April 30, 2008
Schwarzenegger the global citizen
I have never seen Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, in person so I took the opportunity to do so this lunchtime at the Milken Institute Global Conference. I have to say that I was impressed.
Mr Schwarzenegger was talking about his push to build infrastructure such as roads, rail links and schools in California. He has also linked up with Ed Rendell, governor of Pennsylvania, and Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York to spread that message across the US.
I expected him to be amusing and unusual but he surprised me with his fluency in talking about the topic and his charm. Maybe it helped that he was in a room full of business people (and financiers with an interest in the subject) who were on his side.
I also liked his lack of tact. At one point, eulogising about why his state was “the greatest place in the world” he compared it to other states. “People are not dying to go to Iowa,” he said. I can only imagine the apology he will have to make for that.
Nor was he afraid to take a poke at politicians in Sacramento, the state capital, who have not travelled to other countries and have no notion of how things are done in China or France. He talked about going on French high-speed trains and marvelling at the experience.
Some of them come from these little towns and they do not have the vision of putting a highway on top of a highway. They look at me and say ‘Well we don’t have those in my town.’ So I like them to travel around.
Underneath this, of course, he was making a serious point. A lot of US infrastructure is antiquated and events such as the collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis and the failure of the levees in New Orleans is starting to focus attention on the topic.
Meanwhile, other countries have used public-private partnerships to rebuild infrastructure. Mr Schwarzenegger talked approving of what the Canadian province of British Columbia has done while Michael Milken cited the example of the UK.
Listening in the room were a lot of financiers and bankers who would like US states and cities to finance big infrastructure projects in the same way. Mr Schwarzenegger got warmly applauded.
