Warren, Was Your Talk Just an Act?

The next election for governor of California is a long way off, but if you thought we had fun last time, just imagine the possibilities.

Arnold “Big Boy” Schwarzenegger runs for reelection, and his opponent is either Rob Reiner or Warren Beatty. It’ll be an all-Hollywood political slamfest, and it could be all the merrier if Gary Coleman decides to give it another try.

Not that any of those actors, including Schwarzenegger, have said they’ll run in 2006. Reiner, who led the preschool funding initiative in California, often pops up on lists of potential candidates. And you have to admit there’s some appeal in a showdown between the Terminator and the Meathead.

But Reiner seems a little shy about taking the next step. Beatty, on the other hand, is already on his toes and throwing punches. He was supposed to be giving a commencement speech last week to UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, but it sounded more like the launching of a political campaign.

“Cancel it, governor. Call it off,” Beatty said, slamming Schwarzenegger’s planned $70-million special election, in which voters would be asked to do the job the governor and legislators can’t seem to do on their own.

Beatty called Arnold a photo-op fanatic who stages “the fake events, the fake issues, the fake crowds,” and pushes a “reactionary, right-wing agenda” that hurts some of the very people who supported him, including nurses, teachers and cops.

The governor has raised millions in corporate donations after rising to power on the strength of his call for an end to compulsive fundraising and special-interest, pay-to-play politics. Better to follow the cue of former Govs. Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson, Beatty said, and tax the rich.

Beatty took his shots at a time when Schwarzenegger’s popularity is tanking and on the eve of huge anti-Arnold rallies in Los Angeles and Sacramento. So can it be seen as anything other than the start of Beatty’s own gubernatorial campaign?

Beatty told the students he’s not planning to run for governor, but he said he’d do a much better job than Arnold.

After the speech, he said he wasn’t ruling out a run.

So what’s he trying to say?

“I talked to him yesterday for a while,” Democratic strategist Bill Carrick said of Beatty on Thursday, “and I don’t think he’s going to end up running. But I think he is testing the water in the sense that he wants to lead the way for people to understand it’s time to take the governor on.”

Hey, I wasn’t born yesterday. Carrick is a heavyweight Democratic strategist who has worked for Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former President Clinton. If Beatty isn’t running, why was Carrick talking to him?

They’re old friends, Carrick said.

“Somebody had slipped me the speech, I read it, I called him, and I was teasing him,” he said. “It started out with me saying, ‘OK, let’s rumble. It’s time to do it.’ ”

Carrick said Beatty just laughed.

I don’t know. Something tells me Beatty would have trouble resisting the idea of finding out what might happen in Sacramento if we were to substitute brains for brawn, Priuses for Hummers, Dick Tracy for Conan the Barbarian.

And I’m sure you’ve heard the line about how all politicians want to be actors and all actors want to be politicians.

In the movie “Bullworth,” Beatty played a U.S. senator who does the unthinkable -- he begins leveling with the public. Beatty also played a pinko in his Oscar-winning movie “Reds,” in which his character falls in love with communism.

Can you imagine what the commie-hating Schwarzenegger might do with this in the heat of a campaign? During the recall, Arnold dropped a wrecking ball on an Oldsmobile to symbolize the end of the tax-and-spend Gray Davis administration.

Does he play “Reds” this time, and nuke the movie screen?

Beatty initially supported Arnold, Carrick said, and believed in his potential to forge a bipartisan approach to problemsolving. That was before Arnold started calling legislators girlie men and stooges.

If he accomplished nothing else with the speech, Beatty got Arnold’s attention. The governor’s chief flack dismissed Beatty as a crackpot, and Beatty responded by questioning the intelligence of such a remark.

You see? This really is beginning to sound like a campaign.

If they do square off against each other, Carrick said, Beatty will equalize the celebrity quotient that won Schwarzenegger so much face time.

Can you imagine what it must feel like to be Phil Angelides?

The state treasurer spent months studying the budget mess and rolling out specific policy proposals, establishing himself as the leading Democratic challenger to Schwarzenegger. But most people still have no idea who he is, let alone how to pronounce his name.

Warren Beatty, on the other hand, gave one little speech and it was news up and down the state, across the nation and in India, New Zealand and Ireland.

Will he or won’t he?

I got hold of Beatty by phone Thursday, but he didn’t stay on long enough to hear my question. He was in the middle of lunch.

“I thought you’d never call,” Beatty said, promising to call back.

He also said, “I fear you.”

And then he didn’t call back.

I was about to suggest that strategy didn’t appear to be working for Arnold, but just after my deadline, Beatty returned the call. He left a message in which he said he’d be happy to talk soon.

You’ll be the first to know what he has to say.

Reach the columnist at [email protected], and read previous columns at latimes.com/lopez.