He had it all: governor of the biggest state in the union, a movie star known worldwide by his first name -- or late name -- and family man who'd married a Kennedy.
But the higher they soar, the harder they crash and burn.
Arnold Schwarzenegger bypassed PR Purgatory and went straight to Celebrity Hell after it came out that he fathered a child with one of his staff and kept it secret for more than a decade.
Other women are now coming forward to say they also had affairs with the superstar of bodybuilding, action movies and politics, and there are rumors of more children out of wedlock -- and possible investigations that he used state troopers or state money to cover up his liaisons.
His post-gubernatorial plans of doing some kind of political work are up in smoke.
A planned cartoon, The Governator, is also on hold, seeing how the premise of the show was portraying a character that was a devoted family man who's wife and kids had no idea about his secret life, fighting crime.
Other possible movies, including a new TERMINATOR sequel, are still talk. Schwarzenegger is in his 60s, which is awfully old for an action star. The scandal has soured the public on him, and it's the public who buys movie tickets.
So it's worth looking at why this was such a PR debacle for Schwarzenegger.
After all, it's not unusual for rock stars, movie stars and politicians to get caught in affairs. Newt Gingrich is still running for president despite multiple affairs and divorces. Leading men like Hugh Grant, Colin Farrell and Robe Lowe have been caught in sex scandals (hooker, sex tape, sex tape) and a list of reality stars a mile long have made sex tapes without it torpedoing their careers. Not that I recommend it.
Schwarzenegger's case is different.
Scandals involving public figures usually revolve around two things: money or sex.
The worst ones, however, are really about something else entirely: secrecy, betrayal and hypocrisy.
That's why the cover-up is worse than the crime. We all make mistakes, big or small. People understand that. The public can forgive mistakes.
This is why President Bill Clinton survived impeachment and was actually more popular with the public after it was all over. He never pretended to be a family values politician. He never put himself on a pedestal.
And this is why John Edwards got hammered so hard when he got caught covering up an affair and a child out of wedlock. He'd set up expectations by highlighting his faithful relationship with his wife, a cancer patient. He shined a spotlight on it and made it a central part of his appeal, then tried to hide the affair and let an aide claim that the child was his. The cover-up, and the hypocrisy, was worse than the crime.
Rule No. 1: Don't do anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the newspaper.
Rule No. 2: If you do screw up, don't cover it up. Because your secret will get out, and the longer it festers, the more you try to keep it a secret, the more damage it will do when the scandal explodes.
Schwarzenegger's case is so amazing because the woman worked for his wife and family for 20 years. His wife didn't just know the other woman. She saw her every day. His children did, too. And the whole family knew the child he fathered, who resembled him.
To keep such a secret for more than a decade is breathtaking. To hide that secret in plain sight the entire time is even more amazing.
The betrayal stings more considering that Maria Shriver was the one who stepped forward and defended her husband when he first ran for governor and stories came out in The L.A. Times from women claiming he groped them on movie sets.
He used her as a shield and won the election.
This mistake won't simply mean one of the costliest divorces in history and possibly the loss of his movie career.
This scandal will cost him his reputation -- the currency of both Hollywood of politics -- and that's something you can't fix with snappy one-liners or reps at the gym.