POLL STARS.(Arnod Schwarzenegger and other movie actors as politicians)(The Talk of the Town)

In his 1994 film "True Lies," Arnold Schwarzenegger played an agent so secret that even his wife was kept in the dark. She saw him as a drudge in a raincoat, unaware that he was summoned to save the nation on a weekly basis. How times change. At the start of this summer, Arnold was looking forward to nothing more arduous than the promotion of "Terminator 3." Little did he suspect that plans were afoot for his new career--a career so secret that he himself knew nothing about it. Only his wife, code-named "Maria," was in on the plot. How else can one account for the look of bewilderment that gripped Schwarzenegger, the newly elected governor of California, on October 7th, causing his tan features, barely mobile at the best of times, to freeze into a rictus of hilarity? He could cope with no longer being an Austrian. He had recovered from the passing of his bodybuilder's crown to other men molded from cuts of glazed ham. As for his achievements as an actor, those, too, tragically, would pass. In his victor's eyes, however, you saw the dawning horror: Oh Gott. I'm in pollydigs.

Schwarzenegger, who had previously campaigned for nothing more controversial than fitness for all, ran as a Republican, although, given his position on gay marriage and gun control, he would not be recognized as such by the more barnacled veterans of the G.O.P. To confuse the issue, he accepted the governorship while standing on a Democratic platform--that is to say, a platform filled with Democrats. "As a matter of fact, all the people behind me are the Shrivers," he told the crowd, sounding less like a man who is milking his connection to J.F.K. and more like a man who has married into the Munsters. This Arnoldian fondness for the bipartisan means reaching out to the California legislatures--"I extend my hand to them," he said, as if giving a master class in the role of Frankenstein's monster--and the state is itching to discover whether Schwarzenegger will make good on his warmest election promise. Everybody in the state, he had announced back on August 7th, would, under his governance, have "a fantastic job." Lavatory cleaners of Los Angeles! Could you test-drive Ferraris for a living? And you there, with no health insurance, mending that road: didn't you know that the taste controllers at Michelob are hiring now?

Fantastic or otherwise, the coming year crackles with interest, and there would be little surprise if other monarchs of the movie industry, emboldened by the California recall, were to make the principled ...