Sacramento — Many lessons flow from Tuesday's special flogging of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, most of them very old. But they're lessons that apparently must be relearned every generation or two.
* Lesson No. 1: If you're going to proclaim yourself to be "the people's governor" and embark on a crusade, you'd better be sure that the people are following you as support troops or you'll march right off a cliff.
Schwarzenegger tumbled over the edge with his "reform" agenda in flames. He can change directions and crawl back up. But it's not likely much of his package will survive, except for political redistricting, which Democratic legislative leaders have promised -- and did so again Wednesday -- to cede to independent citizens.
Let's reflect on some of these lessons based on the chronology of events starting from when he took office two years ago:
* Lesson No. 2: The time to make big changes is right after you're first elected, when you've got a public mandate and trust. Schwarzenegger, with bipartisan support, sold voters on a $15-billion deficit reduction bond and a minor balanced-budget requirement. Big borrowing, little spending control. That was the moment to have negotiated a real spending cap -- a moderate version of the rejected Proposition 76 -- and sell it to voters.
* Lesson No. 3: Don't make deals you can't keep. The new governor promised schools money that he couldn't deliver a year later, turning former allies into dangerous enemies.
* Lesson No. 4: Don't mess with schools -- whether it's breaking your word or trying to cut back on funding guarantees. Of Schwarzenegger's four measures Tuesday, Prop. 76 suffered the worst drubbing. Education has become a third rail of California politics, like Proposition 13's property tax cuts.
* Lesson No. 5: Every politician is human, vulnerable to the natural laws of political gravity. Policy usually outpoints personality. A good salesman can be ruined -- a popular politician sent into a free-fall -- by a bad product. The governor's policy products were boring to most voters, and incendiary for a crucial number. Schwarzenegger and his strategists mistakenly believed he could sell anything.
"It was a lethal combo: his arrogance and inexperience," says Ray McNally, a Republican strategist and consultant for the prison guards union, who with his partner Richard Temple created some of the most devastating anti-Schwarzenegger TV ads. "He didn't know a good idea from a bad idea....
