Jerry Brown | Interview 19 | September 10, 2019

Interview #19: September 10, 2019

SHAFER: Today is Tuesday, September 10, 2019. We're at Mountain House with Governor Jerry Brown. This is session nineteen, I believe?

MEEKER: That's right.

SHAFER: With Martin Meeker and Todd Holmes from The Bancroft Library, and Scott Shafer, Queena Kim, and Guy Marzorati from KQED. So, we got quite a ways through yesterday, Governor, your first--or I guess I should say your third term really. But there are a couple things we wanted to circle back to, including education. And you alluded, I think, yesterday to the Local Control Funding Formula, and that seemed like it had some roots--something you'd been thinking about for a while. Talk about that, and why you thought that that was important and how you went about putting that policy together.

BROWN: Well, when I first heard, it was called the, I think, student weighted formula, some word with weighted formula as part of it [weighted student funding formula]. And what it is, is a reaction to the proliferation of categorical programs, which at the time that I adopted this new law, there were over fifty 00:01:00categorical programs, like--

SHAFER: And just say what that is.

BROWN: Well, it's a program under a specific category. It could be special ed., it could be the Miller-Unruh Reading Act, it could be for transportation, it could be for gifted children, it could be for disabled children, it could be hot lunches. What it is is instead of giving money in bulk to school boards at the local level, it gives money with specific objectives and rules on how it should be spent. And so what it does, it allows the legislature, or in some cases the Congress, to drive or attempt to drive behavior at the local school-site level.

And the problem is that over the years, these programs multiplied and became very conflicting, and often required applications that required specific research to qualify. And around these programs grew up lobbyists and specialists, consultants, that were hired by the local school districts to get as much of this money as possible. So it wasn't transparent, it wasn't obvious, and it certainly was conflictual, because there are so many different sources of funding, they had many different rules. They had different audit procedures. And when you maybe are playing with forty different revenue sources, you have to hire people at the local level to manage the pursuit of these funds and also 00:03:00their management--and then their auditing after the fact. So it creates a lot of out-of-classroom employees to deal with the complexity of the funding streams.

So the idea was create a weighted formula. And the weights would be, for example: is there a disproportionate number of low-income kids? Is there a disproportionate number of foster-care kids? Is there a large number of kids whose first language at home is not English? Those were the factors we put into the Local Control Funding Formula, so that became a formula that you automatically qualified, once you described your student population. That is contrasted with special employees at the school district level, and for charter 00:04:00schools at the charter school site, having to wade through hundreds, if not thousands, of pages and formulas and various other obstacles to get the money to carry on basic education.

And all of that comes out of our political system, wherein a problem at the local school is perceived as not just a problem in Los Angeles or Berkeley or Sacramento, but a state problem, called the problem of education. And then legislators and governors talk about it, and they want to pass bills. And then when they pass bills, they get laws--and the laws then direct behavior at the local level. And over the decades, there have been more and more mandates, 00:05:00prescriptive commands, coming out of the state capital, telling people at the local level what to do. And those commands are embodied, not just in laws, but in regulations that are promulgated as a result of the laws. And then, in addition, there are then lawsuits and disputes. Sometimes they're political, sometimes they're legal, about the meaning of these rules, and whether someone complied with them or they didn't.

And so the student weighted formula, which resulted in the Local Control Spending Formula, was a way to cut back these many different programs and give the money in bulk, where if we just give it by formula, it would show up and 00:06:00would make the job at the local level simpler, allowing more money to be spent on kids. Okay, now that's the idea. Immediately, after the law is passed, there are groups that are called equity groups. That's what we call them. And they were complaining that there was too much discretion/latitude at the local level, and they weren't spending the money on poor kids and on the kinds of kids that needed the money. So they asked the State Board of Ed. to pass rules to tie the hands of local educators, so that the preferences of the people in Sacramento--the interest groups, some of the legislators, would get effectuated. 00:07:00And I fought those, as did my appointees to the board.

But it sharply puts into relief here, this problem or question: how much should we trust a local school district, and how much should they trust teachers, versus how much we should prescribe in standard lock-step formulas what the teachers and what the school boards have to do? When you make more and more minute prescriptions, you open the way for more and more lawsuits. Because to the extent that there are detailed orders or rules, telling what the school has to do, they're going to miss details. They're not going to comply totally. Because first of all, by now, we're not talking about one law--we're talking 00:08:00about hundreds and hundreds of pages of complex law that very few people understand. Therefore, you're dependent on consultants, dependent on lawyers--and people make mistakes. And the whole idea of this local control formula was to simplify that, number one. And number two was to get money disproportionately to those in need, as opposed to what it was historically, whereas the most money went to the people with the most expensive property in the school districts.

So that was the idea, and it continues, because schools don't perform in the way the people want. In fact, in California probably in most grades in the key courses, less than 50 percent are at grade average. And among low-income kids of various backgrounds, that is more like 20 percent or even lower. So that then 00:09:00says there's a problem, and the answer, when you're in Sacramento, is a Sacramento answer. That is: more money, more rules. And often the more money is tied to very particular rules, which makes it harder to use. But that is the tendency because of the distrust, first of all of the people of California in the public school, and then of the state politicians about how local schools are performing. And they say if the scores are so low, they must be doing something wrong, and therefore we need a law to make them do what's right. And the reality is, is that there's only so much you can do when you're sitting in one city called Sacramento and you are trying to shape the behavior of six million children and over three hundred thousand teachers. And that is why I developed 00:10:00the concept of subsidiarity: let's trust local people. The problem with that is things happen, things go wrong, and therefore, people want more and more rules.

[side conversation deleted]

SHAFER: Okay. So, it seems like there's a bit of a paradox, because you're saying--you said, if I heard you right, that there's a distrust among people of their local schools?

BROWN: Yes--no, of education in general, public schools in general.

SHAFER: And yet, like Prop. 30, that whole campaign was based on the schools

BROWN: Yeah, right.

SHAFER: If you get the teachers' backing, it's important for ballot measures.

BROWN: Yeah, very, very important.

SHAFER: So how do you square those things, that people don't trust--?

BROWN: Well, I don't square them. They just happen to be both true. You wouldn't deny that there are all these rules and laws every year dealing with education--churning, churning. Every year there's more and more--it never stops.

SHAFER: But that's a Sacramento problem.

BROWN: That's a Sacramento phenomenon. But there is a general feeling that public schools are deficient. Even though people support them, and maybe because of that want to give them more money, give the teachers more money.

SHAFER: Yeah, so I mean education obviously is the biggest part of the state budget, almost half roughly. When you were there, when you think about education, it is such a huge portion of the state's responsibility. And yet, like you said, it's so byzantine and there are so many laws and rules. And do you feel--how confident do you feel that government, whether it's state or local, can fix what's wrong with schools?

BROWN: Well, they obviously haven't fixed it, because the scores--well, they've gone up, but the gap among different groups hasn't changed. There are large discrepancies in the society, and those are manifest in the student performances, so that's a continuing challenge.

SHAFER: So is it basically a matter of you have to try something, and the local control formula seemed like a--?

BROWN: Well, local control was to put the responsibility at the local level. At the local level, school board members are elected. And yet, the legislator feels that the local schools can't be trusted and they have all sorts of indicia for that. You know, the suspensions of certain kinds of students, or certain kids getting into privileged programs more, white kids getting into these gifted programs, and minorities often--very much the case. So then, they have to pass more rules, and they've been passing more rules. Certainly, since probably the time of Max Rafferty and then Wilson Riles, at the time my father was governor, 00:13:00and it has been one churn after another. So it's one of the factors of our modern society social structure. There's a lot of discontent, and it's also reflected in the political floundering of democratic systems around the world. So, in America and in California, the public school is part of that sense of drift and conflict that we see.

SHAFER: How much do you, of the difficulties that schools are facing, do you ascribe to the changing demographics and the fact that schools now--there are sometimes a dozen different languages spoken in the school?

BROWN: That's a problem. And the fact is that state scores track income. The higher the income, the better the scores. The lower the income, the worse the 00:14:00scores--with some exceptions. So this is just part of the stratification of society. In fact, a guy's written a whole book on it called The Meritocracy Trap. And what he says is that elite education, and the education of more affluent people, results in those affluent people getting the best jobs--and having jobs where a primary function is eliminating mid-level jobs through automation, which results in more people falling to lower levels in the economy and fewer people being at the highest levels of the economy. And that's reflected in our school system.

19-00:14:45

SHAFER: Yeah. I'm going to switch gears a little bit and talk about high-speed rail. So obviously, you inherited--that's something you inherited, but something you embraced as well, as governor. And you decided to use some of the cap-and-trade money to basically keep that project alive. Why did you feel that 00:15:00that was so important, and--?

BROWN: Well, first of all, I felt that getting rid of it would be difficult. So we had a project. It's putting people to work, people voted for it--and then pull the plug on it? That gave me pause. It also gave me pause to go ahead, but I had to choose one way or the other. As a matter of fact, my wife Anne was very big on the high-speed rail. She thought that was good, and--

SHAFER: So you had a lively conversation about either pulling the plug or moving forward?

BROWN: Well, we have lively conversations all the time, and that's what everyday life is. It's very alive. But I took a train, I took the Lark to LA, Glendale is where we got off, and then took another train to Riverside, when I was five. It 00:16:00was during World War II, 1943. I liked the train, and we took the Daylight coming back. And I've ridden trains in Europe. I've ridden high-speed rail in France, in Japan, and in China. And it seems quite good to me. So also, your goal with high-speed rail, or the characteristic that we're building, is to make it run on renewable energy, as opposed to gasoline or diesel. So that's a big thing, and so it just makes a lot of sense. And the fact that thirteen other countries have very high-speed rail, and another four or five have moderately high-speed rail in terms of the speed--and I believe China has eight thousand miles of high-speed rail. I heard that term. I didn't verify it--but whatever, 00:17:00they built quite a lot.

America has no high-speed rail except what's going on in California. Some people say well, it's obsolete. We can all get into the hyperloop and go underground like gophers, or something, and be pushed by vacuum tube or something, from one place to another. I do think rail is very viable. It can be made renewable. And I'd even go so far as to say we should be investing in rail for the trucks, to get them off the highway. I can tell you the highways in California--I-80 is often congested. I went there the other day, was stalled after Vallejo for over an hour for an accident. We need the alternative of rail for both passenger and freight, and we need moderately high-speed rail, but we could use very high-speed rail.

It makes a lot of sense, but it takes upfront money. To get upfront money takes 00:18:00a lot of consensus, which we don't have in this society. And because of the partisan divide, it was okay when Schwarzenegger did it--maybe even when Bush was talking in this vein. But once it becomes a Democratic program, all the Republicans have to oppose it. And because it costs money, it's easily stigmatized. As a matter of fact, the polls show it has a lot of support. But it's very close, like fifty-fifty, forty-five/fifty-five, are the polls that I've seen.

But whether the polls say it or not, you can't keep adding more cars. How many cars can we have? And cars, over the decades, have increased faster than the population, so the rate of increase is faster. And I think the idea of putting people in all this steel and plastic and moving them around by taking fossilized 00:19:00fuels that took millions of years to evolve, is stupid. I mean we didn't think it through, and so we need to substantially alter that. And trains running on renewable energy is one way to do that, but it takes political support--and I did get a fair amount. And we got it through the legislature.

SHAFER: I mean the [California] High-Speed Rail Authority has been criticized for mismanagement, and there's been a lot of changeover in terms of leadership. Do you think that's contributed to--?

BROWN: Sure, but managing big projects--they're hard. First of all, they write the laws with this specificity, like categorical programs. The authors of the high-speed rail wrote in such a way to make it extremely difficult to actually carry it out, because they dictate so many decisions ahead of time--years before 00:20:00the actual building occurs. So they obviously don't know the future. They're not prophets or fortune-tellers, and so now they are locked into formulas that are a part of the bond issue. And you can't change it unless you go back to the voters. So the very instrument of the bond proposition made it very difficult. That's number one. Number two, the Obama Administration wanted it--pushed it and wanted certain things, wanted to start in the Central Valley, to approve how the speed would work. And then thirdly, all the, through the environmental and other lawsuits, anybody can stop it. We've literally had dozens and dozens of lawsuits. We've lost cases, then we've won them on appeal. And the management of large projects is extremely difficult in America, much more difficult than 00:21:00anywhere else in the world.

SHAFER: More so in California too?

