Todd Harris, who is a campaign spokesman for the Schwarzenegger initiative committee, has spent most of the year playing the role originated by Kevin Bacon in the closing minutes of "Animal House". As 
John Belushi and his fellow Deltas wreaked havoc on their school’s homecoming parade and destroyed a small town, Bacon played a young pledge whose responsibility was traffic and crowd control for the parade. The lasting image of Bacon’s first film role is him jumping up and down , frantically repeating the phrase "Remain calm. All is well", even as chaos descended around him.
After the governor and his opponents completed their participation in last night’s campaign forum in Walnut Creek, media coverage shows that Harris was on message, proclaiming that the evening had been a great success for Schwarzenegger. After months of being forced to attempt to spin the unspinnable, Harris was right. His boss won hands down.
Before the event had even concluded, armchair analysts were complaining that "nothing new" had happened. That’s only half right. Neither Schwarzenegger or his foes did much more than repeat the statements they’ve been making for the past several weeks. But they repeated those statements to a much larger audience than either side had been able to reach to this point in the campaign. Political freaks like me and both my loyal readers could probably have recited most of the evening’s dialogue along with the speakers. But a live television audience, multiplied many times by those seeing news coverage of the event, were hearing most of this for the first time.
Schwarzenegger’s a showman and he plays to an audience better than most professional entertainers. Last night, he was playing a different game than his opponents, connecting with viewers in a way that a state senator or union head could only dream of. Because the event was arranged by a media organization rather than his own campaign, and because his opponents were invited to attend as well, there was a much higher level of interest than existed for his campaign’s own events. A few weeks ago, I wrote that the Schwarzenegger campaign seemed to lack urgency. Breaking their boss out of the bubble last night was a smart step in the right direction.
But it’s only a step, and the clock is running. With two weeks left before election day, Schwarzenegger’s advisors have wisely scheduled him to participate in similar venues in other parts of the state. But unless his own polls have all four of his ballot initiatives running safely ahead ("Remain Calm: all is well"), it’s time to take one more aggressive step to take advantage of Arnold’s natural skills.
So get in the ring with the opposition. If back-to-back Q&A sessions attracted this much attention, imagine what a toe-to-toe confrontation would bring. In a traditional debate setting, Schwarzenegger would have looked even better last night. Don Perata would have looked even more like an elderly political lifer gamely defending the status quo, if such a thing was possible. Some of the post-event spin suggested that the governor’s people were concerned that he might be irritated by the presence of Rose Ann Demoro, the representative of the nurse’s union who appeared to give Perata some real world, working person cover. But Arnold’s better than that, and playing it safe is still not the answer.
If a Schwarzenegger-Perate debate would have been an even bigger win, imagine what would happen if the governor shared the stage with Cruz Bustamante in Fresno at the next forum. (Better yet, don’t imagine. Just watch old footage of the recall campaign.) Arnold proved last night that neither Perata, Bustamante, or Fabian Nunez would be able to hold their own in a one-on-one debate. Which is the best reason to have them.