The Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters says so in this column that is being talked about this week. But Walters offers no actual evidence or examples of this tendency, other than a quote from Schwarzenegger about the virtues of changing one's mind and a comparison to Jerry Brown that's pretty meaningless.

Walters' analysis is conventional wisdom in Sacramento. The problem is it doesn't fit the facts--at least on matters of policy. In reporting a book on Schwarzenegger, a massive briefing binder with all of Schwarzenegger's intended policies from the 2003 recall campaign fell into my possession. To flip back through the book today is to be struck by how utterly consistent Schwarzenegger has been. He's still pursuing the policies he promised: an enlightened environmental centrism, regulation that favors business, infrastructure investment, protection of local government funds, redistricting that takes the legislature out of the process, and a spending limit and rainy day fund.

What's notable is that he has pursued these same policies -- especially the budget policies -- over and over and over again, despite many setbacks and defeats. What's changed is his method of pursuing them. He's tried making nice with legislators and unions, fighting with them, making nice again, and fighting again. His rhetoric has been at times over-the-top and at other times understated. This sense of him moving around and trying all angles in his rhetoric and political strategy leaves the impression of someone who is a flip flopper. And he has broken promises -- most notably to education groups on school funding and to the hotel workers' union on the terms of Indian gaming compacts. He also has a mixed-to-weak record of getting his major policies enacted; he got infrastructure, climate change and workers' comp. That's about it. It may be accurate to call a politician with such a record ineffective. It may be accurate to call him untrustworthy. But he isn't a flip-flopper. His goals and policies have remained the same. 

This debate over whether Schwarzenegger is a flip-flopper or not has become the main narrative of the California media. But it obscures a more important debate that the media avoids. Are Schwarzenegger's policies the right ones? Would his spending cap and rainy day fund really end the boom-bust cycle of California's budget?  Would redistricting transform the state's politics? Would his health care plan really make things better for the uninsured? Or do we need different policies to fix the state budget, clean up state politics, and improve health care? Schwarzenegger has pursued his policies with consistency. But we really don't know if they are the right ones.

Walters' argument is essentially a defense of status quo. His point, one embraced in state political circles, boils down to this: It's not that the California system doesn't work. It's not that any of these policies we mindlessly push over and over are the problem. It's that Schwarzenegger is somehow a bad guy -- a liar, a flip flopper.

I literally wrote the book on this guy, and there is plenty of good and bad in him. But the real story of the past 5 years is how California's governing system utterly defeated a man with many gifts -- whatever else you want to say about him, he's smart, determined, well-intentioned, hard-working, non-partisan, and basically not corrupt. He deserves a good deal of the blame for the missed opportunities of the past five years and for the state's current troubles, but the fault is not his alone. We all deserve a big part of the blame: legislators, lobbyists, political pros, media types, business, labor, and, yes, voters.