BROWN: More in California. And the project was very confused when I took it over. Whether it was confused because the people who ran it were confused, or whether it was--not just the engineering, but the politics of working out the alignment. You know, you're going to go through--what cities do you go through? Where is it? And each one along the way wants to get in the act. And so there's this hemming and hawing, and the head of the high-speed rail was an engineer. And to put up with the political back and forth--that took another skill set. So I do think we got to that point when I came in, but it's been challenging. And people talk about a cost overrun. I don't know. There's some cost overrun because of the lawsuits, but it's inherently--it costs what it does, and we have 00:22:00a lot of rules that drive up costs.

SHAFER: Just quickly--I don't know if we can do it quickly. But one of the issues, of course, is CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act]. Not just for high-speed rail, but for a lot of things.

BROWN: For everything.

SHAFER: You seemed to flirt early in your first--

BROWN: Flirt? I wouldn't call it flirting.

SHAFER: You know, you considered, you considered some sort of reform to CEQA, and you talked about that.

BROWN: Right, right.

SHAFER: Obviously, that's a very heavy lift in Sacramento.

BROWN: Right.

SHAFER: So what made you--a) how important do you think it is? I mean if you could get that done, as king of California, would you have done it?

BROWN: I can't tell you how important it is. It's moderately important. But the Environmental Quality Act does provide some value in making people think closer. But it's also used by competitors. One shopping center owner fights another shopping center; that's happened in Southern California. Unions use it to get 00:23:00project labor agreements, which are agreements that make all the workers on a project be part of the union. So they use that kind of gun-to-your-head approach. And cities, like in the high-speed rail would use it to block--Kings County has been suing the High-Speed Rail Authority for several years. But can you make a change? And the typical is you have environmental support to leave it alone, and you have the labor unions who like the complexity, because that's how they achieve their goal of lawsuit, negotiate, get project labor agreements.

[side conversation deleted]

SHAFER: Yeah, well, we're talking about CEQA. You know--

BROWN: Oh yeah, that part is very simple. The environmentalists are a strong force in Sacramento--at least a blocking force. And the labor unions, as well, want to keep the complexity as it is, for purposes of their labor organizing strategy.

SHAFER: How close did you get, or how hard did you try, to get some kind of a deal?

BROWN: Oh, we tried there, but it was very painful to get very, very modest changes. So there's no appetite to do that. So it's just not going to happen until--maybe with a football stadium you get a little bit of change. But not a great deal.

SHAFER: Chase Center seemed to go up overnight in Francisco.

BROWN: But the other one--they were able to defeat one, and then they got this one, so that happened. How's the traffic, by the way?

SHAFER: Well, we're going to find out tonight, because there's a ballgame at the--the Giants are playing and there's a Dave Matthews concert at the same time. So that's going to be a--Carmageddon, perhaps. We'll see. CEQA, I think, was signed by Governor Reagan.

BROWN: Yes, it was. But it was applied to private projects for the first time by the California Supreme Court in a 7-2 opinion called the Friends of Mammoth 00:25:00case. So it wasn't just public projects, it was private projects--housing developments, for example.

SHAFER: 7 to 2 or--what did you say--5-2?

BROWN: 7 to 2, no, pardon me, 5-2.

SHAFER: 5 to 2. So your father didn't have to deal with that, that law.

BROWN: No, he never had to deal with that.

SHAFER: What difference do you think that made for the things he got done?

BROWN: Well, like the water plan. Freeways were cheaper. No, it cost money. But on the other hand, a lot of buildings, a lot of projects, cause a lot of environmental damage, and sprawl has its own problem. And the roads are being built to force people to drive further and further, and that creates carbon emissions, sprawl, and it's not the way you would plan it if you kind of knew where you were going from the beginning. So no one knew, when they did the 00:26:00California Environmental Quality Act, what would happen. It was not thought through. There was the National Environmental Quality [Policy] Act under Nixon, and the California one was just a tagalong after the national.

SHAFER: Yeah. One of the issues you had to deal with as governor was the drought--and you had to deal with that the first time you were governor as well. Yeah, the bricks in the toilets, I think, was your thing?

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: How did you think about that? When you don't know when a drought's going to end, I can imagine it would be a little frightening.

BROWN: Well, you just conserve as much as you can. Of course with a dam, you don't know whether to let the water out at a certain rate, because it may rain the next year and you didn't need to let it out. And you emptied your dam--or maybe the drought continues and you let too much out, and then you're out of water completely. So they have to manage that, the reservoirs, very carefully. 00:27:00And the federal government does that along with the state.

SHAFER: And do you think--obviously, you've talked about the Delta tunnels, and that may or may not--

BROWN: Yeah, but by the way, managing the water is not what politicians do. That's the water experts. So when you say manage the drought--I mean yeah, the governor can call for conservation, set some goals, but most of that's driven by experts.

SHAFER: But of course you tied it in with climate change.

BROWN: Yeah, I tied it in rhetorically, but also in some of the policies.

SHAFER: What, what did you--and this is an obvious question. But what did you notice, before and after Trump was elected, in terms of the progress that California could make, and other states were making, with regional compacts? What changed for you, as governor, when that happened?

BROWN: On climate change?

SHAFER: Yeah.

BROWN: Well, Trump is, as I've read somewhere, he's attempted to terminate over 00:28:00fifty environmental regulations, not the least of which are the mileage standards, the methane standards. The clean air rules that Obama announced. So Trump is on a tear here. He's a one-man demolition squad to prevent any realistic steps being taken regarding climate change.

SHAFER: That gave you a bigger--gave you a bigger bully [pulpit].

BROWN: Well, yeah, rhetorically, it does that. It makes the climate change movement more newsworthy, and therefore more salient. But it's not just Trump. Fox News, Wall Street Journal, conservative media--virtually the entire Republican Party, Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate. All these people are dedicated deniers. Deniers of the science, deniers of any kind of consensus 00:29:00building to deal with climate change, which they just abhor--and it's very dangerous. It's going to cost untold money and suffering because of the willful blindness of all these people.

MEEKER: I want to go back just a few minutes and ask more about the drought. The drought lasted basically from 2011 to 2017. It didn't really start raining again till the '16-'17 season.

BROWN: Yeah.

MEEKER: I think that the drought was officially named in 2014, but there were no major restrictions until 2015. Are these decisions that are made solely by the water agency? What role did you play in this?

BROWN: No, it's mostly the experts. The governor is more of an announcer. These are complex questions. Governors don't know--I mean what were we talking? Water, 00:30:00precipitation, with a state from Oregon to Mexico? And the weather, knowing what that is--that's very, very expert-centric. Now, obviously, I talked to the Environmental Protection Agency, the state Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Water Resources. We talk about it, and there's a political element of how you roll it out and maybe how you pace it, but it's basically you're just listening to the experts.

MEEKER: There was, I think, a widespread anxiety amongst the citizens of the state of California in the midst of all this, because it is something that is a bit out of our control, you know. And of course there were all the media reports about the bad actors watering their lawns in Palm Springs. You know, and then here you are up in a pretty arid environment. I'm sure during that period of time there was very little rain, and probably a lot of trees were looking 00:31:00stressed. Are you, at any point, thinking okay, we really need to get on top of this. We really need to ask the citizens of the state to begin to restrict their water use much more than they are.

BROWN: Oh, we did. The water board set out--this is really the water board doing this, but I certainly encouraged conservation measures and technological innovation through the water bond. [Proposition 1. Water Bond. Funding for Water Supply, Treatment, and Storage Projects.]. I passed the water bond--that's $7 billion. There was a lot of money in that for innovation, technology, helping people get through these things like the drought. And water transfers--I mean we have the California Water Action Plan. That's probably the most comprehensive water strategy developed in California in decades, so that's a real plan, and we talked about it, and it was definitely expert driven, but it's something that I encouraged and improved and disseminated.

MEEKER: And also new regulations around groundwater. [Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014]

BROWN: Groundwater was a big deal, to try to get that. It was a close vote. A lot of resistance on the part of rural legislators/Republicans, but it passed. And that's a very important law, but it will curtail a certain amount of farming because of the overdraft in the Central Valley. And as the groundwater management law reaches certain milestones, overdraft pumping of water bringing down the water table will have to be stopped. They'll have to recharge the aquifer, which means they can't put water on their crops, which means you can't produce as much crop--and that will happen. And estimates vary as much as a 10 percent reduction.

MEEKER: In the midst of droughts there's always calls for new reservoirs coming from certain quarters. What did you think of those ideas in the midst of this 00:33:00last drought?

BROWN: We thought a certain amount of storage is good. Some people like storage under the ground. Republicans like storage above the ground. We put money for reservoirs, to be decided by authorities, that we set in motion by the bond act. And that's still going on today. So it's kind of an expert judgment. What does it cost to build a dam? How much water do you really capture, and what impact does it have on downstream users? Because whenever you build a dam, you're blocking water--so what happens during the time you block the water? So the theory is you're going to have excess water, because of the rain, and you're capturing the excess, and then you make it available during the drier years. Well, that works, but the cost benefit of a lot of dams is not favorable, and 00:34:00that's why it's so hard to get them approved--because they don't make economic sense.

MEEKER: When you're working with experts in a rarified field of knowledge such as water management, do you have a methodology or a philosophy that you approach working with these individuals, making some difficult decisions that have broad implications?

BROWN: No, there's no methodology other than inquire, get relevant people to talk about it, and that's the process. First of all, when you start as governor, you hire good people. You hire good subject-matter experts to run the Department of Water Resources, Air Board, things like that. And then, you have to manage it through good people in the governor's office--and that's what we did. So the Water Bond Act: my administration drafted that, and we got it through the 00:35:00legislature, and then we got it passed. So that was very widely supported. But again, a lot of this is staff driven. The staff of the executive branch. So you know, we talk about representative democracy. A lot of this is technology and scientific based.

MEEKER: Your water resources chief was Felicia [Marcus]--

BROWN: She's the water board. [California State Water Resources Control Board] And then we have the Department of Water Resources. One's the water quality, the water permitting, and the other is the building--management of the dams and the building.

MEEKER: Yeah, so Felicia Marcus was water resources, right?

BROWN: Yeah, right.

MEEKER: She stayed until Newsom replaced her pretty quickly. So you have any thoughts on that transition?

BROWN: No, it's pretty normal. I mean usually you change people. And it's a controversial body, the water board and managing the water. If you look at the 00:36:00historic flow of river-- obviously, it's dramatically reduced in modern times. But it's reduced to allow farmers to grow crops, half of which are probably exported to foreign countries, but it generates money. And so now there's an effort, because of the Endangered Species Act, to restrict the diversion of the amount of water that's currently being diverted. And the water board is going through that process, and that's a very painful, contentious process, because you're taking away something that people have enjoyed.

Holmes: Governor, just really quick on that same note, agriculture used to be California's primary industry, before the rise of Silicon Valley. They are also the top water user in the state.

BROWN: Yeah, they still are the top water user.

Holmes: You were discussing those tough decisions. I know agriculture, the agricultural industries were very nervous about any kind of restrictions or any other aspects in regards to water.

BROWN: Right.

Holmes: Did you see this as trying to protect an important resource, but also a really viable sector of the economy? I mean how did you see a middle path between those two?

BROWN: Well, this is true of all these things, whether it's the minimum wage, the overtime rules--in this case, management of groundwater. We have an overdraft, and the California Aqueduct is sunk in places. It's going down, so you have to deal with that. And people are taking water, but they're taking water by mining ancient water that's been in the ground for I don't know how many tens of thousands of years. So they're taking a resource that won't 00:38:00replenish, unless they reduce their amount of use. So that's what you have to do. It's not just all about planting an almond tree and digging a hole and taking water and selling half your almonds to the Chinese, or wherever the hell they're going to sell them. You have to be good stewards of the land, the water, the natural habitat, the species.

Some people would say the nonhuman species don't count for much, so just forget about it. Other people would say well, you're exaggerating. It isn't all that bad. But I think generally now farmers know that they've got to stop the overdraft. They would just like to get more water out of the rivers, and the environmentalists would say the salmon is about, is on the verge of--in danger, maybe even extinction. There are real problems there. And the other 00:39:00species--there's a risk there. So the question is how much do you want to alter your landscape, and how much do you want to humanize it? Because human beings live in the environment. And at some point the analogy is put forth--and it's like an airplane. You can take a bolt out of the airplane, then you take another bolt, then you take another bolt. When does the plane fall? So human beings are in a web of species, and you have to respect the interconnection of living forms and cycles of nature, like the hydrologic cycle. So that's got to be managed.

