LOS ANGELES -- It looks as though California is getting some Southeast Asian strongman-style leadership. But will Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's new governor, prove half as effective as the two dominant personalities that have run Malaysia and Singapore these past decades? Or, in the end, will Schwarzenegger be a U.S. West Coast version of the disgraced former Philippine President Joseph Estrada, the cinema star-turned-national savior who's now in jail?
No one knows how Schwarzenegger will pan out politically. Even so, his take-charge, no-nonsense style seems, stylistically at least, akin to those soft Southeast Asian authoritarians Mahathir Mohamad and Lee Kuan Yew.
Two of Asia's true political giants, Lee is the founding prime minister of modern Singapore, and Mahathir, residing next door in Malaysia, is the longest continuously running political act in Asia.