For advice on how to dodge questions about his political future, Arnold has turned to Maria Shriver, who once told her Kennedy kin: "Don't look at [Arnold] as a Republican, look at him as the man I love. And if that doesn't work, look at him as someone who can squash you." His wife, he says, gives him eloquently simple advice: "She said, 'Don't screw up.' I said, 'How can I make sure of that?' She said, 'Don't talk.'"
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Last year when asked to speculate about a possible Arnold candidacy, presidential adviser Karl Rove sounded enthusiastic, telling the New York Times, "That would be nice. That would be really nice. That would be really, really nice." Arnold could face a major impediment, however. Last year, stories in both the National Enquirer and Premiere magazine alleged that Arnold had been grabby with some British television hostesses while promoting a film ("Kindergarten Cop-a-Feel" chimed one tabloid), as well as engaging in some more sustained extramarital shenanigans.
With an Arnold run rumored to be imminent, Gray Davis's campaign manager, Garry South, wasted no time faxing the articles to reporters, with the inscription, "a real touching story."
As for the charges, Arnold says they are outlandish and untrue. Much of the Premiere reporting contains background sniping. Many of the named grousees were in strangely public situations that would have seemed reckless even by Clintonian standards if Arnold had been committing actual lechery, instead of harmless flirtations in bad taste. For instance, Denise Van Outen, onetime host of Great Britain's "Big Breakfast" show, in which she interviewed guests in a bed, was openly flirtatious with Arnold, saying, "You grabbed my breast," then adding, "I really like it. Go on, have another go." To which Arnold replied, "It was a handful. I never know if my wife's watching. I'll tell her it was a stuntman." There were also examples of more piggish behavior--for instance, Arnold supposedly groped "Terminator" co-star Linda Hamilton in a limo in front of her boyfriend/director James Cameron, and a visitor to the set of one of his films is supposed to have happened on him in his trailer, orally gratifying someone other than his wife. Arnold says these are fantasies. After the Premiere piece, numerous celebrities, including Hamilton and Cameron, wrote letters to the editor claiming the charges were "pure fiction" (the reporter stood by his story)....
"That does not mean I'm not guilty of some of this stuff," he says, referring to his well-earned reputation for having a ribald sense of humor. "In the last few years," he says, "I've toned it down because it has become a different world now, because of the sexual harassment. . . . You do things that someone today may take as [going] too far." Then, with a Mephistophelean smirk, he adds, "But no one that has been around me would believe that a woman would be complaining about me holding her." At this point, antsy handlers pull Arnold to the front of the plane for "planning," but not before he promises, "I'll be back."