And we're on unprecedented territory, because as far as we know, before the white man showed up, there were never more than three hundred thousand people here. Now, that could be off a little bit, one way or the other. But now we've 00:40:00got forty million, and we have thirty million vehicles, and we're using 340 million barrels--no, it's billion, 340 billion barrels of oil every year--so gasoline and diesel. So then what does this do? And we're cutting things down. The wetlands are 5 percent of what they used to be. Some of the rivers are 10 percent of the flow that used to be. So then the question is how much do we want to alter the environment, and at what cost? And that's what the debate is. The environmentalists want to restrict and even roll things back to where they were. And other people say build--it's about money. The economy, the economy is 00:41:00about--that's what it's about. GDP, make cash, sell, create jobs. Other people say no, the natural environment has to be understood and respected, so that's the conflict. And I am inclined toward thinking we have to do more to protect the environment, not less.

SHAFER: I want to ask you about the 2014 reelection. But first, just a big-picture question about staff.

BROWN: What?

SHAFER: You know, you were governor--the first time you were thirty-six years old. In 1975, you took office and you had a--you had a younger, well, you had a team of people around you. Tom Quinn, Gray Davis, Richard Maullin, and others. Now, second time around you had Nancy McFadden, obviously your wife, and others. How did you--how would you, how do you think about the differences, if any, between the kinds of people you wanted around you the first time vers[us]--?

BROWN: Well, it's not about who I--well, I guess it's wanted, but it's really just what happens. It's not like you just sit down, and all of a sudden--blank 00:42:00slate. Oh, who should we have in the governor's office? It doesn't quite work that way. It's relationships, it's who you know--who you know and who they know. So that's how it happened. Now, because I had not been in politics that long--I was secretary of state. Reagan had been governor. It was more uncharted territory.

SHAFER: What do you mean it was uncharted territory?

BROWN: Well--did I know what Medi-Cal was? Did I know about how the Department of Forestry worked? Did I know about how the fish and game worked? Did I know how corrections, highways--I mean there's an incredible amount of activity. If you look at the law books of California, the California code, it's millions and 00:43:00millions of words, and who knows what that is? Nobody, really--but some people know more, that have an acquaintance with it.

So, obviously when I come back in 2011, it's a lot different than 1975. So a) I'm older, b) I've had a whole life experience. I've been reading the New York Times for fifty years--maybe even the Chronicle or the LA Times when I lived in the southland. And I've met people. I've traveled all over the world, so I know more, and so also I was mayor and I was attorney general. So that all--and I was governor for eight years before and have twenty-eight years to think about it. So all that produces the result that it did.

SHAFER: When you say you had time to--?

BROWN: So I had more experienced people. Mary Nichols was a young lady when I first put her in the [California Air Resources Board], in 19--I think, 77. Diana Dooley became the health department--she was a young lady, had a young baby when she was in her twenties, because she's now in her sixties. So there it is. You just have more and--but the whole government got more complex. It grew. But I would just say I knew--it's just a question of if you work at something, you know more about it, and I certainly knew better. I mean Nancy was more experienced. Gray Davis had worked for the Clintons, had worked for PG&E.

SHAFER: Like Nancy did.

BROWN: Nancy did, and Nancy worked for Gray Davis, so those were invaluable experiences--learning. A lot of times we kind of think going to school is where we learn things. But on the job you learn things. If you're a reporter, writing 00:45:00stories. If you're a professor, doing actual research for decades or teaching classes. So that's the same thing with myself and politics. That's kind of like an obvious--it's kind of duh. [laughs]

SHAFER: Well, it is, but on the other hand, you know, as you said, you had a lot of time to think about it between the two times you were governor. You might have reflected, perhaps, on the kind of administration it was, the way it ran, versus the kind you--?

BROWN: Yeah, I don't think of those--usually it's about issues. The medfly, is it the big, massive deficit? The groundwater? I mean is it a drought? See, this stuff happens and you respond. We're creatures of the news, and news is a creature to some degree--to a great degree--of reality. So you just show up, you get in the ring, and you start punching. It's that simple. You don't have a 00:46:00process. That's academic. If you want to get a master's in public administration, you'll find out there are four ways to do this and there are three ways to do that. Okay. But when you're there, that kind of formal scheme is the last thing in your mind.

SHAFER: How would you describe the differences between your first time as governor and the last time, in terms of how the office ran/how you wanted it to run?

BROWN: Well, I think there were similarities.

SHAFER: Were there differences?

BROWN: The differences: I think Nancy had a tighter grip than I had earlier on and a tighter grip because a) she was older than when we were there in the seventies. More experienced, more knowledgeable. And she had personal strengths as well, so that made a difference. I think in general Diana Dooley at 00:47:00health--compare her to [Jerome A.] "Jerry" Lackner. I mean there's no question--he was a doctor. And then we had another lady who'd had a nursing career. Well, compare that to Diane Dooley, who was working in the governor's office with some supervisory relationship to the Department of Health. That was in the seventies. So now we're in the second decade of the twenty-first century. So all that just goes to experience. That's the big difference.

SHAFER: There was a--I have a sense that, and many who worked for you sense that you--you kind of relished the idea of bringing people in to departments who didn't necessarily have a lot of experience, but who--you liked the way they thought.

BROWN: No, well obviously. You don't want people who you don't like the way they think. I mean bad thinking is never good. And my sense was I wanted--I 00:48:00definitely went with--I talked about a new spirit. I wanted to create--you could say, if I were John Kennedy, I'd say get California moving again. Well, there was that sense that Reagan blocked a lot of liberal initiatives, so I was trying to stir that up. Now, did I fully understand the institutional inertia and the complexity of structures, whether it's the system of roads or whether it's the system of crime and punishment, law and order, or whether it's the way different departments interact with the legislator, with the advocate groups? That, as a body of knowledge, is quite extensive, just the way I described it. So did I 00:49:00know all the things? No. But I certainly knew probably more than Ronald Reagan did. And inherently, we have a system of government where you do have amateurs. Unless they've come from the legislature, they're not going to know. Even in the legislature, they only know how to advocate. They don't know the management, the personalities, the turf battles.

These are all things that you can't believe until they happen. Who would know that people fight on their turf? I learned that in the first time as governor, when we merged occupational health and safety. The health came from the health department; the occupational came from the Division of Industrial Relations. [The Division of Occupational Safety and Health was created by a merger of the Division of Industrial Safety with the Department of Health's Occupational Health Branch] So we put elevator inspectors with health inspectors. And I often thought that they wore a different kind of shoes, that the health people were a little more upscale and their degrees were a little more impressive or 00:50:00complicated, and the elevator inspectors and people looking at--

SHAFER: Pulleys.

BROWN: What do you call a pump for a car, when you elevate a car? A jack. Yeah, all those are inspected by the state. And then we merged them together, and we wanted to put it under--I think we were putting it under the Division of Industrial Relations. And the doctor, a Canadian doctor, I remember: He quit in a huff. He could not be part of industrial relations, because he was a doctor. And so the turf is very strong, and I found that in many areas. I never heard of turf before. Maybe I heard the word. I don't remember. But when you actually see it, people fight very hard.

It's true with the federal government. CIA fights with the FBI, even though there's not businesses. It's not Lyft fighting Uber. It may be forestry fighting with the water department, or the fish and game department. Even fish and game 00:51:00and Department of Water Resources: they fight about things. And they fight--because it's not money. In business, you can--okay, we'll give you this/we'll take that. But in these agencies, it's beliefs, and they identify--no, it's beliefs and identity. And they identify with their bureaucratic micro-universe, and they fight very hard for it. So as the governor, as the leader of all that, it becomes very difficult. First of all, to deal with it--because you can't deal with details that much. You just have to be more general. But then you've got to get good people who make it work. But the good people themselves take on the identity of their agencies, and then they fight.

I remember once with the insurance commissioner, which I appointed at the time, and he was fighting with the agency secretary about putting a particular insurance company in receivership. And this particular insurance company was 00:52:00friendly with [Howard] Berman and [Henry] Waxman, powerful legislators. So the agency, being a little more political, was concerned. But the insurance commissioner thought this insurance company didn't have enough reserves. And when you look at it, they had money, but this insurance--you have to look further ahead and see whether you have enough for the predicted losses that are going to occur. So I remember getting into the middle of that and getting the political pressure. But I did side with the expert, because I thought he knew more than the agency.

So you get a lot--but you can't do that too often, because you just can't spend your whole time mediating disputes. So you need agency secretaries, you need your leader that works for you and your assistants. So that becomes another problem, where then people--and this is a big problem for governors--and 00:53:00probably presidents, that you then start putting more and more people in the governor's office to police all your cabinet secretaries. So now you have department heads and cabinet secretaries--two layers of government, which, by the way, didn't exist in the sixties. And then you have a third layer, which is the governor's office younger unconfirmed political kinds that are running around trying to keep the lid on. And then they fall over each other. So it can quickly devolve into chaos. Or not chaos--

SHAFER: I was going to say, you're making it sound like--chaotic.

BROWN: Well, but you don't know, because until it gets in the paper, it doesn't exist. [Shafer laughs] So that's good, I guess, in some ways. So the governor can't possibly know what the hell is going on. So you're very much a victim or a dependent on the people you appoint, and the stuff that comes out. Like the DMV. 00:54:00You know, the DMV it doesn't--oh my God, the DMV, a big problem there. Well, it's a big problem because the legislature wanted them to be doing motor voting and get everybody registered [to vote]--very complicated. So the modern complexity of administration and technology makes it a very challenging environment, which most of the time goes along, and only every now and then erupts into a problem.

SHAFER: To what extent did you have or want your staff to basically keep those fires and the chaos away from you, so that you could--no?

BROWN: Well, no, but I like to keep away as long as they handle it. But when they keep it away and then it blows up, then nobody likes that.

SHAFER: But that distance in order to be thinking about things.

BROWN: But, yeah. I mean stuff happens. That's what I keep saying. People don't 00:55:00like that. When I say "shit happens," they say "oh, my goodness." Well, that's true. You can't know what is going on. In fact, I read an article on the global indebtedness of governments, corporations, and households. And it talked about the money supply and repos, and collateral for the repos. And now--was this increasing the money supply or not increasing the money supply? So I called a friend of mine, who'd been my secretary of business and transportation, Alan [E.] Rothenberg. And I said, "Alan, what does this all mean?" He said, "I don't know." He didn't understand--he said, "We don't know." He said that's why I diversify my portfolio, and he told me--he'd worked for one of the Rothschilds, and this Rothschild said to him, "I keep 10 percent of my money in gold, gold 00:56:00bricks. Most of the time I feel very foolish, but when something goes wrong, then I'm glad I did." So that all goes to say there's a lot more uncertainty than people generally like to accept. And so because of my experience of that, I'm usually on the lookout for trouble and try to manage it. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't.

SHAFER: Was that Evan's [Evan Westrup] job, to flag those things for you? [laughing]

BROWN: Well, everybody's job is to see what's coming down the road.

SHAFER: So let's talk about 2014. The economy had turned, was turning around. Obviously, Prop. 30 had passed. Things were much better. No one was talking about whether or not California was governable or not, as they were in 2010. How did you--thinking about reelection, I mean did you expect to have a more formidable--?

BROWN: No.

SHAFER: No. Why?

BROWN: The economy is doing well, the deficit's going down. No, as a matter of fact, we had the two measures: the rainy day fund [Proposition 2. State Budget. Budget Stabilization Account. Legislative Constitutional Amendment] and the water bond [Proposition 1]. And I only campaigned for them. I had to use my own campaign funds, which I didn't like, because I was in the ad. And to be in the ad, you can't use ballot-measure money.

SHAFER: What was the strategy there? To just focus on the issues and not talk about all the great things you had done, which is what campaigns usually do?

BROWN: No, just talk--well, yeah, but nobody likes you to pat yourself on the back. That's never attractive. It's better to have a challenge, to lead the charge, which I did. And I changed it, it was going to be, if I had the legislature change and number the measures, call them one and two--one and two for you. It was a very memorable. Because I never liked the--in the old days, I don't think ballot measures ever went over twenty. And then they decided to let 00:58:00it go to a hundred--and beyond. I've always thought that was confusing, when you have three digits--so I was very intent. It was my idea. No one else even thought about it. I wanted to get a one and two, because I knew that would be easy to say and easy to campaign.

SHAFER: So you could just, as governor, make that happen?

BROWN: Well, I got the--no, the legislature.

SHAFER: The legislature, you got them to do that.

BROWN: But I pushed on it.

SHAFER: Yeah, yeah. So you ran against--there were two, I guess, main Republicans: Tim Donnelly, of Minutemen fame. And Neel Kashkari, who had been in the Obama Administration. Did you care which of those two guys emerged?

