Will Washington be the next stop for Arnie?

And thus did the state of Minnesota find itself governed by an anti-politician whose professional name was ''The Body'', and whose CV included time as a navy special forces operative, professional wrestler and film actor, all the ingredients of modern American celebrity.

Inevitably, Jesse Ventura's single term as governor ended with lowered expectations and hard feelings all round, in January 2003. It was a sobering reminder that force, charisma and blunt soundbites - ''I'm very proud of my wrestling past. I would rather be a wrestler than a career politician'' - are no match for the detailed, boring, self-abasing work of government and politics.

The lesson did not travel well, or at least, was incompletely translated.

Four months later, a southern Californian Republican named Darrell Issa saw a legal and political opening and pounced. The popularity of Gray Davis, the governor of California, was plummeting, the result of the re-introduction of a car registration tax and an overall decline in the state economy. With the millions he had made from his former calling as a developer of car alarms, Issa bankrolled a massive petition. Its objective - legal, but rare in California history - was to force the governor back to the people for an election, or recall, 12 months after Davis had been re-elected to office with a six-point majority over his Republican challenger. (This was similar to a campaign the Herald attempted to ignite 12 months ago for provision to recall the state government.)

In April 2003, as the recall was in its infancy, Schwarzenegger was regarded as only second in the Republican field. He announced his candidature anyway, in August, on the late-night variety show of his friend Jay Leno, and with that, the fate of Gray Davis was sealed.

It was an only-in-California field, 135 citizens declaring themselves for governor, including a porn star, a former child actor and Paul Nave, who listed himself on the ballot as businessman/prizefighter/father.

Since it was a recall election, Schwarzenegger would not have to run the gauntlet that is pre-selection or primary campaigning, and the necessary appeals to the inclinations of ultra-conservative party members.

It was such a necessity that derailed the $US160 million campaign for governor last year of the former head of eBay, Meg Whitman, whose hard line on issues like illegal immigration found the conservatives' G-spot, but marked her with a scarlet letter for the general election campaign against the Democrat, Jerry Brown.

Absent the minefield of a primary, Schwarzenegger could present himself as the model California politician: fiscally conservative and socially moderate, with a live-and-let-live attitude to issues like abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research, with the weight of a career as a movie action hero to validate his every promise.

One of Schwarzenegger's first acts in office was appropriately theatrical, directing a wrecking ball at an old car with the legend ''Davis Car Tax'' spraypainted across it, as a symbol of the end of the vehicle tax. There were two effects: the symbolic one left a shattered Oldsmobile Cutlass; the actual gouged a hole of as much as $US6 billion in the state's annual budget. One was visible at the time. The other looms massive and unmistakeable now that California's budget deficit is projected to be $US28 billion over the next 18 months.

By law, California's governors are restricted to two terms. Re-elected, easily, in 2006, Schwarzenegger's second term officially expires tomorrow.

There will be many and varied judgments made about Schwarzenegger's accidental seven-year reign as the governor of California, but it is that number that will follow him to wherever his next destination might be: the big screen? - probably not; retirement? - too big an ego, too much energy, too much ambition to cash in his chips just yet at 63 years of age. The White House? - 2011 is going to be a strange, frictional year with the Republicans again with the numbers in the House - an astute politician would realise the value in publicity and momentum in re-locating Arnie from one capitol, Sacramento, to another, Washington, to put his weight behind climate change legislation and alternative energy efforts.

The lesson of Schwarzenegger's time as governor is that while political history does not move at the warp speed of the digital age, it can evolve swiftly and unpredictably.

As when Schwarzenegger arrived in Sacramento, the California Chamber of Commerce will throw a massive going-away party, but that too, will be symbolic. As he leaves office, Schwarzenegger has one other thing in common with his predecessor, both heading out the door with approval ratings in the mid-20s. But in the 15 months after his arrival, it did appear that Schwarzenegger would make the same transition from showbiz to politics that immortalised Ronald Reagan.

He was the showpiece of the 2004 Republican Convention in New York, chanting ''I am a Republican! I am a Republican! I am a Republican!'' to a roaring, smitten crowd. Granted, not a tough audience. But it did convince people who should have known what they were talking about.

