One of the California political personalities I haven't really had much time to ponder is former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (it seems odd, even now, to type that, like "Space Shuttle Commander Lindsay Lohan," or "New York Yankees First Baseman Justin Bieber.")

Of course, he's out of office and all, and we have Gov. Jerry Brown, again. This fortuitous circumstance makes my life worth living, but it got me to thinking about how Brown got to be governor, versus how Schwarzenegger got to be governor. Brown took one of the traditional routes to California political success, which was to be born into a powerful political family. Schwarzenegger took another traditional route to California political success, which was to be a movie star. 

Now, if you think about it, it's rather astounding that California hasn't had more movie star candidates. Sheila Kuehl was a very successful California state legislator, but she played Dobie Gillis's sister in a show called The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, a long-lost TV show from 1960 or so. So she doesn't qualify as a movie star, really. There was former U.S. Sen. George Murphy, who was a song and dance man in Hollywood who went on to become a song and dance man of another kind in Washington, D.C.. I'm blanking on any other real movie stars who were California electeds.

Oh, and that Reagan fellow.

This made me wonder, in a parallel universe prior to becoming governor, what if a movie star Jerry Brown had a movie career tracking precisely like Arnold Schwarzenegger's, and what those movies might have been? 

JERRY BROWN FILMOGRAPHY. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Pumping Irony (1977)

Conan the Seminarian (1982)

The Term Limiter (1984)

The Running and Running and Running and Running and Running Man (1987)

Gray Heat (1988)

Kindergarten Party Chairman (1990)

Term Limiter 2: Judge Rose Bird Days (1991)

Last Aristotle Hero (1993)

True Lies, Which is a Contradiction and Might Be Worth Pondering as A Teleological Concept (1994)

Term Limiter 3: Rise of the High Speed Trains (2003)

Around the World in 80 Days in a High Speed Train Again Because They're Cool (2004)

Next week: how Attorney General Schwarzenegger was able to come back out of nowhere and take over the governorship.