Was Arnold a good governor?

12 comments

1. I’d say it was mixed. He had a pretty good environmental policy, but really botched the handling of the budget, especially in 2008. This led to furloughs and even layoffs for a lot of government employees.

2. He was basically well liked and he got kudos for this and that thing, like some environmental work and diversifying the judiciary… but he left a GIGANTIC budget deficit behind which Jerry Brown amazingly managed to turn back into a surplus. Like the state went from $30 billion in the hole to $30 billion in surplus. It’s not like Arnold is personally responsible but it’s not a great look – he didn’t steer through the recession effectively.

3. No, he meant well but couldn’t build anything resembling a governing coalition with legislature and the state nearly went bankrupt under his tenure.

   The general consensus among Californians is that Jerry Brown’s return to office was like a grown up coming back from vacation and cleaning up the mess the kids made.

4. No he was terrible. Just known for fame but sucked at politics

5. Just one dude’s opinion, but I’d say he started off laughably bad. He was very obviously completely unprepared for the job, and I’ll go so far as to say incompetent.

   In my imagination at least, there was some realization he had after his first year that there’s a big difference between pretending to know how to do something (i.e acting) and actually doing it.

   But to his legit credit, he was very clearly good at learning from his mistakes, undoubtedly serious about doing his best … and gotv pretty close to being legit good at governing towards the end.

   I wouldn’t say he was ever a great governor, but he was at least putting in an honest effort to be constantly learning and improving, which is way more than I can say for most politicians.

6. Californian here. I don’t think he was great, but I felt he did well considering the was Republican, because that aside, he had some forward-thinking views.

   Personally I felt that it was a good thing for Californians to have had a very Democrat-ish Republican governor, immediately followed by a very Republican-ish Democratic governor (Jerry Brown, who despite being decidedly on the left side of things, came off as being more fiscally conservative than other Democratic politicians).

7. Yes

8. He had good ideas but couldn’t get them through. The Democrats were obstructionists because of the “R” next to his name.

   How good were the ideas?

   Brown enacted almost all of them.

9. I was very young when the Governator (as we called him) was governor, but according to my father, he was a bit of a mixed bag. He did some good things, specifically with regards to environmental policy, but his tax policies nearly bankrupted the state.

10. Depends on who you ask. Most people’s memories of his term will be of the end of it, which lined up with the Great Recession. He left office in January of 2011 when California was still reeling. Our tax system is overly reliant on sales and income taxes, because Prop. 13 limits property taxes. So when a global recession wipes out the stock market and people’s jobs, California’s revenues plummet and property taxes don’t provide a stable source of revenue as a backup. So the state was broke and slashing programs and furloughing state workers. It left a bad memory in people’s minds of his final time in office.

    That said, he signed the most aggressive greenhouse gas reduction law at the time (AB 32).

    He also was the primary champion of two political reforms that the voters approved, one that eliminated party primaries for state and local offices, and one that eliminated gerrymandering by handing the power of drawing districts over to an independent commission.

    He was also the only Republican governor in the country to embrace the Affordable Care Act and direct his administration to implement it immediately. Every other Republican governor was suing the White House over it. He also partnered with former president Clinton and the FDIC go get banks to relax some of their requirements for opening a checking or savings account, to encourage more low income people into the legitimate banking system and away from payday lenders.

11. He’s a great guy with good intentions, but he just wasn’t that great of a governor. I think that’s mostly due to lack of experience. It happens a lot when celebrities enter politics and government.

    Jerry Brown, who followed him, had tons of experience. He helped turn the state around. We now have surpluses thanks to policies he helped enact.

12. Not sure, but his signature is on my diploma so I’m glad he was our governator at the time