What is not growing is dying


After a three-day respite from constant newswire updates, I came back home last night and — of course — pored over a long weekend's worth of Google news alerts and other folks' blog entries.

And I noticed that very little has changed over the last week.

The "news" is still that Schwarzenegger is slipping, but the evidence is getting older by the day: The "recent" polls are getting less recent. Voters are still being described as disliking Governor Arnold for this policies, and as losing faith in him for his flubs, but the policy missteps and gaffes in question are growing a bit long in the tooth.

The only reason I mention this is that when and if this situation turns around and Arnold is ascendant once again, I fear that it will start like this: A period of calm after a storm, when nothing is really happening, and the media are just repeating their own stories from a week ago...while the ever-resilient voters slip into the forgetfulness and forgiveness...and all of a sudden we see the headline:

He's Back

Our much-touted "organized opposition" needs to make every effort to keep controlling the media cycle, or the windfall/perfect storm of Arnold's long string of fuck-ups will rapidly become old news.

UPDATE: I wrote the above before I saw these headlines, fresh from the newswires today:

Petitions in hand, Schwarzenegger may be back in the driver's seat (AP)
Arnold may be down, but he's not out (L.A. Daily News)

Posted: Mon - May 9, 2005 at 08:03 AM   | Category:     |   |   | |


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