Not to disagree, but what do you base this statement on? He seemed to get a lot of applause a the convention, but is this sentiment shared by the population at large? I mean, his popularity as an actor doesn’t necessarily carry over to politics, and his acting career, while by no means a shambles, has seen better days, and seems be mostly carried by the force of the memorable successes of his early career. The actor closest to what Arnold used to be is probably The Rock or Vin Diesel, and I doubt either would get many votes. Plus he’s of European origin, which doesn’t seem to be too popular on the right these days.
Personally, to be quite frank, I have a vague dislike Arnold. Not for his politics, but for his movies. Especially his attempts at comedy. I’m not American, though, and pursuing this line of argument will probably land this thread in the middle of Café Society.
He left hollywood as probably its biggest star (or in the top two or three, anyway). He’s the most popular politician in California since the 1970’s, and his approval ratings across the country are even higher. He’s respected by both parties, and has huge name recognition. Remember, there are a lot of apathetic folks out there who barely know who people like John McCain are. But everyone knows Arnold.
In fact, I woudn’t be surprised if he was the most well-known human on the planet. He is a huge star in Europe and Asia as well. Austria has issued stamps with his likeness on them.
And listening to the commentary around the convention, it’s clear that everyone expected Arnold to be by far the biggest draw other than Bush himself (and maybe even including Bush).
Please say if you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of these people --
or if you have never heard of them.
Favorable Unfavorable Never Heard Of No Opinion (F/U Ratio)
George W. Bush 54 44 0 2 1.23
John Kerry 52 40 1 7 1.30
Dick Cheney 44 45 2 9 0.98
John Edwards 52 28 4 16 1.86
John McCain 55 19 9 17 2.89
Laura Bush 63 20 4 13 3.15
Arnold Schwarzenegger 56 27 1 16 2.07
Democratic Party 54 36 1 9 1.50
Republican Party 50 41 1 8 1.22
Note that this list doesn’t include some other notables, such as Bill Clinton and Colin Powell. However, McCain and Schwarzenegger are virtually tied for the greatest number of people who view them favorably (if you ignore Mrs. Bush as not really being a politician), but McCain has fewer people viewing him unfavorably.
I included the Demosratic and Republican parties as a whole as a sanity check: one would expect (at least, I would expect), for example, Kerry and the Dems to poll very similarly, as they do. Although there’s always that wacky 1% who’ve never heard of the Democratic party.
Hard data is always welcome in any serious debate. Based on the above, it would seem that a candidate can’t have a favorability that is significantly higher that that of his party, although it’s very possible to be a lot less impopular than the party. Of, course, to a certain extent, the politicians are the party. The data also seems to confirm what people have been saying about McCain above.
As an aside, and without any illusions about the originality of the thought, what would happen if you had an electoral system where you could vote for one candidate, and against another? The winner would be the some function of the two, such as the one with the highest number of favorable votes when the unfavorable had been deducted.
Doubtlessly, this proposition already has a name and has been dismissed by political philosophers for millenia.
I doubt you have been able to miss the avalance of, frankly, rather silly and harmful nonsense about “old Europe”, the perfidious French, the Germans (a nation of weasels, appearantly) and the other effete and untrustworthy occupants of our continent, coming from the pens of (mostly) right-wing pundits ever since the start of the buildup to the Iraq war.
I wish I could say that “Euroweenie” was just a charming term for an Old World hot dog (served with a side order of “Freedom Fries”), but I first read the word in the National Republic, appearantly without any irony whatsoever. I wish I could have missed it too, but there was really little chance for that.
Well, I’d better stop myself right there, or this will turn into a rant, which was hardly the idea and could get us a one-way ticket to the Pit.
Yeah, I know, the title should have been "the most popular politician in America… but I must say, if Leno or Letterman emigrated and ran for public office in my country, I’d vote for them right away! Actually, I’d much rather have a comedian as chief executive than an action film actor or a wrestler. But then I’m more of a comedy kind of guy.
In most of Europe, the typical situation is that politicians, especially at higher levels, have been just that all their lives and have often had no other job (like our prime minister). Which is a crying shame. It’s a side-effect of the prevailing multi-party political situation here, which favors organization men to individualists. That’s an area where I think the American political system is better: people with experience from actual life are put in office.
I would happily vote for Steven Tyler to compose something a bit more lively to replace the rather stale piece of 19th century provincialism that serves as Sweden’s national anthem. But then, I love my country.
Well, to judge from the figures submitted above, Laura Bush should be running for president, but if we’re going to throw it open to comedians, my vote goes to Bill Cosby.
RR
