for his proposed tax cuts for the rich when Hurricane Katrina struck, wiping out downtown New Orleans, among many other places, as well as untold hundreds of lives along the Gulf Coast. Maybe he was counting on faith-based evacuation for the thousands stranded by Katrina's floodwaters. Or maybe his administration just didn't care, since so many of the lives lost were poor people of color, who, unlike their weathy white neighbors—the ones who fund all those Republican galas—didn't have the option of jumping into their Hummers and heading for higher ground when the rivers overflowed the levees. Levees, by the way, that had gone unrepaired when the Bush administration chose to divert civic funds to the black hole of Iraq.

As natural (and national) disasters go, Bush's presidency is shaping up as a bloodbath worthy of Vlad the Impaler. Talk about a Corpse Bride. No wonder Arnold wants to ditch him at the altar.