If the Terminator doesn’t morph into the Great Communicator, it won’t be for lack of trying. “They both have a very optimistic, almost idealized view of America,” says Landon Parvin, a former Reagan aide recruited to help Schwarzenegger. And Schwarzenegger, say his advisers, shares Reagan’s free-market, small-government philosophy. But he is determined to avoid following in Reagan’s tax-raising footsteps; instead, he’ll try to persuade voters to allow him to borrow $20 billion to close California’s exploding deficit.
And Schwarzenegger won’t find any advice in the Reagan playbook for dealing with personal scandal. Sacramento is still buzzing over a possible investigation into campaign allegations that Schwarzenegger sexually harassed women during his Hollywood years. His chief defender in that department will be his wife, Maria Shriver, who returns to work at NBC this week. Maybe the new First Couple will end up known as the Twin Communicators.
