California voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978. At the same time, a champion bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger was becoming a movie star. Over the past quarter century, the twin arts of direct democracy (through ballot initiatives designed to push the public to the polls on election day) and blockbuster moviemaking (through movies designed to push the public to the theaters on opening weekend) grew up together, at home in California. With the state's recall election in 2003, direct democracy and blockbuster movies officially merged. The result: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In The People's Machine, political reporter Joe Mathews, who covered Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial campaign for the Los Angeles Times and who has subsequently broken many front page stories about him, traces the roots of both movie and political populism, how Schwarzenegger used these twin forces to win election and, especially, how he has used them to govern. "Let the people decide," said Governor Schwarzenegger after his inauguration. The People's Machine, through remarkable access and whip-smart analysis—there is news in this book—reports on whether this system of governing proves blessing, curse, or mess, and on the remarkable Austrian bodybuilder, movie star, and political man with the nerve to carry it out.
Joe Mathews, a fourth-generation Californian, writes about his home state and its politics, media, labor, and real estate as the Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan think tank. He is co-author, with Mark Paul, of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (University of California Press, 2010). His previous book was The People's Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy (PublicAffairs, 2006), an account of Governor Schwarzenegger's first term and his use of ballot measures as governing tools.
Joe serves as a contributing writer at the Los Angeles Times, as lead blogger at NBC's California site Prop Zero, and as a contributor for The Daily Beast. His work appears in the New York Times, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, The American Prospect, Politico, the Scientific American, Los Angeles magazine, and Fox & Hounds Daily.
Before joining New America, he was a reporter for eight years at the Los Angeles Times, where he covered state and presidential politics, education, labor, and the city of Compton. Previously, he covered the Justice Department for The Wall Street Journal. He began his career in 1994 as a reporter on the city desk of the Baltimore Sun, where he wrote about urban issues and the environment. His coverage of a down-on-its-luck neighborhood of former slaughterhouses earned him the incomparable title, "Bard of Pigtown."
He also is co-president of the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy (www.2010globalforum.com) - a free, public meeting of academics, journalists, activists and other experts on initiative and referenda in San Francisco, July 30-Aug. 4.
