All That's Missing Is the Popcorn

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He has done things his own way on his own time. "One of his charms is that he sets everything he wants out on the table," says his friend Butler. But politics has a way of setting its own table. As Schwarzenegger was agonizing over whether to join the circus now or run a few years later as he had always planned, former Governor Wilson privately offered him a piece of advice he had got from Richard Nixon back in 1966, when Wilson was wrestling with a decision on entering a race. "Jesus, Pete," Nixon told him. "If you think you can win, you got to go now." For once, Schwarzenegger knew, the question wasn't whether to seize the moment--it was whether to let the moment seize him. --With reporting by Sean Scully/Los Angeles, Matthew Cooper, John F. Dickerson, Michael Duffy, Douglas Waller and Michael Weisskopf/Washington