Rather than just hoping that revelations about past drug use or sexual exploits will no longer be seen as relevant, why not go further and hope that this sort of digging into a candidate's past will cease. If it doesn't, then it is a sure thing that in the future many people worth considering for public office will be deterred from running, and as a result mediocrity will continue to rule.

Well, wait a minute. Bustamente is not distancing himself from MECHA *today,* while Arnold is not (to my knowledge) presently engaged in orgies. On the other hand, as I have written on my blog, Bustamente has come up with the first (and so far only) fresh idea of the campaign.

There will never be a time when a political candidate's past sex life and drug use is of no interest to the general public, and hence the media. How much interest will depend on the mores of the times, the personality of the candidate and his values.

Arnold never claims continence or other conservative values. Because conservatives hold to higher standards in personal behavior, they will always be more vulnerable to attack. It's hard for a liberal to be attacked as a hypocrite for his personal sexual behavior because modern day liberalism holds to few if any standards in this area outside of legality.

Hey Luke, what about lying? Is that Ok with Republicans? From a 1988 interview with Playboy:

PLAYBOY: What about other drugs; have you done them?
SCHWARZENEGGER: Never in my entire life. When I came to America, someone gave me a drug like speed. He told me it would make me sharper and I'd lose weight. But I lost muscle tone. It was like having a hard-on that's not hard, that is half limp. I don't like that. I like to feel fully pumped. I threw the pills away. Nor has
anyone so much as smoked a joint when I was there. Or sniffed coke. Or taken any drugs. In Hollywood, I have never seen any drugs on the set or anywhere. It could be because people know me well enough to know that I don't want anything like that. I'm around actors all the time--and I've worked with them in Mexico, on jungle locations where you'd think it might happen just to pass the time--and I've never seen it.

Of course lying undercuts credibility, Arnold's or anyone's. But not all lying is alike. Some is more serious than others.

I woke up this morning to a long segment on GMA about Arnold's '77 Oui interview....complete with analysis from Stephanopoulos, etc. I look forward to a similarly in-depth piece next week on Bustamante's connection with MEChA. Alas, I think I'll be waiting awhile....

As a conservative (McClintock supporter) I am turned off by Arnold's past. And the media is right to examine things like the reaction of family-values Republicans to a candidate who particpated in orgies and smoked weed. But to say his past sexual behavior has the same nexus to his ability to govern as Cruz's embrace of the Hispanic KKK is ridiculous.

I'm sure all the liberals who defended Clinton's sexual misdeeds (while he was married!) by saying it had no connection to HIS ability to govern would agree. Wouldn't they?? Shouldn't they??

Let's remember what MEChA's motto is - "for the race, everything. For those outside the race, nothing." Cruz reiterated his support for this group yesterday. This from a man who seeks to govern a multi-racial, multi-ethnic state.

Even if, as his supporters say, Arnie should be cut some slack because he didn't live his life with an eventual political career in mind, the candor of his interviews--even after he became a superstar--astound me.
Particularly because, if we're to believe Arnold's "American Dream" story, he has planned on becoming a political figure from the moment he set foot in this country.
Fine, he was still a cocky (pun intended) bodybuilder when he conducted that 1977 Oui interview. But what's he doing telling reporters in 1988 about how much he hates half-limp hard-ons? Yeeech.

Louis, when/where/what did Bustamundo say yesterday that was pro-Mecha???!

Hey, let me sound off here as one who likes Arnold a LOT better now that I've read the '77 interview. Hell, I'd vote for a gubernatorial candidate who was pro-group sex, hands-off to drug use and willing to go on the record that there's nothing wrong with homosexuality. Too bad he's probably busy trying to figure out how to distance himself as far as possible from this younger, more interesting Ahnold.

One thing I don't get is how it's "digging" to look up a published interview from a nationally distributed magazine. Digging would be paying off old friends, going through his trash, peeping through windows, etc. The public record, however, is exactly that, and for every candidate.

*I'm sure all the liberals who defended Clinton's sexual misdeeds (while he was married!) by saying it had no connection to HIS ability to govern would agree. Wouldn't they?? Shouldn't they??*

I am one of those liberals, and I would certainly agree. On the other hand, I used to be a moderate, and used to actually vote for Republicans on occasion, right up until 1997, until Republicans started probing Clinton's sex life. So now more am I moderate. Republicans tore the country apart, willfully, and to no good purpose; and they continue to tear it apart willfully ("You're either for us or against us" is, pathetically, the most memorable quote from 9/11). I can't be party to such a party. But I agree. Arnie's sex life will not for one minute bother me when I don't vote for him.

Ted,

Here's the link:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,95871,00.html

Joseph,

I just hope (but am not foolish enough to expect) that the democrats in this state agree with you. Anybody who has followed Gray Davis knows that when the chips are down on the campaign trail his attack machine is like no other. Just ask Dianne Feinstein, who Davis compared to convicted felon Leona Helmsley.

