CHARLEMAGNE, Napoleon, Hitler, Schwarzenegger. It’s an odd sort of group that stretches from Holy Roman Emperor to Governor of California by way of le petit caporal and the Führer of the Third Reich.

But this strange quartet is not the latest left-wing critique of the populist Californian governor — assigning him his place in some grand parade of history’s pumped-up ego- obsessed villains. It is, apparently, the company in which Arnie sees himself.

A new and largely friendly biography of the former bodybuilder-turned-actor-turned-politician traces the rise from humble Austrian roots of the most surprising politician since Ronald Reagan.

In Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Laurence Leamer says that in his youth the future governor admired charismatic political leaders, men who through sheer force of personality were able to communicate over the dry roofs of musty political institutions, directly with the people themselves.

“Arnold admired such leaders as Charlemagne and Napoleon, who could take the inert, passive masses and forge them into a force to make history,” Mr Leamer writes. “As an Austrian, he had learnt how Hitler had mesmerised the Austrian and German peoples.”

Though he never approved of Hitler’s policies, the author says, Mr Schwarzenegger could not help but be captivated by the stories of the man’s personal political skills. But if this is how Mr Schwarzenegger sees himself, he is finding the 40 million or so who make up the masses of California a good deal less manageable than his predecessors found the medieval Franks, the post-revolutionary French or the Weimar-demoralised Germans.

Indeed the popular mood of Californians today suggests that Mr Schwarzenegger may be closer to emulating Benito Mussolini, the macho man who, it turned out when it came to politics, was not really up to much. A poll this week by the Public Policy Institute of California found that only 40 per cent of voters approve of the job their governor is doing, down from 64 per cent a year ago. Some 57 per cent think that the state is headed in the wrong direction. Barely a quarter trust the state government to get things back on track. Protesters clogged the streets of Sacramento, the state capital, on Wednesday to condemn Mr Schwarzenegger’s governorship.

Less than two years since he won a recall election victory, ousting the Democratic Governor Gray Davis, the Republican Party’s star politician is fighting growing popular discontent with his management style, his policies and his politics.

The public seems weary and irritated by the continuing struggle between the governor and the California state legislature over the state’s budget mess and the education and other reforms pushed by Mr Schwarzenegger when he won office in 2003.

The state still faces a significant revenue shortfall, a record of profligacy that finally unseated Mr Davis, but progress on structural reforms needed to remedy it has been slow.

Mr Schwarzenegger is also battling to reform the state’s education system, making it easier to dismiss poor teachers and reward good ones, and he wants to bring more private money into the state pension system.

Faced with an impasse on these issues, in March Mr Schwarzenegger resorted to a ploy right out of the playbook of some of the most effective political leaders in history — an appeal over the heads of public officials to the people.

He threatened to trigger a special election to be held this autumn — the regular one is not due until next summer.

On the ballot would be spending caps, education reform and, most explosively for his political opponents, a measure to change the way that the state draws its district boundaries for statewide and national elections — one that would take the power out of the hands of the elected politicians, people who tend to use it to feather their own nests, and give it instead to a panel of judges.

But the populist manoeuvre has so far failed. The special election idea is viewed by voters as a costly waste of time and they regard some of the governor’s proposals as little more than a shameless attempt to grab power for himself. Having rejected a Democratic governor two years ago who was incapable of fixing California’s problems, voters now seem reluctant to give the new man too much leeway.

Which raises the age-old question of whether California may not be in some sense ungovernable. Californians like nothing better than to rail at the ineffectiveness of their elected officials, but confronted with a chance to give them real power, they recoil from the idea.

This suspicion of government goes back more than a century to an age when the state was carved up by big railroad and mining magnates and government was run in their interest.

Reformers developed a system that — through the requirement for popular initiatives, blocking majorities in the state assembly and other means — made it virtually impossible to get much done. Mr Schwarzenegger’s misfortune may be that, having chosen a charismatic leader to lead them, Californians are getting distinctly nervous about the idea that he might actually do so.

It would never have been like that in the Weimar Republic.

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