Governor Schwarzenegger Lays Claim to Reagan Legacy
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Governor Schwarzenegger of California laid claim to President Reagan’s political legacy yesterday at an event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Reagan’s election as governor of the Golden State.
“I pledge to you that I will try to live up to his example,” Mr. Schwarzenegger told the late president’s widow, Nancy, during a speech at the Reagan library in Simi Valley, Calif.
Mr. Schwarzenegger recalled that days after arriving in America, he bought a poster of Reagan. The former Mr. Universe said he was inspired by Reagan’s confident and optimistic outlook.
“He had an impact on me, one way or another, for 38 years,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said, according to a Webcast made available by his office.
Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican who is widely favored to win re-election next week, observed that he might have avoided some of his mistakes if he had better emulated Reagan’s civility.
“In the heat of political battle, you say things that you wish you never said — and you ‘girlie-men’ know exactly what I’m talking about,” the governor said, repeating the less-than-decorous term he used in 2004 to describe his opponents in the state Legislature. “Ronald Reagan believed that when you disrespect your adversary, you disrespect the foundation of the democratic system and, thus, the people themselves.”
Mr. Schwarzenegger drew parallels to Reagan’s time in Sacramento, noting that Reagan unsuccessfully pushed a ballot initiative to cut income taxes in 1973. All three measures Mr. Schwarzenegger took to voters last year were defeated. “I feel much better just knowing I’m in such good company,” the governor joked.
With a divided federal government looming as a possible outcome of next week’s elections, Mr. Schwarzenegger offered one of the Gipper’s observations on the divided government he faced when he was re-elected in 1970. “To conclude pessimistically, as some have, that little progress can come from such a situation is to deny the value of the two-party system that has served us so well,” Reagan said.
Mr. Schwarzenegger noted that Reagan acquired a reputation for decisiveness at a time when “California’s universities were under siege by radicals and by militants.”
A former governor, Pete Wilson, told the library gathering that Reagan’s actions in that crisis foreshadowed his strength facing down the Soviet threat years later.
“He refused to put up with rioting hooligans who disrupted the learning of others at the University of California. He ordered the National Guard to quell and arrest the troublemakers at once,” Mr. Wilson recalled. “The Ronald Reagan who refused to tolerate the thuggish behavior of student radicals in Berkeley would not long thereafter demand in Berlin, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.'”