RHOADES LESS TRAVELED:

So Schwarzenegger endorses McCain for president with Giuliani standing by and it’s all over CNN and the networks and every eye is on: 1) Arnold; 2) John, who seems a bit stiff, like his suit is wearing him; 3) Rudy, who, let’s face it, has a goofy smile for a tough guy.

Noted, as an aside: Arnold, a trumpeter for green technology, staged the event at Solar Integrated Technologies, a solar roofing company in Los Angeles that grew from $38 million in revenues in 2006 to $80 million in 2007. The company also went from 35 employees in 2005 to 210 today.

At the margins of the frenzied flash of lights: A boyish, harmless, wholesome looking chap named Randall MacEwen, who happens to be president and chief executive of Solar Integrated and lives in Bay Shores, Newport Beach.

You’ve heard of the six degrees of separation theory as it applies to actor Kevin Bacon?

Well, Newport Beach, I’ve come to learn, is somehow, some way involved with pretty much everything that matters, not the least of which is presidential politics.

But back to what opened my jaundiced eyes amid the political posturing and media mania: Randall — or “Randy,” as Arnold, in his Austrian way, called him — MacEwen and his wife Dianne.

He’s 39 and looks 30. She’s 40 and looks 29. They’re green, and yes, there’s a double-meaning there, because Solar Integrated, which was already thriving in a slumping economy, credited with constructing the largest solar roof in the country (in Riverside) and for all the solar roofing in the San Diego Unified School District, got a plug from the best pitchman in the history of California last week.

What does that mean for business?

“Hard to quantify,” Randall said, matter-of-factly.

Randall and Dianne are green in a more important way. Money, despite what you’ve heard, does not make the world go round, nor can it solve the energy crisis that imperils, if you believe in science, and I do, our state, country and planet.

Human will and green technologies such as solar power can.

Just ask Arnold.

“Here we have an economy that is now flattening out, that is leveling off, that is not really producing what we anticipated because of the housing crisis and because of the [subprime-lending] crisis,” he said, before touring Solar Integrated. “And here this company is increasing its productivity over this last year by 100%, so this is really extraordinary. You’re protecting the environment and you’re fighting global warming and that is music to my ears.”

Speaking of Arnold, I asked the MacEwens their impressions of him. Both talked about his presence, passion and uncanny ability to remember names, including those of the workers at the manufacturing plant.

Yeah, yeah, but what surprised you about him?

“He wasn’t as big as I would have thought,” Randall said.

At one point, Dianne got moved aside — physically, literally — by an FBI agent. She didn’t know who he was protecting, or why he thought she might be some sort of Squeaky Fromme, but she was taken aback.

Well, for what it’s worth, I was taken aback by yet another Newport Beach connection to an international issue, this time in the form of an entrepreneur on the high end of a learning curve that many of us are just beginning to navigate.

Mea culpa. I should have known better. Six degrees of separation. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kevin Bacon lives on the Peninsula.

BRADY RHOADES is the Daily Pilot’s managing editor. He may be reached at [email protected] or at (714) 966-4607.