Who'd a thunk it? Arnold Schwarzenegger, who amassed fame and fortune as a purveyor of escapist fantasy, is the most engaged and reality-grounded governor of recent history.

Schwarzenegger has not yet proven that California is fully governable, but by cajoling and bulldozing a Democratic Legislature into approving a landmark overhaul of the state's troubled workers' compensation system, he has demonstrated that it's not as ungovernable as recent history implies. And he's undercutting ousted predecessor Gray Davis' implied excuse that while he failed, no one else could do any better.

That was probably true of the conventional politicians who also aspired to succeed Davis during last year's historic recall election. Given his sparse credentials and record, it's doubtful whether Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the leading Democrat, would have been an improvement.

If California's governorship was not to sink into total irrelevance, and with it the rest of state government, it needed exactly what Schwarzenegger promised: independence, a specific agenda, a powerful will and an ability to marshal public support. Voters - who had become totally disenchanted with Davis, his unwillingness to govern and his rationalizations for failure - took a huge chance on Schwarzenegger. They didn't know whether they would be getting a real governor or someone who would turn himself and the state into laughingstocks.

His earliest actions, such as unilaterally reinstating a multibillion-dollar reduction in taxes on cars and signing a repeal of a controversial law granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, didn't answer the question. He did the first by himself - and while it kept a campaign promise, it may have been a fiscal error, increasing by $4 billion a year the state's budget gap. And the Legislature was eager to do the second because lawmakers knew that they had overstepped and were risking the wrath of voters.

The GOP governor's deal with the Legislature on a $15 billion bond measure to refinance some of the state's budget debt and his highly focused, successful campaign to persuade voters to approve it were more impressive. The strong vote for Proposition 57 demonstrated that Schwarzenegger could, indeed, move voters - the most important of all political abilities - and do so on his own, without the background of a recall. He then quickly parlayed that status into the deal on workers' comp, threatening to go to the ballot again if Democrats balked.

All of the ballyhoo notwithstanding, the bill that emerged from intense negotiations is much closer to what employers had been demanding than anyone could have expected. Significantly, Democratic legislators ignored the lingering opposition of workers' comp attorneys, who had long been a significant source of campaign funds.

The secrecy and the lack of even cursory public examination of the complicated bill are troubling and undercut Schwarzenegger's pledge of openness. They are reminiscent of the disastrous overhaul of energy regulation that the Legislature passed in 1996, leading to an energy crisis that has never yet been fully resolved. But maybe it's impossible to deal with such complex issues openly, and if the choice is between wheel-spinning openness and real action, we'll cross our fingers and opt for the latter.

The rookie governor's boundless self-confidence is infectious. One wants to believe him when he says he can govern this very fractious, complex state.

"From the first day on in my administration, I said that for the people to win, politics as usual has to die," Schwarzenegger said last week as he signed the workers' comp compromise. "And this is exactly what we did on Proposition 57 and 58. This is exactly what we did on reforming our workers' compensation, and this is what we will do on the budget, and this is what we will do on energy, on prison reform, Indian gaming and education. We will do it over and over and over again, because everything is possible."

Given the Capitol's decades-long history of inaction and misguided action on these and other matters, one is inclined to be dubious. But maybe, just maybe, Schwarzenegger can deliver. At least he's trying.