''In regard to him ever being president of the United States, my advice to you … and to any of those doubters, don't bet against Arnold Schwarzenegger.'' The speaker was the former President George Bush snr, presenting Schwarzenegger with an award for ''excellence in public service'' in November 2004. Bush's son had just won a second term in the White House, and Republicans like Karl Rove could see a clear path to history's horizon for their party. Lissa Morgantheler-Jones, a former Silicon Valley financier, believed Schwarzenegger could lead the party and began a campaign to amend the clause of the United States Constitution that restricts the presidency to US-born citizens.

Schwarzenegger was born in Austria and emigrated to the United States when he was 21. He became, as history records, the best bodybuilder in the world, and then the biggest movie star in the world. It didn't take too much faith in the American and especially Californian capacity for re-invention to believe that Arnie's great talent for career transition could work again.

The campaign became known as Amend for Arnold. (Subsequently, to avoid the taint of politics, it was called Amend for Arnold and Jen, Jen being Jennifer Granholm, the Canadian-born governor of Michigan, a Democrat).

Morgantheler-Jones says: ''He was pleased. He really, really wanted at least to have a shot at the presidency.'' With his popularity at its zenith, Schwarzenegger replied to a 60 Minutes interview question about running for the presidency: ''Yes, absolutely. Why not? With my way of thinking, you always shoot for the top.''

Watching from the sidelines were Republicans like Ken Khachigian, a political consultant and former Reagan speechwriter. ''Nobody took that seriously at all,'' he said.

The proposed constitutional amendment would require the approval of three-quarters of the states and two-thirds of Congress.

''That was the triumph of hope over reality,'' Khachigian said. ''Maybe he thought it was serious, but certainly no one I know did.''

But even now, with California's once-fabled education system one of the worst in the country, with its infrastructure revealed as primitive and underfunded, and its voters at once clueless and over-entitled as the result of the state's leadership and legislative vacuum, Morgantheler-Jones remains convinced that her campaign chose the right man at the right time.

''There's so many things that he's done that people don't realise, and don't appreciate,'' she said. Foremost among them was the support of a referendum initiative that took the design of the electoral map out of the hands of those who stood to benefit from it.

The work of the Citizens Redistricting Commission will not be evident for four or five years, but Morgantheler-Jones believes it will be Schwarzenegger's most enduring legacy: to make more seats competitive, reduce the number of extremists on the right and the left, and thus begin the remaking of a state that had been all but ungovernable.

''What Arnold has wrought is a future where the moderates will be in the majority where they belong, rather than being marginalised,'' Morgantheler-Jones said. ''It was so odd that the birthplace of freedom needed a strong man from outside the country to point the way and hold the middle.''

To the rest of the world, it might have seemed a remarkable thing that on October 7, 2003, California would choose as the man to run its state a candidate with no political or administrative experience whatsoever. But there was a template, and that template was Reagan, also an actor, although of a lesser wattage than Schwarzenegger. He governed California for two terms, from 1967-75.

Even among secular Republicans, Reagan is a candidate for sainthood. The more devout want his statue in each of America's 3143 counties, and his face on both the 5¢ coin and the $10 bill.

Khachigian, who served in Reagan's transition team when he first moved into the White House in 1981, says there is no comparison between the two actor-politicians.

He recalls Schwarzenegger's main downfall as his failure to follow through on promises to reform - read reduce - government, immediately after his election.

''He could have been more adamant, more persistent in the ways that Reagan was when he was governor. He tried and tried but didn't use a lot of the cachet he built up when elected. He wasn't persistent.'' More than that, Khachigian believes, Schwarzenegger was unable to adapt to the difference between Hollywood and Sacramento.

''He came from a culture that relied on individual effort and ego and personality, which does not translate into a political management role. I think, to the very end, he had ultimate confidence in his ability to convince people to do things … and the power of meeting one-on-one with people and smoking cigars, but he just didn't have the touch.''

Khachigian defines the ''touch'' as the implicit understanding of policy, advocacy and the political process that Reagan had honed over 25 years.

Schwarzenegger's communication skills, he says, had not been tempered in this way. ''He tried to be a force of nature, rather than a force of persuasion.''

It's too late to change it now.

He would like to take his act to Washington, Schwarzenegger said in an interview with the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times, as an adviser on energy and the environment.

Key to the message, he said, was changing the words, to agree on energy policies that reduced the country's dependence on foreign oil, rather than arguing about climate change.

''People are very receptive when I talk about these things,'' he noted, ''because I'm a Hummer driver, not a treehugger.''