ShareThisCalifornia Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, weighing in on the presidential race, said that both Republican candidate John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are on the right track in "talking about bringing people together" across partisan lines.And he said that the high profile and competing endorsements of the Kennedy family -- not including his wife, Maria Shriver -- in the Democratic presidential contest represents a dramatic departure from past years."What's interesting is that, within the family, for the first time you have different opinions," he said. "I've been in the family 30 years, and I've never seen that ... that's really the story -- what created that, and how Caroline and Teddy hooked up with the same opinion, and Kathleen ended up going with Hillary.""I don't know the whole scoop, because it just happened, " he laughed. "But eventually we'll find out."The GOP governor was referring to the news that Shriver's cousins, Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, and Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, and her uncle, Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, endorsed Obama on Monday in a dramatic event at American University in Washington.But other family members, including former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, has endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and said her brother, Bobby, and sister, Kerry, do as well.Schwarzenegger declined to address a possible endorsement by his wife, saying "you'll have to ask her yourself."But sources in the office of the California first lady, who is the daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver -- and the niece of Ted Kennedy -- said that Shriver currently has no plans to endorse in the 2008 presidential race.Schwarzenegger, during a wide-ranging session with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, also declined to formally endorse a GOP presidential candidate. But the California governor didn't rule it out -- and came closest when he said that McCain should be congratulated for working across party lines to get things done, despite being hammered by conservative pundits around the country as being too friendly with Democrats."I think that you should never worry about being hammered," he said. "If you want to lead, there will always be people against it. I hear this kind of stuff all the time."McCain "is smart to continue talking about those issues. It is smart for Obama to continue talking about those issues, crossing the line," Schwarzenegger said. "You will see worldwide, more and more people are going to look at that as a way of bringing people together. And there's nowhere more important to do that than in America."(E-mail the writer at cmarinucci(at)sfchronicle.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Schwarzenegger praises McCain and Obama
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