August 18, 2003

COLUMBUS: This California race has barely started and it looks to be coming down to a dog fight between Arnold, Cruz and the Anti-Bunk candidate. Some lawyers are working to delay the election so the other folks can catch up and get their votes counted. But they could delay it to November 2004 and it won’t change anything. Like a good race horse, I’ll just lay in behind those two, then on election day I’ll pull ahead to win by a nose.

Of course Gray Davis is out there reminding everyone he is still Governor. He’s about the only who thinks that position still carries some clout. Everybody else knows it’s only the candidates who have clout.

President Clinton is advising Governor Davis. At least that’s what he says. It may be just an excuse for him to come to California and confer with that other candidate, Mary Carey.

Arnold signed on his first adviser, Mr. Warren Buffett. You can’t get much better than Warren if you want to increase your portfolio. But for increasing your vote total, he may not be the best choice. In his first speech on behalf of Arnold, Mr. Buffett advised Californians to take three steps to prosperity: buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up to around a million dollars, vote to raise the real estate tax by $38 Billion, and then move to Omaha.

He said, “I own a $250,000 house in Omaha where my property taxes went up $2000 last year, and a $5,000,000 house in California where my taxes went up only $20, and that isn’t enough.” Then he kinda dropped a hint about the root of the problems Californians face. “One house overlooks the Pacific, and the other overlooks Nebraska. Other than that, and the price tag, they’re identical.”

And Arnold is getting advise from President Bush but no one can prove it. All diplomatic messages between them are routed through Switzerland.

Some folks figure he is also advised by the Kennedys but there is no proof of that either because it is conducted in the bedroom, and the Supreme Court says we can’t ask about anything transpiring in a bedroom.

It looks like I’ve got to dig up some advisers. In 1928 I said, “Henry Ford would be my Secretary of the Treasury. Ford could take our little dab of money that our Treasury has, and let him handle it a little while and he would have us out of the Red by Christmas.” So I figure I’ll follow the same line today and pick Henry’s grandson, William. If he can drag Ford cars back up where they were when they had the Model T, I know he can pull off the same miracle for California.

Arnold has George W. advising him, but the one person I would really like to sign, and the one who could practically guarantee victory for the Anti-Bunks, is Barbara Bush. She will likely have to decline, so I may ask Ross Perot. Maybe he’ll draw me up some charts.

Here’s more Semi-Historic quotes from Will Rogers: Only the names have been changed. (Life magazine, 1928)

Mr. Arnold Swartzenegger, I kinder hate to send you this challenge, for you are a good fellow and I think a lot of you, but it just looks like the only way we can get the “Issues” of the day straightened out is on the Platform in a Joint debate. You know the American custom is when you can’t beat a man at anything why the last straw is to Debate him.

There is just hundreds of candidates I wouldn’t waste a Debate on, but in the natural course of events it looks like I am going to have to take you and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante on before the votes are in the can this fall. [Cruz Bust-a-mante is not to be confused with that other candidate, Mary Carey Bust-a-plenty.]

So I thought I would start in with you and see how I made out, and if I had any luck against you why then I would take on Cruz.

Now you are a man, and so is Cruz, that has got by without a lot of Bunk, and the debate might be that you both ought, by rights, to be in my Party, “The Anti-Bunks.” But what the debate could be, is that you both have let yourself be hitched to a Platform that is nothing but Bunk.

As a man is known by the company he keeps, I will show you that now that you have entered Politics you will be mixed up with more Bunk than you ever thought existed.

You may say the Issue is “Prosperity.” You will try and show that we are prosperous because we HAVE MORE. I will show where we are NOT prosperous because we haven’t PAID for it YET.

They tell me that Lincoln and Douglas had a debate one time, and they say Douglas won it, so even if I lose and just become as well known as Lincoln why it won’t be so bad.

Tune in next week for the Rogers-Bustamante debate.