SAN FRANCISCO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austria's gift to American politics and other entertainments, cannot be president because he is not a "natural born citizen," but that does not mean his political power is confined to California. This state is so big — the economy of Los Angeles County is almost as large as Russia's economy — that the continent can reverberate from what happens here, and Schwarzenegger expects much to happen in the next 10 months.

Speaking in his office here, he combines a keen sense of California's role in the nation, and of his role in California, with an actor's sense of an audience.

"In most states," he says happily, "nothing is going on this year." So attention will be given to what is going on here. And "if we win, they will get energy." By "they" he means people and political forces across the country who are eager to emulate his distinctive brand of libertarian conservatism.

His libertarianism extends beyond the theory of political economy he encountered as a young man in the writings of Milton Friedman, and beyond the exuberant entrepreneurialism of his life, to social issues. He favors abortion rights, does not care if any state's voters endorse gay marriage and has "no use" for a constitutional amendment barring that. Hence some Republicans consider him useful but not a proper communicant in the church of true conservatism.

However, his conservatism, more than theirs, is the point of the spear in conservatism's primary political challenge — defeating liberalism's attempt to Europeanize America.

He proposes — the Legislature probably will balk; then the voters will decide in referendums — to cut spending across the board when the budget is not balanced, and to adopt nonpartisan redistricting by a panel of retired judges. This latter might pick the lock that the Democratic Party and its base in the public employees unions — government organized as an interest group — have on the Legislature. Schwarzenegger's program aims to curtail the distributional politics that drive government's expansion.

Today's Democratic Party is defined by its deepening devotion to government distribution of income to its clients — to the education-social services complex. This explains what the county map of the 2004 presidential vote reveals: There are very few mostly blue states. Democrats increasingly depend on city and university-town concentrations of voters who work in that complex.

California, where per capita spending in constant dollars has more than tripled in five decades, is burdened by the sort of growth-inhibiting government that has plagued some American cities. Writing in The Weekly Standard, Joel Kotkin, author of the forthcoming book "The City: A Global History," distinguishes between America's "aspirational" cities and "Euro-American" cities. The former — e.g., Atlanta, Charlotte, Reno, Boise, Phoenix, Orlando, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Fort Myers — are thriving. The latter — e.g., Boston, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia — are experiencing social fragmentation as government's clients fight over dwindling scarce resources, and many of these cities are losing population, often to the aspirational cities.