About those election promises

摘要

So far, so satisfyingly good for Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Asia-bound George Bush stopped off last week in California to call the state's Republican governor-elect "a fine and strong leader"; the state's Democratic attorney-general, Bill Lockyer, has revealed that, like more than 4m other Californians, he too voted for the movie star on October 7th; and there is universal praise for the broad-based team chosen by Mr Schwarzenegger to manage the transition of power in Sacramento. Not bad for a political novice within days of winning his first-ever election. The difficulty is to prolong the honeymoon. Mr Schwarzenegger will take over from the hapless Gray Davis by the end of November. At some point in December he will have to send his draft budget for 2004-05 to the printers, so that he can present it to the legislature in Sacramento by January 10th―and getting that document to make both arithmetical and political sense will surely tax even the Guberna-tor's powers of positive thinking.