A year after being sworn-in as California's governor in 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger's popularity was so great there was talk of a constitutional amendment so the GOP's Austrian-born action hero could run for president. The movement failed, which might have been just as well; Schwarzenegger leaves office today with an approval rating of 22 percent and a state budget deficit of $28 billion--hardly the kind of record that helps launch White House bids. So how does one square the reversal of Schwarzenegger's political fortunes with Marc Ambinder's assertion in the October issue of The Atlantic that the Governator's legislative victories "might have saved California"? From around the Web, a sampling of opinions on what one of America's most prominent politicians got wrong (and right) during his seven years in office:
Too Tough? The movie star-turned-politician who "strutted into the state capital in Sacramento vowing to take down its special interests and blow up its bureaucracies," was ultimately derailed by the very veteran lawmakers he thought he would tame, notes Jim Christie of Reuters.
