Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to find that Kevin Drum has looked at Arnold Schwarzenegger as a gubernatorial candidate and found him wanting. It's always fun to see how these out-of-left-field candidates fare. Some, like Arnold, profess that they won't be beholden to anyone or any "special interests" at all, but proceed to pretty much do just that. Others, like Ross Perot, turn out to be crazy. ("I'm dropping out because George Bush's flunkies plotted to sabotage my daughter's wedding....") It's perenially fascinating, really. And there are the Jesse Venturas of the world, who vacillate between crazy and actually competent.

But anyway, someone in Kevin's comments section makes the point that Arnold is qualified because he was a successful businessman before he became a huge film star. Now, my knowledge of the particulars of Arnold's pre-Hollywood business career is limited to what this commenter says: that he invested his bodybuilding money in real estate and made a killing. I guess that's one possible definition of "successful businessman" -- i.e., "a person who takes a small amount of money and parlays it into a large amount of money". But really, is that enough? Is investing in the right opportunity at the right time really sufficient to be considered a successful businessman? I'm not sure that it does. What was made out of that investment? Who benefitted? What other wealth was created?

Really, I'm totally ignorant here on the particulars of Arnold Schwarzenegger's business acumen. But I have a hard time judging someone's business success by the just the amount of money they have now versus the amount of money they had five or ten years ago. It's kind of like that guy, Al Dunlap, who made a career of "improving earnings" at various companies by firing huge chunks of their workforces. Is there a point at which the scorched earth upon which one stands speaks louder than the number of zeroes in that person's bank balance?