New Schwarzenegger Book

We hear political columnist Dan Weintraub just signed a contract with PoliPoint Press to write a book about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. A recent tour through the beta site of Google Books showed nearly 1,000 tomes that mention Schwarzenegger, but only a handful have examined him in honest detail and with style.

Weintraub will look at Schwarzenegger 3.0 - his efforts to push the Republican Party to the left and tap into the huge class of undeclared voters. He'll undoubtedly have to look at the disillusionment of true believers and activists in both parties, and what post-partisanship really means.

Political consultant Rob Stutzman, who used to work for Schwarzenegger, reminded me recently of a Weintraub post from the 2003 recall election, "The Woman In Red." Weintraub had the first real blog for California politics, and the mysterious appearance on the campaign trail of a woman in a red top - just after the groping allegations against Schwarzenegger emerged - provided another surreal moment in that astonishing year.

Read his posts from that day.

This week, Weintraub went behind the wall. From now on, you have to pay for his blog. The Sacramento Bee is sequestering much of its political coverage under a paid service called Capitol Alert. It's probably where we're all going. That Classmates.com ad on this blog isn't going to pay for my salary, for example, not to mention our staff in China, Iraq and around the world.