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Return of the Terminator
Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about T3, politics and his desire to give something back to America.
Paul Chutkow
From the Print Edition:
Arnold Schwarzenegger, July/Aug 03
(continued from page 4)
"What is relevant is that if you're a leader, you have to create action. You have to be proactive rather than reactive. You have to plan ahead: Plan ahead with the energy crisis. Plan ahead with the water crisis. Plan ahead with state security and national security. There are lots of problems and challenges that cannot be predicted from one day to the next. Some take 10, 15 years to materialize. You know what it takes to redo the freeways and highways? It takes 10 to 20 years. And then there's the airports. LAX is overbooked. San Francisco is overbooked. They're exhausted. How can we expect to have an increase in imports and exports from overseas when all the airports are overbooked? We have to listen to those signals and say, 'OK, let's get working on it!' That's what action is about. And that's what people admire in action heroes in the movies."
In Arnold's mind, success in the movies and success in politics come down to the very same thing: heroes. Arnold has many personal heroes, from many different backgrounds and ideologies -- Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mother Teresa, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Muhammad Ali. But to Arnold, they all have one thing in common: "A lot of people talk, but to be out there in the trenches, to roll up your sleeves, to create opportunities and really make a difference, I think that's where it's at."
Photo by Nigel Perry
Paul Chutkow is the author of Depardieu, a biography of the French actor Gérard Depardieu, and co-author of Harvests of Joy, the autobiography of Robert Mondavi.
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