BROWN: Well, look, it would be easier if it was the Minuteman. Because he was ridiculous, and it would have been even easier. He wouldn't have raised any money. But Kashkari wasn't all that formidable. He was smart, he was quick, but unknown. And if you ask people today, who he is and who ran in 2014, I'd bet 00:59:00there's one in a hundred that could tell you. Which, by the way, goes to a real question. What is it with our politics, that somebody can come out of nowhere, win the nomination, and then as soon as it's finished--leave. That's kind of like it was in the early days, when people kind of rode into California and rode out. I think Burnett came from Oregon and before that from the Midwest, and he quit after a year or two, and I think he left California--or no, maybe he didn't.

SHAFER: I would imagine most governors would prefer to have, as you had most of your time, like a big majority or even a supermajority with your own party.

BROWN: Well--

SHAFER: Was there--what are the pros and cons of that?

BROWN: What do you mean, of your own party or of the election?

SHAFER: Yeah, of your--no, well to have like an easy--a vast majority of the legislature.

BROWN: Oh, you mean the legislature.

SHAFER: Yeah. Yeah, what are the pros and cons of that?

BROWN: Well, the more Democrats you have, then the more moderate legislators 01:00:00you're going to have. The more unreliable, in one sense. They're going to--as the number goes above forty, the districts become more marginal. You get elected in certain Orange County districts, you may not make it. In fact, one guy, one senator was recalled. So there's differences between representing San Francisco and Alameda, and representing the Central Valley. So you're going to get people who are going to be more Republican in their orientation.

SHAFER: I guess what I'm thinking though, is that they could also send you more things that you may not want to sign.

BROWN: Well, they may--they do that too. Oh, you mean they could override a veto?

SHAFER: Well, you have to say--no more. You might have to say no more.

BROWN: Well, they increase the number of bills. They have far too many bills. And it's somewhat scandalous that the legislature can't possibly understand the bills they have to vote on. They can't, there's too many of them. Challenging. 01:01:00And they have only minutes when they leave--I only get, they only pass maybe a fourth of the bills--maybe a third, I don't know. But so you already winnowed it down, and it comes down to my desk. I have a team. I don't know how many people--twelve? Well, we have professionals, and then we have staffers, and they're going over it. And they write up summaries, and we get letters from all the department heads. We get letters from legislators. So I've got a lot of information, and I work full-time, usually for twelve days, or at the end of the second year--thirty days. So that's a lot of time--and then, and it's still challenging. Less challenging in my sixteenth year than it was in my first year, but still very challenging. So the legislature, particularly with term limits and all, it's quite challenging.

SHAFER: How often would you sign--

BROWN: So it's very staff driven, that's kind of what it is.

SHAFER: Yeah. How often would you sign bills that you really didn't want to sign, but you felt like, for one reason or another, you had to?

BROWN: Well, I don't know what had to means. Do you want to be effective? Do you want to sign bills that make you less effective and irritate people that you need for something else? So this is not about two plus two equals four, and three plus three equals six. You're dealing with human beings, and I mean if I would have applied a strict standard of is this bill needed? Is it clear? I mean I could veto many, many, many more bills. But the legislature, this is their bill. They like it, they need it. They're trying to look like they're effective. So if you make them look ineffective, that's not going to be very helpful to the relationship. And you have to work with the legislature. The governor is only one element here. Between the legislature, and then the courts.

SHAFER: Yeah. What about--you had one debate with Kashkari, and I think it was 01:03:00on--was it the NFL "Monday Night Football" night, opening--?

BROWN: Right.

SHAFER: Yeah, how did--who came up with that as an option? [laughing]

BROWN: I have no idea. Ask Evan [Westrup]. I don't know.

SHAFER: I mean was the goal, do you think, to--?

BROWN: No, well--I don't remember if we knew about it ahead of the time. I have no idea. That may be known, but I don't remember.

SHAFER: Yeah, but you felt you had to do one?

BROWN: Yeah. Well, better to do it than people complain about it.

SHAFER: About not doing it.

BROWN: But no, the debates don't get that much coverage, any way you look at it. They're not the biggest thing in the campaign. When I was an incumbent--no incumbent ever lost, except Culbert Olson, running for a second term. Although no one was ever running for a fourth term, so it's hard to kind of measure, hard to know where things fall historically. But obviously, as an incumbent, with a 01:04:00rising economy, with solving the principal problem that was perceived--namely, the deficit, how could there be anything else but a victory? So why would a debate have anything to do with the price of eggs?

SHAFER: How lucky do you think you were?

BROWN: Oh, completely lucky! What do you mean, luck is--it's all, you know, it's a lot of luck. Now, you can screw it up. George Bush, the second Bush, went into Iraq, and he did that on his own, which is a total disaster. But then the recession came, and he didn't have much-- So, I didn't have a recession, so that was helpful, and no major scandals. No electricity blackouts, no riots in the streets, no mass crime wave--so all that was helpful. The governor doesn't control those things.

SHAFER: Yeah. One of the issues that Neel Kashkari tried to get traction on, and 01:05:00people like Chad Mayes and other Republicans talk about, is poverty.

BROWN: Yeah, they talk about it.

SHAFER: Yeah, what do you think of that strategy?

BROWN: What do I think of poverty?

SHAFER: [laughing] No, of that as an issue, of Republicans--because they do keep talking about it.

BROWN: Yeah, but no one's listening. I mean the Republicans are in support of the current stratification and increasingly privileging the most well off, as witnessed by--the Trump tax cut was universally approved by Republicans. But that tax cut went primarily to corporations, which then--I think half the money or more went to buy back their shares or giving dividends. And the number of people who own stock is a restricted/more affluent part of America. So if they're talking about poverty, they're not being honest, because you can't 01:06:00redirect the wealth of America upward to the few, and expect there not to be more and more people in poverty.

SHAFER: So that when they say well, look: Democrats control the legislature, they control every statewide office, the governor's office, and there's this growing poverty--

BROWN: There's poverty.

SHAFER: This real problem, so they'll say like--

BROWN: There's really a problem--same as there is in England, there is in China, there is in Brazil, so what else is new?

SHAFER: So, it's unfair to say Democrats have been in charge and run the table, and control every--?

BROWN: Well, can we ever go and have no problems? That's not conceivable. The whole game of politics is there's a problem, and I can do it better. That's what it means to have an election. It doesn't mean that--well, what was the problem? Was he saying I caused poverty?

SHAFER: No, no, no--just Democrats. That Democrats can't, think they're--

BROWN: Well, let's say that we have more poverty because we have environmental rules, we have high taxes on the rich--and they'd be spending more money creating jobs, which I think is patently absurd. Because they're not spending more money. Why are all the corporations buying their stock back? There's only one reason: they don't know what else to do with their money. They have no ideas. They're not going to invent a new Apple phone--maybe Apple will, but the average corporation is buying back shares. And by the way, that's very nice for the owners, because they get cash. But it's also a statement: why, if a company has money, wouldn't it do more of what it's doing? Well, maybe we have enough of what it's doing, and they don't need any more money. So then why do they need a tax cut? Well, they can get it. And the people who are talking about poverty are the ones who say we need a tax cut--or at least they don't oppose it. So I'd say that's a very bankrupt position.

SHAFER: Yeah. At some point, I think maybe it was--was it the state-of-the-state 01:08:00address, you unveiled your playing cards with pictures of Sutter and Colusa, the dogs. How did that come about?

BROWN: I can't remember. Maybe Evan thought it up. I don't know.

SHAFER: I mean those dogs became--what impact do you think, having those--?

BROWN: Not much impact, and it was nice. I don't think it had impact.

SHAFER: Really?

BROWN: But at least it got that--well, at least a lot of people knew my dog Sutter. That was good, and Sutter had his own Twitter account and Facebook, so that was fun. Now, whether it got the idea over--it's hard for me to tell. It helped reinforce the notion there is a deficit. We had the little cards, what--save your bones, or whatever. We had many little things. They were very cute and they were interesting. I was concerned that the legislature might be offended, that I'm treating the matter so lightly, but it came out fine.

SHAFER: Well, Holly Mitchell, I think at one point said, you know, "Bark if you don't like poverty," I think?

BROWN: [laughing] But you said the other day, I was thinking after you left, you said Holly Mitchell was upset at what part of the criminal law?

SHAFER: I was wrong. I was wrong. It was poverty that we were talking to her about.

BROWN: Yeah, I knew--well, I corrected you on that, right?

SHAFER: You did, yeah. [laughing] Well, you pushed back. But no, and she did say that she felt like she had to teach you things about what it's like to grow up in poverty.

BROWN: Yeah, well that--yeah, that's a questionable statement.

SHAFER: Why?

BROWN: Well, the teaching of--do I have to teach you what it's like, what is in politics? Maybe. But I think the idea of one human being teaching another is--unless it's a master/apprentice kind of relationship, is a little bit silly.

SHAFER: Yeah, okay. Let's move on.

BROWN: And poverty: we should all go to Bangladesh then, or places in the world 01:10:00where there's--go to Burma and see--the distress that's out there in the world, it's varying degrees. And so if you say, "Well, you don't know what it's like to grow up in poverty." Well, we don't know what it's like--obviously, everyone has their own experience. But even Americans don't understand what it's like somewhere else, so there's a lot of stress out there.

SHAFER: So the criticism that some--

BROWN: Well, I think we need to imagine the variety of human experience, you know, and I think there's a point--if you grew up very poor in a black family, that's different than growing up in a middle-class white neighborhood. I agree with that. But that isn't the only blind spots that we have. In fact, I was 01:11:00reading an article that came to me in my email, from a historical site, about a concentration camp for children in Poland, that I'd never heard of before--and so I read it. And I thought to myself oh God, there was a horrible thing during--by the Nazis. And I thought to myself, well, this is something you ought to know. We ought to know about these things. And I don't think people think about it, because whatever they were doing, in the forties in Germany and Poland, could happen again. And therefore, we should be on the lookout for problems that maybe develop slowly, as they did in Germany. And therefore, not just understanding what black poverty is like, but learning about the different ways human beings have lived and treated each other, and whether those things could happen again--which they obviously could. And are we going--what are we doing to forestall that? And certainly trying to prevent hatred and 01:12:00discrimination, those are all very important things.

But I think we all have a need to be--if you want to say educated, or we all have a need to learn a lot more of what's going on to human beings, and not just in California--but globally. Because there's such a difference between how some people live and other people live, and therefore, we don't think about it that much. And certainly in America, where we're sending our bombs over to Yemen and killing innocent people, and hundreds of other situations, I think it's time to learn. And so I would take Holly Mitchell's counsel, and I would generalize it more broadly and say that's a good idea, but we all need to get educated about difference and things that are important, but we don't know about.

SHAFER: Yeah. What did you--going into your, into 2015, your second term--you 01:13:00weren't going to, probably, be running for statewide office again--unless you ran for school superintendent.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: Which I know you thought about. What did you think--what were your goals for the last four years?

BROWN: I don't know about the goals. I know when Evan brings his interns to meet with us, they always say, "What your three priorities for this year?" And it doesn't show up that way to me. I mean there were things I wanted to do. Get the deficit down, and get the cap and trade extended, get the cap-and-trade funding, the high-speed rail, get the dams, the tunnel projects permitted. But they were just there. I mean it's--so, I don't know. I don't sit down at the beginning of the year--well, I do. I guess the state-of-the-state speech, I've got to think of--that forces me to think okay, I'm going to do this. So I say it there. Usually, that covers it.

SHAFER: In general, do you think--as you said earlier, politicians--you can't 01:14:00see around every corner. You know, you don't know what's going to be confronting you--like in a month. Some--an earthquake could happen, anything could happen--a recession. How much, as a politician, do you think is about just being able to react in the morning and have good judgment?

BROWN: Very important, very important. But it's also important to have goals or a plan--a program, so you have some thrust. If you're just waiting there to be hit, you're going to be in trouble. So you've got to be always doing something. Fighting to fix the deficit, fighting to curb global warming. Fighting for renewable energy. Fighting for a more fair school formula. Fighting to make the prisons and the crime-and-punishment system fair. So I did all those things. So you need a thrust. You have to be doing things that aren't done yet, but which 01:15:00the governor can lead people into doing. So yeah, you do have to have that thrust. But at the same time, you have to be looking out: what do you do? And my two classic examples are medfly, which when I first heard about it I said, "Oh boy, I don't want to think about this." So [Richard] Rominger, who was my secretary--

SHAFER: Ag. secretary.

