Arnold “The Worst Governor In History” Schwarzenegger went home to his native Austria to pat himself on the back because after seven years of his governorship, there’s apparently no one left in California who will still do it for him.
Awwww. The Governator claims that two terms of disserving the people of California cost him at least $200 million.
Reuters has his odd combination of self-adulation and self-flagellation:
Counting expenses and lost income from acting in Hollywood films, “in all it is probably more than $200 million,” he told Krone when asked how much his two terms in Sacramento had cost.
“But I’m not sorry. It was more than worth it,” he said.
“What was much worse was the damage my time as governor did to the family. There is a lot there that needs to be repaired,” he said, recalling the many Sunday evenings when his wife, Maria, and children broke out in tears at his heavy work schedule.
“We hate your job,” Schwarzenegger quoted family members as saying during his early years as governor when he would leave his Los Angeles home every Monday morning for the capital, Sacramento, and not return until the end of the week.
“It was heartbreaking every time,” said Schwarzenegger, a Republican who served as governor from 2003 until early this month. “In my second term of office, I did better. I tried to fly home every evening.”
The people of California had such high hopes for Arnold when he entered office. He said all the right things and started off as a good, hard-ass conservative. But when he lost the first battle to control state spending and his personal approval rating plummeted, the Governator clearly decided that being popular was more important than being a good governor.
In the end, he was neither.
But give us a break here, Arnold. Who the hell was going to pay you $200 million dollars to make movies? You entered politics because your movie career was over. Finished. Through. Kaput.
In 1996, Eraser stunk up the joint. In 1997, Batman & Robin bombed. In 1999, End of Days was a huge failure. In 2000, The Sixth Day and Collateral Damage tanked. And in 2003, Terminator 3 barely paid for itself. By late 1993, politics suddenly looked like a brilliant way to gently ease yourself out of failing career in Tinseltown.
A little known fact is that Arnold has probably made far more money in real estate than he made in movies. He owns half of toney downtown Santa Monica. In fact, he was once the Editor’s landlord in a beautiful building above Schatzi on Main, his Austrian restaurant. We shared the floor with Johnny Carson’s and Antonio Banderas’ production companies.
In the end, the state of California would have been much better off if Arnold’s post-Hollywood career had been devoted to real estate instead of destroying a great state.
Source: Reuters
H/T: KQ
