States in front of me and looked to see which states were close together. My idea was to group them and, whenever I had a few days free from shooting or other business, hit four or six at a time—leaving room for improvisation, of course, because the governors wouldn’t always be available when I was. Many times if I had other business—a seminar, say, or a contest in Columbus, or a vacation in Hawaii—I’d organize the surrounding states.
When I visited the governors, I assured them that politics wouldn’t come into play. This was pure fitness and sports. For many governors, that was hard to understand. “The Terminator is coming from the Republican White House to expose me as not paying enough attention to children,” they would think, worrying that I would steamroll in and embarrass them. But we made it clear in advance that this was not our agenda. I wasn’t preaching a Republican philosophy but a fitness philosophy. Word got around, and suddenly the governors were at ease. We started to be welcomed. Everyone joined the fitness crusade.
It was a great, great learning experience to see firsthand the way state and local governments work. I’d never seen so many instant advocates for physical fitness. I figured out that we could do two states a day. Usually we’d start with breakfast with the governor, and I’d talk to him or her about improving fitness in the state. Every state was different, so I had to study up. Then we’d head to a school and join the kids in a fitness class. Next would come a press conference. In some states they were huge: a whole gymnasium packed with parents and kids would welcome us, with the school band playing. I’d always present the governor with a Tony Nowak jacket with the President’s Council logo, and help him put it on, and there would be a photo op of him surrounded by kids.
The final step was always a “fitness summit,” where we invited people from the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, the governor’s staff, education officials, health club owners, the YMCA, the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, and so on. Usually it would be a crowded meeting room with fifty to one hundred people. We’d talk about the importance of fitness for kids and the health risks of not exercising. And they would make recommendations about how to work together. Then we’d get back on the plane, go to the next state, and do exactly the same thing in the afternoon.
Later on, I realized that it had a lot in common with a campaign trip. You’re on a tight schedule, you have to be there at a certain time, do the speech, pump everyone up. The school bands welcome you, and the local politicians come out and drum up a storm of support. After being the fitness czar, running for governor of California felt like deja vu.
Interestingly, nobody ever objected to my using my own plane. If people asked, “Is the government paying for this?” it was good to be able to tell them, “No. I’m paying for everything myself. Including the stationery. I’m not doing this for money. I’m doing it to give something back. My talent is fitness and, therefore, this is something I can give back.” It felt great to be echoing Sarge.
Those fitness summits were like a crash course in politics. In California, when I urged the attendees to step up the physical education in the schools, they jumped on me.
“Well, tell our governor to put more money into education, so we can hire phys-ed teachers.”
“But there’s a recession,” I said, “and from what I’ve read, our state is getting less revenue, so our governor doesn’t have the funds.”
“He should reallocate funds from other programs. This is for the kids.”
“But if there’s no money, why don’t you look somewhere like the YMCA or one of the local sports clubs, and see if they can provide trainers to help out?”
“Oh! So the schools should use volunteers instead of teachers? That’s a good one. In fact, if you read our state law, Arnold, you’d know it’s illegal to fill an existing teaching slot with a volunteer.”
I was running into a teachers’ union taboo against volunteers in the schools. Encountering that attitude was a real eye-opener. It was not about the kids, as they claimed. It was about getting more teachers jobs. Of course, I understood that’s what unions do: fight for their own.
Of all the governors, the one who made the deepest impression on me was Mario Cuomo. New York was about the tenth state I visited. From a distance, I’d never liked Governor Cuomo because of the way he’d attacked Reagan in his 1984 Democratic convention keynote address: “Mr. President,” he said, “you ought to know that this nation is more a ‘Tale of Two Cities’ than it is just a ‘Shining City on a Hill.’ ” But when I met him and we talked about fitness, he was responsive and complimentary. He gave very valuable pointers. For example, he advised, “You have to mention more about kids’ health, and you’ve got to talk about the costs. That is big, big, big. Talk about the health disaster that will develop and what it will cost the taxpayer if kids don’t get fit.” He was very supportive of what I’d done. I could see why Cuomo was so well liked in his state and why he was a great leader.
Then we went before the media, and he did a whole spiel about how great it is for me to travel around the United States and to use my own money and do all this voluntarily. “This is what service is about,” he said. I thought, “He knows that I’m a Republican and that I represent a Republican president; it’s really gracious and generous of him to make this much of an effort.” More than that, I thought he was right. I still had forty states to go, and I was able to incorporate his suggestions in my message.
My friendship with President Bush was warm from the time we first met during the Reagan years. I felt honored when he asked me to attend the inauguration and to introduce him at some of the surrounding events— although introducing him was also somewhat uncomfortable at times, I have to admit. There were so many people who perhaps would have been more worthy. In particular, I remember a Martin Luther King Day celebration where there were a lot of African-Americans in the audience and many black speakers. If I’d been sitting there, I’d have wondered, “Why is
We grew quite close after he chose me for the fitness job. I could go over to the White House and see him anytime I was in Washington. We had that kind of relationship. Anytime. John Sununu was his chief of staff in the beginning, and he also was welcoming to me. It was never “The boss is busy now, come back tomorrow.”
We felt honored to be invited many times to join the president and Barbara at Camp David. The White House can be very confining, and they loved to get away there on the weekend, even though the president always brought along work. I would fly up with them on the helicopter or meet them there. We’d go out to local restaurants and go to church on Sunday. And, of course, President Bush loved physical activity and games.
One time, when a journalist asked him, “Mr. President, did Arnold show you some exercises?” he laughed and said, “Oh, when he comes up to Camp David, we work out together all the time. He teaches me weight training and I teach him about wallyball.”
“Wallyball? You mean volleyball.”
“No, no, wallyball.”
“What’s wallyball?”
“We have this indoor arena where we play volleyball, and we have special rules that let you play the ball off the wall. Arnold has played several times already, and he’s getting better.”
I bowled up there with the president. We threw horseshoes. We swam. We lifted weights. I went trap shooting with him! (When does the Secret Service ever let you carry a gun around the president?) On a snowy weekend in early 1991, just as Katherine was learning to walk, the three of us visited the Bushes and went tobogganing. Unfortunately, I did not know the toboggan. It’s different from a sled, which you can steer with your feet; the toboggan is flat, and it slides differently. The president and I came down the hill too fast and crashed into Barbara, and she ended up in the hospital with a broken leg. I still have the photo President Bush sent me afterward. It shows him and me on the toboggan and is inscribed, “Turn, dammit, turn!”
Heavy meetings went down at Camp David after Iraq’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It was so strange to shuttle back and forth between a real-world crisis and the make-believe threat to the future on the