BROWN: Actually, I didn't deal with it, because I didn't want to--it just didn't seem pleasant to me. So that's a real lesson. I think Gray Davis, with the energy--I don't know all the facts, but the electricity crisis should have been more--I think that's the lesson. When things are difficult, maybe you take a day or two, but you've got to get at them and bring in the best thinking you can. And then there's other things, you don't even know what you're doing. Like Wilson and deregulation, and Davis in the pensions that let police and fire 01:16:00retire at fifty.

SHAFER: You think he didn't know what he was doing? Or he was just paying back the unions.

BROWN: Well, the Republicans voted for it too. Things in Sacramento become obvious. Everybody's for it. So then you do it. And then yeah, deregulation, that was everybody.

SHAFER: It was unanimous.

BROWN: Yeah, was it unanimous?

SHAFER: Pretty much. I think it was. Yeah.

BROWN: Well, deregulation--I remember, I was just thinking the other day, as a matter of fact, of a guy named [Philip M.] "Phil" Hawley--Carter Hawley Hale, the department store guy--the Broadway in Los Angeles. He came to see me because we had an installment rate, I don't know, 18 percent max on installment debt, credit card debt. He said you have to deregulate. This should be competitive. And I remember thinking to myself--well, you know, there's too much debt. If a person thinks your credit card is too high, the credit card of the department 01:17:00store, then just raise the price, or rather lower the price. But they didn't want to raise the price, because then they couldn't sell as many goods, so they wanted more debt. And the way to get more debt, they said deregulate it and it'll be competitive, and that'll bring it down. Well, that's what he said, and the legislature passed that, and I signed it. But I wonder, when I listen to Elizabeth Warren, maybe we should have kept that lid on the credit. So that's another question, we're talking thirty, thirty-five, or forty years later, these questions are still not entirely clear.

But I can tell you, deregulation wasn't just a meme. It was a belief. Senator [Edward] Kennedy was for deregulating the airlines, deregulate the trucking. And 01:18:00the retail industry wanted to deregulate what had been the credit caps, that you couldn't go beyond a certain percentage interest rate. And now, of course, it's much higher. So that was deregulation. This was a real exciting thing that people thought: deregulate the airlines. Now, I guess it has created a lot of cheaper flights, but it has all this dynamic pricing, that at ten o'clock it's one price, at twelve o'clock it's another price. So, things happen because of the mood, and the mood is driven by technology or different changes in the economy, and the politicians go along. I always think it's like a herd. A wolf appears, a sound, and the herd moves to the next hill or over the cliff. And I feel that's the way politics is. They're just--I don't say cows, but herds that 01:19:00are being driven hither and yon by various signs and alarms.

SHAFER: So there's a herd mentality.

BROWN: [laughing] Yeah, I think you could say that. And very powerful, and the media is just--integral to that, because that's called news of the day. And news of the day is almost as certain and as controlled as though it were the Soviet ministry of information. You must report on a silly tweet of Donald Trump. If you don't, your competitor will, and therefore you must report it, or your management/your shareholders--whatever. So in effect, we are prisoners of a certain censorious media regime. [laughter]

MEEKER: And your first two terms, I think, were characterized pretty strongly by a bunch of thinkers who were not part of the herd. You know, Gregory Bateson and Stewart Brand, and those gentlemen. In your last two terms, it's not apparent 01:20:00that there were any individuals that were of that ilk. Was that type of thinking solely brought by you? Or were you working with other people who are introducing new ideas?

BROWN: Well, I think the first term was more exploratory. Now, as I get to the third and the fourth term, it's time more to manage and to deliver. Although I would say that my thinking on nuclear became more focused, with my meetings with William Perry and others that I--Kissinger, Shultz, Sam Nunn. So I have spent a fair amount of time dealing with the nuclear issue. And then of course the climate issue, speaking with people like Michael [E.] Mann, the atmospheric 01:21:00scientist from UC San Diego, [Veerabhadran] Ramanathan, and then people at the ARB [Air Resources Board]. So I'd say climate was an area that was of great interest.

MEEKER: Steward Brand is still active with the Long Now Foundation and other pursuits.

BROWN: Yes.

MEEKER: Do you follow that? Is that of interest to you?

BROWN: I was at a SciFoo [Science Foo Camp] meeting, which is a gathering of three hundred-plus people at Google, on one of Google campuses. Stewart Brand invited me, and I went to that. It was very interesting.

MEEKER: What is SciFoo?

BROWN: It's a gathering--it's a weekend with three hundred very smart people that are doing very interesting things throughout the world, that Google invites. And you spend three days, and your job for Friday night--there's a big space on a big wall, and people go to wall, and there's thirteen or so spaces 01:22:00for meetings, and a certain number of hours on Saturday and Sunday. And people go, and they write what they want to talk about. And then people come--or don't come. And I did mine on climate change and the danger of nuclear blunder. So those were my two sessions, which were well attended, I would say. [laughter] And I went to many others, and I found it very exciting. And Stewart Brand was there, and he gave a little talk on, I think, repair, and that was very interesting. So, very interesting. And then they had another Foo, I guess--I don't know what Foo means, but somebody's acronym. It's a name--they had one in Petaluma. I went there, a few weeks ago.

But I will say: I was reading a book by Ivan Illich last night, and in one of the footnotes it referenced Stewart Brand and the CoEvolution Quarterly. But 01:23:00this was in the context of a comment that you couldn't really have gender equality without shrinkage of the economy. This was an anti-growth, very unorthodox--very heretical--that Illich was writing about, and he cited Stewart Brand. And I'm going to ask Stewart whether he--because the CoEvolution Quarterly, and the tools in the Whole Earth Catalog, that was a little bit of self reliance kind of elegant subsistence. And I think Stewart Brand is now into more of a techno--a lot of technology, a real celebration of technological innovation, almost without limit. In fact, he's working on restoring species that have gone extinct, through DNA technology. So he's even thinking that--no 01:24:00problem, we can bring it back through technology. I'm more skeptical of that. So anyway, I think Stewart Brand's thinking is different today than it was then. Although even then he was for, talking about--had an article on space colonies, by Gerard [K.] O'Neill, that I found very interesting.

MEEKER: That constellation of ideas and thinkers from the 1970s that you were engaged with, looking back on that whole zeitgeist, if you will, does that seem more remote today? Or does it seem like those ideas are relevant today and still being wrestled with?

BROWN: Well, I think one of the ideas that I got at that time was the notion of reinhabitation. Peter Coyote, I think, did a play in Nevada City. I remember being there, with Gary Snyder and others. It was the reinhabitory theater, and I 01:25:00feel that I am engaged in reinhabitation of this particular land in this particular place. So I always admired Gary Snyder for going to, as we call it, the ridge up there in North San Juan, above Nevada City, near the south fork of the Yuba River and having his place out there. In fact, I bought some land near him that he looked after. I never was able to build a house there. So now I'm doing this, and I thought this was too dry. There's much more water up there in the Sierras. So I'm doing that. So even this place is something I envision as a center for people with ideas to be talking, and I will do more of that. Of course I have so much challenge in just understanding what's here--the geology, the vegetation, the fauna, the animals, this history, the archaeology, the 01:26:00weather--how to live here. So that is occupying a fair amount of my time, just building this. But at some point, bringing in people will be part of what I do. So I would say the spirit of that time, of the seventies, where I had people like Sim Van der Ryn and Stewart Brand and Gary Snyder--the Arts Council, Peter Coyote and others, but where that's still very much a part of my thinking.

SHAFER: One of the bills that came to your desk in 2015 was the death with dignity law. [California End of Life Option Act]

BROWN: Yes.

SHAFER: Yeah, and which you ultimately signed. Can you talk about how you thought about that bill, as it was making its way through the process?

BROWN: Well, I didn't think about it till I think I got it. You know, when you have, I believe I've signed sixteen thousand bills, more or less. So you can't think about too much, too often, because they're coming. But I thought 01:27:00about--yeah, a pill. This whole business of assisted suicide, or what's euthanasia. That was always kind of a bugaboo from a Catholic point of view. But on the other hand, suffering is not something anybody likes. And as you get older, you say well, it's around the corner, and so I thought of it. Yeah, I'd like to have that pill. Whether I would take the pill, I don't know. But who is government to say you can't do that? So I said yeah, we've got to do that, and people responded very favorably to that.

SHAFER: Can you talk about some of the conversations you had with people who came into your office to try to dissuade you or--?

BROWN: I don't know if anybody did.

SHAFER: Really?

BROWN: I don't remember, but--

SHAFER: I would have thought the church, somebody from the church would--really?

BROWN: No, I don't think so. Well, you know, it could have been. It's not an impression that I'm present with.

SHAFER: Yeah, so--yeah, the veto, the signing message that you had was obviously very well thought out. And I've pulled up a bit of it here, and I wonder if you could just read it?

BROWN: Why do you want me to read it? Because it's--

SHAFER: So we have it for the--

BROWN: Oh, you have it. [laughing] For your KQED radio program.

SHAFER: [laughing] That's right.

BROWN: This is what we call news--and I think you're not supposed to do that--it's called news manipulation. [reading signing message] "In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death. I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I'm certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill, and I wouldn't deny that right to others."

SHAFER: To what extent did you expect that and the signing of it to get the kind of reaction that it did?

BROWN: I thought it would be well received, and it was.

SHAFER: Yeah, was it a hard call for you to make?

BROWN: I don't remember--I'm not sure. I mean there are so many points, when 01:29:00you're dealing with a thousand bills in a year. Not all of them, but many of them have emotions attached to them. In fact, I have been reflecting lately that politics is driven by emotional battering. Maybe I said that in an early interview--emotional battering.

SHAFER: Of whom?

BROWN: Of everybody. I mean of the governor, of the legislators, of the staff. People--they can't buy you, but they can batter you. [laughing] That's just the way it is! So, but I don't remember--

SHAFER: You have to punch back.

BROWN: I don't remember being--I thought that was, I don't think people wrote too much about--I think most commentary was for that.

SHAFER: Yeah. Well, I think people were touched by how personal it was.

BROWN: Well, I like to try to say things in normal language. And there's a lot 01:30:00of tendency, particularly by people who are writing out of the departments for the bureaucracy, to write in a form of English that is not the English we use ourselves. But it's a very specialized argot that people use when they go to the office during the day, and I try to keep that out of my writing, to the extent that I can.

SHAFER: Is it fair to say that of all the 16,000 or so bills you've signed, that that one had more of a personal effect on you than--?

BROWN: Well, I don't know if they had a personal effect on me, but--

SHAFER: Or a potential, you know--

BROWN: No, but look, you write to be effective, right? So that's one of the rules of effective writing. [laughing] You have to speak personally, so I did that.

SHAFER: Yeah, yeah. Just another thought about that--the battering.

BROWN: Maybe that's too harsh a word, but they get very upset. You know, when 01:31:00the farm workers sat in for a couple of weeks wanting the car check bill--you know, they're there.

SHAFER: The vaccine bill this week, this past week.

BROWN: Maybe the vaccine bill. I remember the farm workers sitting in my outer office, standing in my outer office, and I think there was one woman who had a baby--I don't know if she was nursing the baby--and a whole bunch of farm workers. I mean they didn't look like the bureaucrats. So they're pressuring the poor farm workers, and I notice one of the labor organizers in the back laughing, smiling at the effect of his battering, or his pressure, if you want to call it that.

SHAFER: Hard to resist.

BROWN: So there's a lot of pressure--pressure tactics. Of course people in government try to pressure back--so it works on all sides.

SHAFER: Well, and in that regard, like one of the things that you became sort of famous for, was the charts at budget time. You know, the May revise and the 01:32:00January unveiling of the budget, and the sky-is-going-to-be-falling-soon message. [laughing]

BROWN: Yeah, well, it hasn't fallen yet.

SHAFER: It hasn't fallen yet.

BROWN: I think we're getting close.

SHAFER: But was that a form of pressuring back, to the legislature?

BROWN: Well, that's different. That's just: here are the facts. This is the revenue, these are the expenditures. Here's how they've grown. The chart was primarily about history; first of all, there's very little history in government. The number of people in Sacramento who knew we once had twenty thousand people in prison, as recently as the time when I was governor, Reagan was governor--very few people know that. So whatever is, they think it's always been that way. Well, because I've been around for a while, I know it's different.

One showed the capital-gains revenue going up and down, in big gyrations. And I 01:33:00thought that was important, because--and we were at the up point, and it was up, up, and up. But you could see from the zigzag, it's going to go down. And the other was that we've had nine or ten recessions since 1945. So we have these recessions, and then we have a recovery, but then we have a recession. And I find that during recoveries, people think there's not going to be a recession. But then we do think of it. And what struck me--somebody said, and I don't even know if it's true, but it's kind of the way things tend to work, that nobody predicts a recession. But we predict: now we try to chart out a five-year history. I don't think we did that. I think my administration established that, but we always looked down the road a bit.

