A profile of Jerry Brown

It's going to be good to have Jerry Brown back in California state government:

Jerry Brown calls himself "the most durable politician in the Western hemisphere next to Fidel Castro."

That's from Jerry Brown envisions still another public role by Daniel Wood Christian Science Monitor 11/06/06:

Outside the state, he is perhaps best remembered as the Jesuit seminarian who, in 1974, became California's youngest governor at age 36. While in office he dated singer Linda Ronstadt and lobbied for state use of communications satellites back when cellphones were the size of canned hams.

Here in California, Mr. Brown is known as one of the most visionary and uncategorizable politicians in state history. Now mayor of Oakland, Brown has served two terms as governor, run for president three times, and now at age 68 appears poised to become the state's attorney general, the second most powerful politician in America's most populous state.

Brown I'm sure knows that Schwarzenegger's environment-friendly stance has so far been nothing but election-year posturing. But he's nominally taking Schwarzenegger's word for it and says:

"We are going to work together to persuade other jurisdictions to adopt sensible laws to control greenhouse gases and control global warming," says Brown. "We have to bring other states and Congress along. I think the governor of California and the attorney general will be a very powerful team to bring that message to the nation's capital."

Though Brown is a Democrat and Schwarzenegger a Republican, some analysts say Brown could wield a degree of influence on the governor's evolving agenda in other matters - wage discrimination, consumer protection, education, and law-and-order issues.

I've criticized other California Democrats for not allowing Schwarzenegger to pose as bipartisan in the election year. I haven't really heard Jerry doing that, and we only have excerpts from the interview here, so he was presumably resonding to a hypothetical question about Schwarzenegger being re-elected, although the polls indicate that's highly likely at this point. Besides, I really like Jerry and I'm willing to cut him a break.

I've often said that what many people find so mysterious about Brown's perspective actually has a lot to do was that he was trained for four years to be a Jesuit priest but then went into politics.


He more-or-less says that himself, though it got placed at the very bottom of the article:

Brown's own summation of his long contribution to California highlights his unconventional path in life.

"I am a person who had almost four years' experience in pre-Vatican II seminary. Latin, silence, ... and a very strict system," Brown said. "What does that bring? A totally different perspective on today's world. It gives me a sense of distance and perspective in which to look at our contemporary issues."

The Monitor piece is quite a good article on Jerry Brown that gives a good perspective on his career to this point.

Tags: california politics, jerry brown, schwarzenegger

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