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Arnold Schwarzenegger | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Only-in-America Capitalist Charm By ANDREW SULLIVAN
If you do not understand Schwarzenegger's success, it's worth renting the 1977 film Pumping Iron, which featured his political and human skills in the body building subculture. He outpsyched his opponents as well as out trained them. He did a deeply American thing: he took a bohemian subculture and infused it with the hard edged, competitive ethos of capitalism. He has played the popular culture with unerring skill ever since. He took Republican politics, married it to the glamour of the Kennedys and then exported that hybrid to California. This year he managed to rally the Republican base with an order to stop gay marriages in San Francisco while deftly saying on The Tonight Show that he had no problem with gays marrying. Think of any other Republican who could do these things, and you begin to understand the depth of Arnold's talent. He has become a crucial element in making the g.o.p. seem even faintly appealing to social liberals and moderates, and represents the lingering Cheshire smile of Reagan Republicanism in the new century: the optimism, the inclusiveness. Above all: the charm.
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FROM THE APRIL 26, 2004 ISSUE OF TIME MAGAZINE; POSTED SUNDAY, APRIL 18, 2004
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