But as you formulate a revenue, even if it's only for eighteen months, which you 01:34:00do in January, you say, "These are our proposed expenditures, and these are our proposed revenues." The revenues aren't in the bank. They're a prediction of what will happen. And the prediction of what will happen is looking in the rearview mirror of what did happen. But we never predict--so, for example, in 2008 when the mortgage collapse happened--that wasn't predicted. In fact, I think Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve was very buoyant a few months before this. So the revenue is printed in the budget, but it's based on fortune telling or prophecy or predictions. What if you have that prediction, "Oh, the revenue's coming in. We figure the growth is 2 percent or 2-½, or whatever the hell it is." And what if it's zero percent? Oh, then there's 01:35:00hundreds of billions less than you thought there were. Well, is that just a total surprise when it happens? And the problem is we don't know what's going to happen. Something's going to happen.

As it occurred, we always have more money--but at some point you're going to have less money. And so managing that uncertainty is difficult, because--the battering. People are used to being needy, and our needs keep escalating. We need not to have--what is that thing in bread that they don't--?

Holmes: Gluten.

BROWN: Gluten. We need not to have gluten. I never heard of that a couple of years ago, and there's a bunch of other stuff that we need, that we never knew we needed! So maybe that's true. We knew we didn't know we shouldn't--we didn't need cigarettes. Well, that's a good thing.

So we're picking up some good things, but we're getting more and more needy as 01:36:00we go along, at every level. And so that means we've got to spend more money. And when they come, they don't say I think it would be desirable to do x. They said, "I need--it's unfair. I'm suffering--I need. Give me." And I don't care whether it's the university or the schools, highways. Everybody wants stuff, because government is about money. And that goes back to the principle--more money is better than less money. So whatever money you have, government, if you play it right, can give you more money. And one of the ways you play it is you guilt-trip people, or you pressure them, or you advocate--or you batter them, emotionally speaking. So there's my lesson on how government works.

SHAFER: Yeah, I liked that. You know there were, in those years when, as the budget grew, there was, of course, pressure to restore cuts that had been made.

BROWN: Right.

SHAFER: And then there were demands, battering--whatever you want to call it, to spend money on new things. And among the issues that bubbled up, especially, I think, after Trump got elected, was different public benefits for undocumented immigrants.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: In-state tuition, for example, for Dreamers. How do you feel about that issue? Do Democrats overplay their hand on that sometimes?

BROWN: They might, but I don't think--we haven't yet. I don't think I did. People felt that getting a good education's a good thing. People got more used to the idea that millions--because there are millions of people here, that there was something normal about that. Therefore, the kids should be able to avail themselves of a good education.

SHAFER: And then just recently--I mean we're jumping ahead, but Newsom just signed a bill to extend health--

BROWN: But to healthy people, twenty-six and [under]--

SHAFER: So not a big expense.

BROWN: Smaller than if you did it for everybody.

SHAFER: Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think here. [to Meeker] Where do you think we should go? You're going to take climate change?

MEEKER: Well, was there anything else about immigration we'd like to discuss? Another law that was passed was the law that forbade local police departments from cooperating with federal immigration officials. I'd like you to comment on that particular law. Is that one that you still think is necessary and appropriate?

BROWN: Well, I certainly as attorney general, was not anxious to restrict immigration enforcement. As it became clear that there were abuses by federal immigration, and particularly under Trump, it becomes obvious the states should take a different and more protective role. I certainly didn't want to protect 01:39:00criminals. And therefore, when the various laws that I signed came down, I blocked them until I was able to get amendments that gave the authorities more authority. And as a matter of fact--

SHAFER: And you exempted the state prisons too, I think.

BROWN: I did exempt the state prisons. So yeah, every day immigration is sending an incarcerated person back to their country. And, I realize that there are certain ways that if the immigration people really wanted to get somebody, they could, because of the public records and because bookings are public records. Now, the only reason they don't is because they don't have the manpower or the willpower. So they would often go to downtown LA to pick up somebody, but they didn't like to go out to Antelope Valley. So that was the difference. So I 01:40:00didn't like the idea of sanctuary city to the extent that it covered people who were doing bad things. It's certainly my experience in Oakland--there's certain people that were gang people or criminals. And if they were illegal--well, why put up with them? Why should they be here? That was kind of my thought.

So that evolved over time. And they talked about the woman going shopping, or the father driving to work or something. As it became so many people here illegally, working and integrating into the society, then of course you want to tend to treat people that are here, even if they aren't here legally, as more closely to how you treat people who are. And that's how it happened.

But there are people who do serious things, and I think it's pretty obvious that 01:41:00that's not the kind of people that we should be protecting, particularly since they came here on their own volition, and now they're--sometimes they do very bad and serious things. So why should we have to incarcerate them and pay all that money, if they could go back to where they came from?

MEEKER: Are you at all concerned that any of the laws passed during your administration, in fact made it substantially more difficult for the federal government to deal with those individuals?

BROWN: First of all, there was a lot of pressure from the activists. And I was responding, certainly, to that. But also, to the plight of undocumented that 01:42:00came, that work hard, trying to do the right thing. May get caught driving under the influence or get in a fight with their wife or--do certain things. So I thought we should not make it so easy for the immigration authorities. And now under Trump, where they're running around like the Gestapo, that even justifies state protections even more. I don't think we're just--so that's true.

But I was careful to meet with the sheriffs, listen to what they had to say. I did meet, work closely with them. I didn't give them all they wanted, but I gave them a lot more than the legislature wanted to give them. So I always knew the safety valve, that they could make known--well, by just making the public record 01:43:00and just listing when people were getting out. And so the INS could be there. So I thought that was important. I didn't want to shut off the INS completely, like some of the activists. Activists believe, it appears, that really there shouldn't be a border, and anybody who gets by--that's it. They get to stay. So I don't think that's what the people want, and there is a humanitarian crisis.

But we also have to try to govern. And if you look at what's happening in Europe, this migration can really disrupt things, even though, I think--the need is there, and we should be doing a lot more proactively in Central America particularly. Now, what Europe does in regard to North Africa, that's a whole other story--or Syria. So these things are not--there's not a simple answer. So as a politician, I try to find a balance.

MEEKER: How do you respond to those activists who are becoming increasingly more mainstream?

BROWN: I did respond. I signed some of these bills, but I modified them. After the first Trust Act, I vetoed, and then I did a more restricted bill. The same thing with the so-called sanctuary bill. It was much broader until I made them change it.

MEEKER: Do you think that the state has any role in maintaining the reality of the southern border?

BROWN: What do you mean? Well, no we don't--we don't, at all, because immigration is a federal matter. Do you mean to send people down to the border and patrol it? I mean does the federal government have to police our local communities? We do have a federal system, so--I mean the Minutemen like to do that.

But I don't think--our police resources are not--there is a federal government. 01:45:00They have increased the border patrol. I mean they've got plenty of money, and besides, the migration northward is driven by a lot of economics. And that's not going to be affected by police, it's going to be affected by the activities in those countries--El Salvador and Honduras. I think I mentioned, I talked to a priest who was in the seminary with me. I called him. I got his phone number--he's in Honduras. He said a thousand people have left the area where his parish was, because there's no jobs. So if we don't like immigration, we should be doing something about that. And that's our own border. We do have far-flung American presence all over the planet, so right in our own backyard we ought to be doing a lot more.

MEEKER: Well, there are push-and-pull factors in every immigration.

BROWN: Right.

MEEKER: And so, it seems like the kinds of benefits and sanctuary status given 01:46:00to undocumented immigrants in California might be considered a pretty strong pull factor.

BROWN: Well, I think it's the jobs, because there's very little immigration, I'm told, during recessions. And the immigrants provide a service that nobody else is providing, so that's why they're coming. And why the farmers want them, and why other people need them.

MEEKER: Do you have an opinion on things like guest-worker status?

BROWN: I think some form of that--and that has its own complexities. In the sixties, they thought the bracero program was detrimental to American workers. Today people, I think, are more sympathetic to it.

MEEKER: Because illegal immigration might be detrimental to American workers as well?

BROWN: No, because there aren't workers here. When you came down Hwy. 20, you saw a lot of almond trees. Well, now it's machines. It's getting to be more and more machines, but it does take workers. You see them. And they're not the 01:47:00people coming out of the high school down here. That's very hard work, and it's just part of the modern world. If you look at all the goods coming from China, which is part of the trade war--why are we doing that? Well, it's cheaper. Why do we have the supply chain? I never heard of the word supply chain when I was governor the first time. Now that's everything. So what we're doing is we're renting--we talk about world trade. It's actually renting lower-paid foreign workers to make--to be part of our industrial activities. So you can have people come and do the work, or you could outsource the work and have the people in the foreign country do the work. And it's also a part of that, it's a little bit of--it's both.

SHAFER: I want to ask you about the 2016 presidential election. You know, it 01:48:00seemed to be Hillary's to lose.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: In terms of the nomination. Did you have an affinity more for one or the other in the primary? I mean who did you vote for?

BROWN: Well, I endorsed Hillary.

SHAFER: Who'd you vote for?

BROWN: I don't remember who I voted for. I'm sure I voted for Hillary. If I endorsed her, certainly I did.

SHAFER: Why did you endorse her?

BROWN: Well, because I thought that Bernie would have a hard time beating Trump. It looked like Hillary was a more solid bet. I didn't really want to get involved in it. I mean I have my own races, so I haven't traditionally liked to jump--I remember I got, I was co-chairman of the Muskie campaign. And I remember when he came to Los Angeles, overnight his campaign started collapsing. He made a comment that a black couldn't be considered for vice president, and that 01:49:00didn't go over too well. And then he gave a talk that I attended--and he talked and he talked and he talked. Within a few weeks, his star had begun to sink. So I thought it was pretty clever to jump out and be the co-chair of the Muskie campaign. And he looked like Abraham Lincoln, in some way. So I've been a little more gun shy since 1972.

SHAFER: So you endorsed Hillary--I think you endorsed Kamala Harris as well, in the senate race.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: Yeah, and those were--I mean my perception was that was a pretty--I don't know if perfunctory is the right word, but it was quick. [laughing]

BROWN: Well, you know, I like to run. So other people's races don't interest me that much, to tell you the truth.

SHAFER: So you don't see yourself as being part of that world? That you endorsed me, I'll endorse you? And you know--?

BROWN: No, I'm part of the world of there's an office, I think I'll run for it. That's the world I live in. So it's a little harder for me to be a spectator and 01:50:00be up in the stands cheering the people down on the field. It's not something I've done a lot and it's harder for me to go around and give speeches for other people and say how great they are. I like giving my own speeches. I don't talk about how great I am, I talk about all the vision, all these things, either problems or solutions or alarms. I enjoy making that articulation myself. So when you go for another candidate, it's one step removed. And so you're dependent on validating or endorsing the mind and the articulation of another. So it's not something I've been drawn to.

SHAFER: How much of that is, you know, maybe not being that impressed by the candidate?

BROWN: Well, I don't know. But I do think a lot about issues, and therefore what 01:51:00would be the fodder of campaigns. And so my own view is often not present in the articulation of others, because it's somewhat--I don't want to say it's unique, but I find my ideas pretty interesting. I find other people's ideas not as interesting--generally speaking. Now, that's not to say there aren't people who I really find--I like to listen to, but usually they're not running for office. They're writers, thinkers, scientists, environmental leaders, whatever.

SHAFER: So in terms of that election, I mean a lot of people were shocked that Trump won. Were you?

BROWN: I thought Trump was making headway. In fact, I talked to Bill Clinton about it a month before, and so I think he was concerned too.

SHAFER: What made you say that?

BROWN: Just looking at the--I don't watch much television, but just looking at 01:52:00it, it seemed that Trump had a story. He obviously had a story. Well, it wasn't that good in California, but it was good in the swing states--barely.

SHAFER: What do you think she did wrong?

BROWN: I don't like to dissect these things. I think Trump was perceived as more of a change person, because he was so odd and so different. And he was more in your face. And so I think in those rust belt states--that appealed to people. Just as it turned off people in Orange County in California, by millions. So that's a complex undertaking, that Hillary did so well in Orange County and lost in Ohio and Pennsylvania. That shows you the difference in how people experience their lives, and that's just part of the diversity of America.

