as an actor

Schwarzenegger may have had a very specific niche he fit within as an actor, but when he worked within that niche he was excellent. If you look at Conan the Barbarian, it should not have worked as a movie, and yet it absolutely does, and no small part of that is his acting. Dude can smolder stoically. Terminator, T2, Running Man, Total Recall, Predator, they're all excellent uses of his very specific type.

Then jump ahead to True Lies and Last Action Hero, where he's arguably at his height of fame, and he makes basically a couple of parodies of his acting persona, during a time when action heroes were largely taken much more seriously than they are today, and he nails both of those roles, too.

Sure, he's got a bad habit of trying to make movies he maybe shouldn't have, and yeah, he's always a huge muscly Austrian with a thick accent, but I think he might be the best Western action star who's ever lived.

As a person or a politician... ehh... could be a lot worse.