Special Episode: The Recall

Arnold's Pump Club

Health & Fitness, Fitness

4.9 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2023

⏱️ 134 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From Arnold: This is a reminder to celebrate. Because 20 years ago, I was sworn in for the first time. I held my hand in the air and took the oath in front of the cameras, but I didn’t do anything alone. Our great environmental laws, our political reforms to take power from the politicians and give it back to the people, our historic infrastructure investment — I could go on and on.

Those successes were not mine alone. They were a team effort. My time as Governor was a success AND a joy because of them. So tomorrow, I am not just celebrating my 20th anniversary of becoming Governor; I am celebrating them. We’ll have drinks and mariachi, remember the good old days, and connect. We changed the state for the better and had a good time doing it. That’s worth celebrating.

One of the reporters who covered me, Joe Mathews, wrote a history of the Recall election. The great voice actor Edoardo Ballerini narrated it. It’s basically a 2-hour audiobook. It won’t be for all of you, but I knew some of you might like it. So, I’m sharing it here as a bonus episode.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The California Recall, its first 20 years, written by Joe Matthews, narrated by Eduardo
0:11.3	Ballerini.
0:13.9	In memory of Bonnie Reese, Julie Soderland, George Gorton, Alan Zerrmberg, and many other
0:18.7	Californians who shared the recall ride.
0:23.9	Introduction. Anything is possible, even the impossible. That is the paradox of our times and our
0:33.1	politics. In California, in the US, and in democratic societies around the globe,
0:39.6	we the people talk often about how hard it is to get anything done. We talk about all the
0:44.5	limits and constraints. We express frustration with political gridlock. We say that all politicians
0:50.8	are hopeless partisans and must appeal to their base. We recite the wisdom that democratic
0:55.9	governance is about slow incremental change. We offer nostalgia for the new deal and the post-war
1:02.8	era when big things happened fast. We rule how hard it is to get our disengaged citizenry to
1:09.0	pay attention to politics and government. But if that is true, what explains the recall?
1:16.1	And all that has happened since. How do we explain a political earthquake that shook
1:21.2	not just California, but made news in every country on earth? How can we explain a historic event?
1:28.7	The sudden replacement of the second most powerful elected official in the United States,
1:33.3	the most powerful country on earth? How can we account for the one-of-a-kind governor,
1:38.7	a movie star, muscle man, immigrant, who had never been elected to high office before,
1:43.8	and hasn't been elected since? How can we wrap our heads around a governorship of
1:48.4	so much ambition that it seemed to cram 25 years of plans and dreams into just seven years?
1:55.6	How can we begin to understand its ongoing impact by throwing away our conventional wisdom
2:02.2	and looking squarely at the recall again? If we do, we might see that we are wrong about politics,
2:09.3	about government, and about ourselves. The recall was a big thing that did get done,
	...

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