So should Hillary have spent more time in Michigan? Probably so. But at the moment, well--first of all, Obama had been in for eight years. And generally, the pendulum swings. So people want: okay, let's get some change here. So Hillary and Obama had been battered and attacked. The healthcare plan was reviled. So then she comes along, and is liable to the sense--well, that's more of the same. So it was more of the same, versus this strange character called Trump. Now, I'm not telling you anything you can't read in the newspaper, but women voters and suburban, more-educated people, were turned off by Trump. Working-class people were intrigued, at least enough of them, to give him those 01:54:00four states. So that's the election. Now, that's all--I don't know, that's just--

SHAFER: Well, and the turnout was depressed, I think, for her in some communities. The black community, for example, in Detroit.

BROWN: Well, but that's part of the excitement or non-excitement. That's just part of the way it works. Candidates have strengths/have weaknesses.

SHAFER: Yeah. So I think that was the same year you had Proposition 57 on the ballot. [Criminal Sentences. Parole. Juvenile Criminal Proceedings and Sentencing. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute.] How did you see that--?

BROWN: By the way, that was of real interest to me, because I had something to do with that.

SHAFER: Yeah. How did you see that as fitting into what you were trying to accomplish on criminal justice?

BROWN: Well, it's obvious. It allowed earlier parole, so it was more of an indeterminate sentencing scheme. And it allowed for credits as governor, and going over lifer paroles, which I went over probably six thousand. I noticed that the credit-earning capacity changed wildly over the years. So if the person 01:55:00had been convicted in the nineties, they might get 50 percent credit. If they were convicted in 2005 or later, they didn't get any credit--or much reduced. So that made me inclined--I came up with the idea to, in fact, I have to say that it was my idea--I think, sometimes I forget where I get these ideas. My wife tells me I'm constantly using her ideas without attribution.

SHAFER: [laughing] Taking credit.

BROWN: So that could be--but that's not important where it comes from, because all the ideas come from somewhere. The idea giving the Department of Corrections the power to set credits--20 percent credit, 50 percent credit. That's all now, not in the hands of the legislature, but in the hands of the correctional 01:56:00authorities. So that was a very important move. And the other piece was earlier parole for people who were not on the violent list, or the so-called dirty dozen. There were twelve statutes that were called out at the time of the determinate sentencing law. Not because they were the only violent crimes, but they were such that people felt we'd better keep these people in longer, and that's what it was. So we said okay, we're going to leave that alone, and we'll take everybody else, even though it wasn't completely clear in the minds of some people.

And the DAs violently, virulently objected, because they said, "Oh, what does it mean?" Of course whatever it meant, it just resulted in people going to the parole board, which I thought almost never could be wrong. Because now you're giving people a subsequent chance, based on more information on how they 01:57:00performed in prison. So that, to me, was a good. And the DAs thought--because they have kind of a cowboy mentality, if they get someone in for forty years, they don't want them eligible for parole. They like that--sixty years, they'd put that in their speeches, or whatever. So [Proposition] 57 was kind of an obvious, although I must say most of the people wanted something else.

SHAFER: Most of which people?

BROWN: Most of the prison reformers. Some people wanted a sentencing commission, and the other people thought they ought to handle youth authority only. So I piggybacked on the bill for youth changes, and then added these two elements: parole and credit earning. And then that became a lawsuit, and one judge even thought I couldn't do what I did. But then the court of appeals overruled him, and I could.

SHAFER: Yeah. You talked earlier about the need to have a thrust, for an administration to keep moving forward. And one of the things that you used in your fourth term was ballot measures--Prop. 57.

BROWN: And Prop. 53 [Revenue Bonds. Statewide Voter Approval. Initiative Constitutional Amendment]. That was very significant. No one has ever mentioned that. I would imagine most people don't even know what 53 was.

SHAFER: I'm scratching my head.

BROWN: Well, it was an effort to stop the tunnels. To require a statewide vote on anything that had, beyond a certain borrowing element then you had to get a vote of the people. It was meant to stop the tunnels, and that was, I think, twenty points ahead, and I beat it by less than a point. So that was something.

SHAFER: Yeah, it kind of renews, in a way, your faith in voters, doesn't it? That people do pay attention. I mean they're not just--you know.

BROWN: Well, it renewed my faith in my ability to make a good ad and raise money to put it on the air.

SHAFER: Was that faith lagging? [laughing]

BROWN: Well, you don't know until you do it. And sometimes it might not work. I mean that was a close election. But there was no--

MEEKER: How do you communicate that particular issue to the voters? It's kind of--arcane.

BROWN: I just said this is bad for California. Go look at the commercial. It's pretty simple. But the other side is that the man who put it on the ballot. He didn't buy any ads. So it was a free-fire zone, so that helped. If he had had ads, maybe it would have--it probably would have turned out differently. So that's another luck--or contingency or circumstance. Those are very important elements.

SHAFER: I mean among the other thrusts that were--were prevalent in the last couple of years were gas tax, housing--

BROWN: Cap and trade.

SHAFER: Cap and trade, high-speed rail. Was that strategic? I mean was that like--did you think, you know, we need to have some things to keep moving forward?

BROWN: Well, but these are all a given. High-speed rail is already there. You either stop it, or you push it. Cap and trade was already there. You let it expire or you continue it. The tunnels--already there. So a lot of things are there. You've got a deficit. You've got a rainy-day fund. So a lot of this stuff--

SHAFER: But you have to decide to sell it, try to sell it, be--come out front.

BROWN: Yeah, but you can't decide to do nothing--at least--and be very successful. Can't just sit there and let stuff happen that is significant and consequential. So that's why I say a lot of things are just given. They're teed up, you're at bat, the ball comes along. You're either going to hit it, or you're going to let it go by--and you can't let every ball go by.

SHAFER: I'm struck by how many sports metaphors you use, and how little sports you seem to watch on TV. [laughter]

BROWN: I've watched enough in my life. You don't have to watch them every day to get the idea. I mean I've seen hundreds and hundreds of sporting events in my 02:01:00life. I started going to football games at a very young age.

SHAFER: And you boxed.

BROWN: I went to Kezar Stadium to watch when USF went undefeated twelve games and didn't get a bowl invitation. They say because it had African Americans on the team. I went to the Seals Stadium with my father when Lefty O'Doul was the manager. That was a whole other era. It's gone, but I still remember. Three strikes and you're out. I mean that's a metaphor that they still use. [laughter]

SHAFER: Yeah. In terms of housing, you signed a raft of bills.

BROWN: Yeah, a raft--that's a good--that's a good term.

SHAFER: And I think you said--now, don't send me so many next time. [laughing]

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: Obviously, that was a big push, by especially--

BROWN: By legislators.

SHAFER: By Bay Area legislators.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: Do you feel like those bills you signed will make a difference?

BROWN: They'll make some difference. But the housing market is trillions. The bills are billions or hundreds of millions. So you have the market. Market goes overboard, whether on housing prices, rents, dot-com. There's a tendency to go beyond, and then snap back. But we haven't snapped back on housing. But it's very hard to--you can't really try to lower the price of housing. Because you tell people this is your most important asset, and now we're going to diminish it? That's not thinkable. So then what's the other alternative? Well, they say, if you build a lot more, it should bring the price down. Well, that remains to be seen.

The other one is you can actually give money to people directly or indirectly. 02:03:00So you could have the taxpayers help people buy the homes they can't otherwise afford. That has a very limited reach. So it's very, very limited, this how many--in San Francisco, I've heard the term $600,000 to subsidize one rental unit--or maybe it's one housing unit. How many can you do that? There's an affordable house, I think one unit in Tiburon, cost $1 million, to meet their affordable housing goals. [laughter] In fact, that's the way they talk about it. They don't talk about giving everybody an affordable house, they talk about meeting goals, which they have a hard time doing.

So it's just one of those conditions, that pricing has gone up. It's gone up now in Sacramento. But it's going up in Tokyo, London, Paris, the cities, the coasts, those big cities. Maybe it's the low interest rates, the capacity to 02:04:00borrow. We've made it easy to drive up the price. If you couldn't get a thirty-year mortgage at a low rate, the price would be lower. So the price is a function of the money sloshing around, the credit. But if you don't have the credit, then you have a recession, have unemployment, and people say we don't want that.

Well, one of the ways they use is monetary rules, and that means make money cheaper. Let people borrow more and more, whether it's to go to school, to buy a corporation, to buy a house, to buy a car. Now, it's five-six years to buy a car. It used to be you had to save. Don't buy a car till you can afford it. That was save to buy it, now we borrow to buy. We borrow to go on a vacation, put it on a credit card, because the consumer is 70 percent of the economy. And if the consumer stops buying, then the economy goes down. Then you're out of work--then 02:05:00you have a problem. So the whole capitalist economy is based on buying what you don't need, with money you don't have. So that's the principle. I find it not very sustainable. I tried to do my best to warn people, that this is not something we continue doing.

SHAFER: Yeah. So--all those housing bills and efforts that were passed, efforts that have been enacted and tried and failed. Do you feel like, in the end, it's going to take a big chunk out of the problem? Is it going to make some real headway? Or is it just really--

BROWN: Well, this is the issue now. Now whether it'll be--if we're in a recession, people may not be talking about housing prices. They'll be talking about jobs. So there's always something to be talking about. But most of these problems are more general, they're more widespread. No one wants to talk about: 02:06:00you either have government lower the value of your home, because that sets the comparable price. Or you have people, through taxes or through bonds, make money available for people who can't afford the very high price of housing. So the answer that is given is have a small number of people get money to buy the house, and call it addressing your housing goal. And that's what we did. We addressed the housing--and we said, "Hi, housing goal." [laughter] And we did.

SHAFER: You didn't reach it.

BROWN: Well, do you think we did?

SHAFER: No.

BROWN: Well, but the other one is people move out of San Francisco. They're moving out of Oakland. They do move. There was an article, which I'm sure you didn't read, because you don't read very carefully, about all these people moving to Boise, Idaho. Did you read that one?

SHAFER: Yeah. I know somebody that just moved back, Corey Cook from USF. He was 02:07:00there and came back. Who wants to live in Boise?

BROWN: Well, they say it's very nice. And if enough of your friends move there, why not? But it's like this guy--my great-grandfather, Schuckman. How the heck did he get to the Mountain House, which is what it was called when he moved here? He was in a little place called Wüsten, [Germany] a little bend in the road, which I visited. But he didn't stay at the bend in the road. He got on a sailing ship and came to America, and then came west. That's probably not even thinkable today. Say, could you, if you can't afford San Francisco, move to Williams. It's a lot cheaper. Of course there's a lot less to do. [laughter] So these are the dilemmas that people have, and we'd have more people, and we have the same amount of land. So it's not the same: the pioneers could come west and get land and start a life and grow food and get jobs. Today, it's harder. We're 02:08:00in a complicated institutionalized centrally determined, in many ways, society. So we have to deal with these dilemmas.

And housing--it's difficult, because if you want--for example, we have sprinklers. Do you know it was just a few years ago that every house had to put in sprinklers: every new house. Before that, we never did it. Since the white man came west, no one ever thought of sprinklers inside your house. The old Mountain House didn't have sprinklers--of course it burned down. [laughter] But it was burned down by an arsonist, I think. So okay, then you have sprinklers. Then we have seismic standards. Then we have different kinds of--

SHAFER: Solar energy.

BROWN: So what I'm saying, it's not free. It costs money. We have efficiency standards, and they do raise cost, but they also save money. And the way we do 02:09:00all these things is we don't add it all up. Usually, governors add it all up. And we have a lot of needs. We have needs in housing. We have the needs in the childcare. When I was in high school most mothers didn't work. Today, most mothers work, so what's going to happen to the kids? Well, some people don't have kids. Other people have to have childcare. Well, who can afford childcare? Well, then the government pays for it. So working these conflicts out are such that there's always going to be a level of dissatisfaction, which when it gets acute enough, then they put someone new in. And they go through the cycle. That's what it is.

SHAFER: But endless need.

BROWN: Endless desire, becoming endless need, becoming endless rights, becoming endless laws, becoming endless spending. Oh, and that's the way it works. And they did have welfare states in Europe that worked pretty good, and their tax percentage was much higher than America's. So I don't think we've come anywhere 02:10:00near what we can afford--if we had a consensus. But we don't have a consensus.

SHAFER: I want to talk about cap and trade a little bit more. That was a priority for you, to get that extended when it expired. And you needed some Republican votes, because you wanted to get a two-thirds [majority] to--

BROWN: No, I had to get a two-thirds, because it was--

SHAFER: You had to get a two-thirds to protect it, because of--from the lawsuit.

BROWN: Because it was a tax, or like a tax.

SHAFER: So talk about how you went about putting that coalition together.

