Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger caused a stir recently when, appearing on late-night television, he said he wouldn't mind if the people of California voted to legalize gay marriage.

"I believe in domestic partnership," Schwarzenegger told host Jay Leno, endorsing the status-quo alternative to gay marriage. But, the governor added, "If the people change their minds and want to overrule that, that's fine with me."

Schwarzenegger's comments pleased gay rights activists, who have been pushing the governor to reconsider his stand. But his words angered and puzzled conservatives who thought Schwarzenegger opposed gay marriage.

He still does, his aides insist. But he also recognizes that his job is to implement the law. And he will do so if the voters (or the courts) change it.

The confusion over gay marriage wasn't the first time, and probably won't be the last, that Schwarzenegger has left supporters and opponents wondering what he is up to. The doubt stems in part from the governor's oft-stated view that he is an instrument of the people, a populist hammer whose job is to work the people's will on the government of California. Whatever the people want, he seems to be saying, he will do, even if he disagrees with it.

The governor's fealty to the voters is admirable. But it also raises questions about his leadership style, and where he draws the line. A true leader takes account of the public's view and then does what he thinks is right, even if it's not popular. If Schwarzenegger is going to take his cues from public opinion, does that mean he has no core beliefs of his own, or that he will never pursue them if they aren't shared by a majority of his fellow Californians?

That, in fact, was the biggest problem with Schwarzenegger's predecessor, Gray Davis. Until just before last year's recall election, Davis almost never did anything that was not supported by a large majority of the people. But on the two biggest problems he faced - the energy crisis and the fiscal meltdown - this method froze him into inaction, because the only plausible moves were highly unpopular.

Davis rarely talked of following the polls, apparently seeing such an admission as a political liability. But Schwarzenegger revels in it.

Consider this governor's position on taxes. While he campaigned on a pledge to roll back the car tax and avoid other tax increases, Schwarzenegger said after the election that he might reconsider his opposition to higher revenues if the people also changed their minds.

"We don't know what the situation, what the feel is, a year or two from now," Schwarzenegger said. "It could very well be that you do a survey, and you do a poll, and ... all of a sudden the 80 percent of the people that say, 'No taxes,' change to 40 percent. And 60 percent say, 'Raise taxes.' Then you can take a look at it."

If that is truly Schwarzenegger's take on leadership, he will have trouble governing. After all, it is sometimes difficult to divine what the people want. They might be evenly divided, or giving their opinions based on bad information. They can even be wrong.

But further evidence suggests that the governor's view of his relationship with the people is more complicated than that. Unlike Davis, who read the polls, internalized the positions they dictated and then tried to work inside deals with the players under the Capitol dome, Schwarzenegger sees his role as bringing the public actively into the process, getting their buy-in on big decisions. For him, the communication goes both ways, and so does the relationship.

In discussing the negotiations with the Legislature that led to his two ballot measures - Propositions 57 and 58 - Schwarzenegger said that he believed he had promised the people that "I would always include them in everything I do." He was willing to compromise, he said, to get a deal he could sell to the voters.

"We are serving the people," he said. "It's not a deal that is just made up between us. It is something that has to satisfy, in the end, the people."

Polling all of last year showed that voters hated the idea of borrowing, and suggested that they were more inclined to try to balance the budget with spending cuts and tax increases alone. But Schwarzenegger concluded that wasn't possible, and took a different path.

Still, the first surveys taken on his $15 billion bond measure showed it was supported by barely one-third of the voters. But with a focused campaign and a massive, bipartisan coalition, Schwarzenegger sold the voters on the idea, turned the numbers around and won in a landslide.

If he really saw his job as always implementing the public's will, rather than sometimes seeking to change it, he never would have tried.