His departure will be a far cry from those early heady days in office when he mocked his opponents in the legislature in Sacramento as “girly men”. That was before he was too became bogged down in the political gridlock that has long plagued the state.
To be sure, Mr Schwarzenegger tried to force through economic and political reforms that could have done much to ameliorate what was to come. But it was the trade unions and those “girly men”, undazzled and unfazed, who out-muscled the ultimate macho man as his initiatives were defeated at the ballot box.
He had promised an electorate eager for a change that he was an outsider who would bring his all-action persona to force results.
Those expectations would have been unreasonably high, even at the best of times. And so the disappointment of that electorate with his failure to deliver results has been all the greater.
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