This week

In the most natural transition since Neil Kinnock starred in a Tracy Ullman video, California gubernatorial hopeful Arnold Schwarzenegger made his debut in the Wall Street Journal this week. "I have often said that the two people who have most profoundly impacted my thinking on economics are Milton Friedman and Adam Smith," he began. Not as often as he's said "I'll be back", surely?

Ever since the Running Man announced last month he would indeed be running, he has been much given to quoting lines from his movies in speeches (though sadly never Total Recall's "Please send me to Mars"). In fact, along with "I'll be back", in "Hasta La Vista, Governor!" Arnie appears to have stumbled upon the Blairite fantasy - a witless soundbite that fits every possible curve ball.

But back to the WSJ, where Arthur Laffer is the next brainiac cited in Arnold's richly textured op-ed piece. After all, if Apocalypse Now star Martin Sheen can convince as Nobel economics prize-winning president Jed Bartlet in the West Wing, why shouldn't the star of Eraser be in with a shout?

Hard to say, but it's almost poignant that even the more outlandish of Arnie's films require a lesser suspension of disbelief than his asking us to believe he's the author of this. Possibly they let him get one line away.

"This endless litany of taxing schemes," a paragraph reads, "reminds me of the androids that I fight in the Terminator movies, which I keep shooting dead, but keep coming back to life."

Aha. The fact that he only kills two androids in the entire series, neither of which does a Lazarus, is too obvious to pull him up on. But should we bother being concerned about him, this Mr Universe unable to craft a half-decent analogy? Arguably, it could be worse. California's only the world's fifth largest economy. It's not as if it's Japan or anything.

More worrying, perhaps, is that talking to people in New York last week I found even intelligent Republicans playing up his socially liberal agenda, his energy, the alleged brains behind him - pretty much everything other than the fact he starred in Kindergarten Cop.

Day by day the urge to counter any of these arguments by making like the kid in the Emperor's New Clothes who shouts "but he's naked!" or rather "but he's profoundly stupid!" gets stifled. Reagan was an actor and he was a big success, they claim. It already feels oddly futile to point out that compared to Arnie, Reagan had the mind of John Maynard Keynes.

Of course, no one's suggesting he's the only dumb politico. Maybe what's more unavoidably objectionable is how obvious he makes it. Last week he shunned yet more public debates for an appearance on showbiz chum Oprah Winfrey's show. Seated next to his increasingly haunted looking Kennedy-born wife who, bless her, appears to be dying a thousand deaths every time he opens his preposterous trap, Arnold gave a measured defence of the fact that he'd given interviews in praise of gang-banging in the past.

"Sure!" he yelped at the despicably complicit Ma Winfrey. "But that was when I was saying stuff like 'a pump is better than coming!' "

But then, what can you expect from a chap who announced his candidacy on Jay Leno's chat show - the very chap who once declared politics is showbiz for ugly people. Whether Jay wishes to revise that definition in light of these recent advances isn't clear.

But either way, this week's Californian polls show observers are now less likely to be asking "Tell me this is a joke?" than "Who's going to take over the Terminator gig?"