Schwarzenegger is clearly annoyed as he asked that the president not come until after the election because he did not want to compete for cash.

My guess is he's going to stay away from anointing candidates, having been burned once. He's not stupid. If he wants to run for the center, he can't embrace a set of candidates against the conservative wing or one that comes from the conservative wing. That's politically dicey whichever way he goes.

Their polling must be telling them that he's a drag on his own initiative. How have the mighty fallen.

I think it's flat-out a referendum on Arnold and his agenda. I don't think there's any way around that. He's made it so by his own rhetoric and his own positioning.

Just because he's declaring now doesn't mean he has to run. Look what happened (in the recall campaign) when everybody thought he wasn't going to run and he decided on the Leno show he was.

He's now not seen as the same Schwarzenegger who won the recall (election) and was so successful last year. He is either seen as a partisan, or insensitive about ordinary people.