"The biggest mistake all of us make is looking at Arnold through the lens of traditional politics," says Dan Schnur, a California-based Republican strategist. "Political hacks like us just assume that a Republican governor is going to spend a lot of time and energy working on behalf of a Republican president. But Arnold Schwarzenegger and George W. Bush might not need each other politically as much as you'd normally assume."

Schnur knows something about Republicans who are lukewarm on Bush; he served as communications director in the 2000 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain. Schnur sees a parallel between Schwarzenegger and McCain; like former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Schwarzenegger and McCain have established for themselves an aura of political "independence" that makes them "the Republicans best equipped to reach out to swing voters."

But unlike Giuliani -- who has campaigned hard for Bush -- McCain and Schwarzenegger are still on the sidelines, serving as co-chairs of the Bush-Cheney campaigns in their respective states but doing little to help the cause. Indeed, when Reagan died last week, both McCain and Schwarzenegger made comments that seemed designed to put some space between the Reagan legacy and the Bush reality. On "Meet the Press," McCain drew a distinction between Reagan's friendship with House Speaker Tip O'Neill and the "bitter partisanship" of Washington today. Similarly, Schwarzenegger issued a statement in which he said that Reagan, as California governor, had "promoted bipartisan cooperation" and "embraced government's duty to protect our natural resources" -- characterizations that might apply to Schwarzenegger's first six months as governor but not to Bush's first three-and-a-half years as president.

While aides to Schwarzenegger and Bush both tried to wrap their bosses in Reagan's coattails this week, the governor and the president have taken starkly different approaches to both policy and politics. They both worship at the shrine of the tax cut -- within an hour of taking office, Schwarzenegger slashed California's car tax -- but Schwarzenegger is pro-choice, open to gun control and apparently interested in environmental protection; he appointed environmentalist Terry Tamminen to lead the California Environmental Protection Agency and vowed to defend California's nation-leading efforts to limit greenhouse gases from cars and trucks.

He is also interested -- maybe genuinely, maybe out of necessity -- in reaching across the political aisle. While the Bush administration takes a "you're with us or you're against us" approach to both foreign and domestic policy, Schwarzenegger has reached out -- sometimes with carrots, sometimes with sticks -- to interest groups and the Democrats who control the state Legislature.

And while Bush finds in the ghost of Reagan support for "staying the course" and never admitting error -- in announcing Reagan's death last week, Bush spoke of the "confidence" that "comes with conviction" -- Schwarzenegger seems to revel in flexibility and course-correction. In an insight as un-Bushian as you'll find in politics today, Schwarzenegger recently told the Sacramento Bee that it's "very important not to get stuck with certain principles, but to be able to be flexible." He said that governing should be based more on "what is going on in the real world ... than reading someone's book and sticking to that, and saying, 'This is the Bible, and I will never change from that point of view.'" In the same interview, Schwarzenegger said that "ideology and political philosophy, many times, falls apart in front of your very eyes when you go out there in the real world," and he acknowledged that some of the more conservative views he held earlier in life have proven to be wrong.

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