Poor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He first put his political toe in the water a couple of years ago, signaling that he'd like to be governor. But now that the starting gun has gone off for the big swim championship, he's pleading for a time out, so he can first take some swimming lessons.

"It would be wrong of me to say: 'Hocus pocus,' and just come up with an answer," he told reporters quizzing him about what direction he wants to take California. "I would be another politician, and I don't want to be another politician."

"The dog ate my homework" didn't cut it in school, and it won't work in a race for governor. Voters expect people who are running to lead the state to know what direction they are headed. So here's a crib sheet for the guy who's behind on his studies.

To: Arnold Schwarzenegger
From: Your policy shop
Subject: California's future

The political guys are telling you to bad-mouth the California economy. Good strategy. But the lucky thing for you, if you are elected, is that things aren't as bad as we're saying. California far outpaced the nation in job growth in the second half of the 1990s, and it has performed a little better than the rest of the country in the slowdown.

So when the national economy recovers, California, which has a large share of the growth industries of the future -- high technology, biomedical, entertainment, telecommunications, tourism -- will be well positioned to boom again. Your job will be to set the conditions to keep it growing.

Four things are critical to future business investment and job growth: education, infrastructure, quality of life and overhead costs.

California is making progress on the schools, but has far to go. It's still below the national average in school spending, and the low-income neighborhoods where achievement is lagging still get the least prepared and experienced teachers.

You should tell voters we need to spend more on those schools, particularly to improve the quality of teachers and to expand access to preschool for children who will be attending them. But you ought to emphasize that the new spending should be conditioned on reforms -- accountability and merit pay for teachers, options for poor children trapped in failing schools, more innovative charter schools.

California also is near the bottom in infrastructure and transportation spending. It will take a lot more money to keep goods and people moving in the next half-century. But we also need to make more efficient use of the investments we have made. The state can fund more transportation investment and more efficiency by moving to pay-as-you-drive road pricing.

That market mechanism will also help deal with the quality of life. The sectors that propel California's growth aren't rooted here. They can leave if the quality of life deteriorates because of congestion, crime, unhealthy air, lost open space.

So a major prong of your economic strategy agenda has to be fixing the state's broken system of growth management and local finance, a system that now encourages sprawl and congestion and discourages new investment in housing and industry.

The system that makes housing more expensive is just one of the overhead costs that threaten future prosperity. You've already talked about the need to reform workers' compensation to relieve the burden on business.

But there are a host of other unnecessary costs piled on businesses and housing, from unnecessary layers of environmental paperwork to frivolous lawsuits to prevailing wage requirements on organizations that build affordable housing. Here's where you can really be the Terminator.

The overhead costs you've talked about most so far are taxes. But you need to face up to the reality that taxes aren't high in California. And many of the things the state needs to do for education, infrastructure and the quality of life take money.

With the budget still out of balance by $8 billion to $15 billion a year, you must tell voters that the state will have to cut back on some things it wants, including cheap college fees and parks. You will have to reverse big wage increases handed out to state workers and lead an initiative campaign to rein in public employee pensions.

But you should also level with voters. There's no way to have the future California wants without restoring some of the revenues cut in the boom years. And you should tell them that, as one of the richest Californians, you believe the revenue must first come from people like yourself, the biggest beneficiaries of California's promise.