Louis

I'm with Mr. Ricey. Considering that Ahnuld was young, single, that the ah recipient of his and his friends favors was entirely willing, and that was almost 30 years ago, I really don't think any but the most conservative prudes will object. I agree the "lying" is a bigger problem, but even there, the quotes from the 1988 Playboy interview are ambiguous to say the least. In any case, its hard to blame Ahnuld for hedging on this with 4 kids, some of who are preteen.

Speaking of which, I definitely recall my own preteen years when, tho I'd never heard of MECHA, I'd certainly heard of Chicano power, and felt the pernicious effects this hate filled KKK like racist ideology had on me and my fellow "anglos", asians, and "wetbacks" in LA's schools, with nary a discouraging word from teachers, administrators, or the LAT. So, yeah, Ahnuld could have been miscagenatin and gangbanging 7 days a week for all I care. Bustamante, on the other hand, was exactly the type who fomented, and still foments, separatism and hatred between the races. Like Kaus, I've got a feeling the MECHA issue has legs if Ahnuld has the balls to exploit it. About damn time!

I'm voting for Huffington anyway, so this stuff about Gray or Cruz is lost on me. Arianna's sex life would be way more interesting to me anyway than Ahnold's. I keep wondering what motivated her to write that magnificent tear-down book about Picasso.

In the Playboy interview, Arnie says he's never done drugs in his life. He then goes on to explain the effects that drugs had on him. Weird.

>Hugh Hewitt, the pro-Arnold radio host, adds another partisan twist on his blog. He says anyone who cares what Arnold was doing in 1977 also has to care about Cruz Bustamante's radical college politics -- "one campaign, one standard," he says. If that's true, isn't the inverse true -- that conservatives hitting on Bustamante can't justify giving Schwarzenegger a pass?

If I were advising the Republicans, I would tell them not to worry about attacking Arnold's past. Most voters (Rep. and Dems) don't care about Arnold's sexlife 30 years ago anyway.

But Cruz Bustamante's past (and current) association with a racist organization like MEChA is not going to attract a lot of non-Latino voters.

"But Cruz Bustamante's past (and current) association with a racist organization like MEChA is not going to attract a lot of non-Latino voters."

It's not going to attract a lot of Latino voters either - most Latinos are middle-class middle of the road people who would be embarrassed to be associated with some radical nut group claiming to act in their name. Unless Bustamente can spin MEChA to make them sound like a harmless ethnic solidarity group.

You know, I'm a white guy who happened to major in Spanish at UCSB at the same time that MECHA was very active on campus, so I knew a lot of people who were directly involved with the group. There's a lot of things I found troubling about some of the positions the group espoused, but to equate them to the Klan is just ridiculous. Nobody ever burned a cross on someone's lawn or lynched a man because of Brown Power.

I can corroborate what Mr. Ricey says. I worked at L.A. City College from 1970-78 in very public/political positions. MeCha was quite active then. In fact, I worked with the campus adviser to it. It was like any other pressure group that attempted to advance its members' agenda. Not unlike the Young Americans for Freedom, for example, or the Young Republicans.

The difference was that MeCha, like most activist groups of the time, was little more than hot air. It couldn't, to borrow Lyndon Johnson' phrase, organize a two-car parade.

Anyone who would call the near-useless MeCha "a KKK" gets no credibility in my book.

MeCha may not be anywhere near as powerful or effective as the KKK of 80 years ago, but then neither is today's KKK. Neither organization appears to be directly fomenting violence in today's world, thankfully. However, they both base their existence on racial solidarity and separatism. The difference being that absent a well documented, life changing revelation and change of mind and associations, KKK membership is rightly seen as the kiss of death. MeCha membership, on the other hand, appears to be the key to the club among our rising class of Chicano pols. Apparently the one can't be taken seriously because of selective historical injustices and the fact that their racism is spoken in spanish and not english. Having attended public schools near LA City College during the time you worked there, Roger, I can say that while I hadn't even hear of MeCha, their pernicious influence was definitely felt by we "outsiders" in the form of "Chicano power". My experience as a 10-18 yo at the time, was that those, like yourself, in public, political positions, liked to prefer these problems did not exist.

Hugh Hewitt is a liar, even for a politician.

While shilling non-stop for Norm Coleman, which was his right, he never stopped pointing out what aliar Paul Welstone was for breaking his 2-term pledge. That's ok.

I asked about George Nethercutt, who was also elected on a term limit pledge, and whther he would criticize him. Hugh said that he had criticized Nethercutt.

Funny, but in the three years of listening to Hewitt's show, I have never even heard one criticism of Nethercutt.

I can hardly wait until Hewitt does what he does best--shill--in 2004 when Nethercutt runs against Patti Murry in the WA senate race.