BROWN: Well, to tell you the truth, the Republicans came to me and said they wanted to do something. They said, "We're losing younger voters who want to do something about the environment and climate change. Our consultants--," and they brought in the consultants. So they wanted to do it, so that's another fortunate outcome, and then I worked with them. Then we had to do it in a certain way, and some people said, "Oh, you're negotiating with oil companies." Yes, because I 02:11:00had to get the Republican votes, and two Democrats voted against the bill. And if we had no Republican votes, we wouldn't have had the cap-and-trade bill.

SHAFER: Were you surprised that the Republicans came to you?

BROWN: Well, surprised, I don't know if surprise would be the word. I was very happy that they came to see me.

SHAFER: You would have had to go to them otherwise.

BROWN: Yeah, and I don't know, if I had gone to them that might have had a different flavor. They might not have done it. So it's very important that their consultants, for whatever reason, poll numbers or whatever, had them come down and see me. And of course the Republicans revolted against the ones who did it, which I think, in the long term--I think the people who were for cap and trade will prove out to be the more popular.

SHAFER: What did the fact that the Republicans were involved in the room, they were in the room--and I think there were a lot more in the room that ended up voting for it--

BROWN: Right.

SHAFER: So what did they get that you would have--you know, not have put in the bill?

BROWN: Well, we put a lot of money in for agriculture, $250 million. And most of the Democrats don't know a pig from a cow. I don't mean that literally, but they're not farm sensitive. They're more urban sensitive, you know? It's like if you go to the Stonyford Rodeo, you won't find a lot of SEUI [Service Employees International Union] members in the audience--I don't think. [Shafer laughs] At least they don't have that purple shirt on. So there is a divide, and the Republicans needed me to respond. Of course some of these people, like the dairymen, endorsed the bill. In fact, the Western [United] Dairymen drove, their lobbyist came up with a written endorsement to give to Devon Mathis, so that was very important. So the Farm Bureau and the farming interests were very helpful. Of course then when it came time for divvying up the cap and trade, Democrats 02:13:00weren't so sympathetic, so I had to push very hard.

BROWN: Yes.

SHAFER: Yeah, what did Ag. get, that $250 million, like what was that--?

BROWN: Well, I mean there is money for biodigesters, and that's good on cap and trade. So the pollutants that come out of dairies--we spent, I don't know, $60 million in the agricultural field, and there are others, other things. It was money to innovate, which was precisely what cap and trade was supposed to be about.

SHAFER: Did you anticipate at all that Republicans would pay a price for working with you?

BROWN: No, no, because I don't talk to them that much. I couldn't believe--

SHAFER: But you think about politics.

BROWN: I couldn't believe that cap and trade--first of all, I doubt whether most Republican voters even know what cap and trade is. So how do you they get--the Republicans tend to get stirred up. Of course the Democrats are getting stirred 02:14:00up too, through these enthusiasms. So the people who were able to take Chad Mayes, take him out of the leadership position--they weren't able to defeat him. I don't think any of these guys lost their seats. So it was more the activists.

SHAFER: Chad Mayes says it was that photo he took with you, that was more painful--

BROWN: Well, he decided to do that. I thought at the time maybe it was not so smart.

SHAFER: Yeah, and he said he would do it again, by the way.

BROWN: I remember when the farm worker issue was very hot, that Democrats in Fresno did not want to have their picture taken with me. So I am very aware of pictures, and sometimes they're not favorable.

SHAFER: Yeah. Relationship with the legislature.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: There was a sense, and I know you--you pointed out to me that you never used this phrase, but a lot of people described you as the grownup in the room, 02:15:00the person--

BROWN: Well, literally that was true. I was older than everybody else.

SHAFER: Yeah, but they were also grownups. But the point--

BROWN: But I had grown more, because they weren't in their seventies. [Shafer laughs] For the most part, I think one lady was in her seventies.

SHAFER: But the point being that you had sort of gravitas, you had knowledge.

BROWN: No, I don't know about--no, but it's the governor--there's one governor, there's a hundred and twenty legislators.

SHAFER: But do you feel that there was a deference from the legislature to you?

BROWN: I don't know. I don't feel much deference. But they were very friendly, and certainly more friendly than they were the first time I was governor. Of course I was this young kid at thirty-six--or not young kid, a young man. So, yeah, I've been around. I've won a lot of elections. So that impressed them probably.

SHAFER: Other than being twice as old, did that--?

BROWN: Well, the legislature is a different game. They have people pounding on them. They are battered by various interest groups that come to see them, local interest groups, the unions, the environmentalists, the childcare, the this/the 02:16:00that. And they keep pushing them, and they don't say, "Oh, would you think it good if you did this?" No, they say, "We're victimized, we're," they make it sound--a horror. "And you'd better do it, or else." So then they're pressured, and what the hell, they just vote yes, and it comes down to me. And then I look at it, and I'm not as subject, because I'm more removed. At least I feel more removed. And most of these people are small fractions of the electorate. So if you look at it from a purely political calculation, most of these interest groups are not that strong. But they feel very strong to the legislators and to the city councils, that often respond to pressure.

SHAFER: Do you feel that you dealt with legislators differently because of the experience that you'd had the first time?

BROWN: Well, I had a strong hand. I don't know if I dealt with them differently. 02:17:00Well, because I was very aware that when I would veto bills, I didn't think that was bad. The legislature wasn't that popular when we started. Of course when we ended, they were very popular. So sometimes the vetoes are important, not only because of the subject matter, but because in general people like some independence. Slavish conformity to a political class is not something that endears you to people. So knowing that being--vetoing some bills does connote independence, if you do everything the legislature wants, then you're not going to look like a leader or a governor. If you don't do enough of what they want, they attack you, even in your own party, and then they say you can't lead. So either you can't lead because you don't give them what they want, or you give them everything they want and people know you don't lead. So between one and the 02:18:00other, you've got to find a path forward. And it turned out all right. And I wouldn't veto everything that I might like to veto.

MEEKER: One difference between your first two terms as governor and your last two terms was the passage of term limits in the state legislature.

BROWN: Yeah.

MEEKER: Do you think that that had a significant impact on the corpus of the body?

BROWN: Yes. I think we've traded arrogance for ignorance.

SHAFER: Say more.

BROWN: [laughing] Well, we had people who knew a hell of a lot. But they certainly were very confident in their assertion of power and maybe overbearing. On the other hand, when we struck them down, the people, through the term limits--then we got this revolving door of short-termers. And that's been corrected somewhat by the amendment to the law. But there is a problem. If 02:19:00you're around too long, you begin to act in a certain way that may--it entitles, you have more authority, more power, you can push people around. On the other hand, if you're a short-termer, you don't have a sense of history, you don't know your way around. I think there's merits on both sides. But I'd say long-time service is very important, as we find in the executive branch--as even in Congress. And the Republicans have a term limit on their committee chairs. I don't think that's very wise. I think, in general, these wise old committee chairs kept America going, and I think you've got to be careful in messing with that.

MEEKER: Do you think that further reform is called for? And if so, what would it look like?

BROWN: Well, reform--you mean to go back to un-reform the reforms?

MEEKER: Or to push further in the direction that the recent reforms--?

BROWN: Oh, you mean to get more people--well, we could have a lottery, like they did in Athens. [laughter] I think that would be difficult. I mean there's no easy way. As I say, you either get people who don't know enough, who are insecure, or are constantly running for the next office--that's called term limits. Or you have people that endure a long time. Although even under the regime of no term limits, there was turnover. But in some districts, they'd stay forever. Adam Clayton Powell was there forever. John Conyers, the other fellow from Michigan, [John] Dingell, he was there for a long time. So maybe they stay too long. But on the other hand, with term limits, maybe they don't stay long enough. So I'd say there's no way without downsides. That's called life.

MEEKER: Do you think that the commission that draws boundaries is effective?

BROWN: So far it has worked for Democrats in California. Is it a good thing? I tend to think it's a good thing. But you know, America has had gerrymandering for a long time. So--

SHAFER: It's gotten more extreme though, now.

BROWN: Maybe it has. Well, it started getting extreme in California.

MEEKER: Well, and the Supreme Court has just endorsed it.

BROWN: I think even actually before [Phil] Burton, the Republicans did a big gerrymander. So I think this commission has some positive. But I'm just wary of trying to say this reform will produce unmitigated good. I usually think that it's always a mixed bag.

Holmes: Did you think that that kind of gerrymandering that we see, that we're still trying to deal with, do you think that plays a part in the hyper-partisan character?

BROWN: What do you mean, because they save seats? I don't know. But you know, when you keep a party in power with a lot of gerrymandered seats, then things 02:22:00build up. And often they get--somehow they sweep them out at some point. But they have done some pretty clever gerrymandering in the South, and I think in Wisconsin. So yeah, we need some change. But now, do we want the Supreme Court to do that? The one man, one vote? We got along fine with that. One man, one vote--well, we got along differently. And now we have it--so I think all these things, just like the primary. The primary puts money as one of the primary ingredients, whereas the convention system put political bosses, so called. And political bosses got us Roosevelt, got us Truman, I'd say Adlai Stevenson. And now we have twenty candidates running around with their emails, Twitters. So there's not an easy way: I think historians need to write about this. And 02:23:00politicians don't have any deep and thoughtful answers to these kind of questions.

SHAFER: Do you think the electoral college should be changed/gotten rid of?

BROWN: Well, that was a debate topic when I was in high school debate. Resolved: The electoral college should be abolished--and I argued both sides. So it does seem weird that someone who wins by millions of votes, and loses because you can--it's kind of like gerrymandering. Yeah, and there may come a point where--yeah, it's not all--it has problems with it.

SHAFER: Yeah. In terms of Trump's election, California has become what they call the state of resistance.

BROWN: Yeah, right.

SHAFER: You know, de facto, through things like sanctuary--like SB 54, and all kinds of things. Lawsuits--more than fifty, I think, by now. What do you think 02:24:00of that? I mean did you feel as governor you needed to modulate that a little bit? Or you pick your fights?

BROWN: Well, I think resistance always was a word that I thought was overblown. I mean the first time I heard resistance was the underground: Camus and these people were in the resistance in France. Now we're talking about resistance from well-fed politicians. So it seems a little off, to me. Secondly, resistance is kind of a negative. You resist the occupation. Well, I get the analogy, but I'd rather just take the thrust of what we want to do. Like we're fighting on climate change. Climate change is something we've got to curtail, stop. So I'd rather talk about that. I think it's exciting to be--so that's why they use it, and it's easier for a journalist to write about.

SHAFER: Well, and of the lawsuits that have been filed, do you feel like they--?

BROWN: But it overgeneralizes, and says we're resisting.

SHAFER: But setting aside the word--

BROWN: I'd rather persist. I'd rather have something that I want to do rather than something I want to stop.

SHAFER: When Kamala Harris got elected to the senate, you chose Xavier Becerra to be the attorney general.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: How did that happen? Were there other--I'm sure you were thinking of other people.

BROWN: No, not really.

SHAFER: No?

BROWN: Well, I just looked at all the people, looked at their qualifications. Who did I know, who I didn't know. There weren't a lot of names. There were a few. But I didn't know any of them very well. But I saw Becerra went to Stanford. I was kind of impressed by that. My wife went to Stanford.

SHAFER: Who first thought of him, do you remember?

BROWN: I think I did. I really just scanned the list. His name jumped out at me. Oh, went to Stanford--went to Stanford Law School. Worked in the AG's office, in Congress won all his terms. So that, to me, looked like experience.

SHAFER: The fact that he's Latino, did you like that as symbolism?

BROWN: Yeah, I did.

SHAFER: More so because Trump had won, do you think?

BROWN: No, I mean it's California. So that's not an insignificant element.

SHAFER: So, it's about 12:30pm. We don't--we want to, we're going to wrap up early today.

BROWN: Yeah.

[side conversation deleted]

SHAFER: So, I just wanted to pick up with this--we were talking before about the state of resistance. And you said I prefer persist.

BROWN: Well, I was just thinking of a play on words, but I do think forward movement--resistance sounds like defense, but you've got to have offense. Offense meaning initiative, leadership. Now, there is a point: resistance is something. But generally in politics, you're thinking about doing something, and not--well, I don't know. It's just the way of it.

SHAFER: Yeah, do you think the lawsuits, any of them, are frivolous?

BROWN: No, I think the lawsuits--well, you've got to bring those lawsuits, because Trump is, in many ways, violating the law. Well, in the lawsuits California's alleging he's violating the law, and I think he is. Particularly when he wants to take away the waiver that California has to regulate greenhouse gases, without providing an adequate factual finding. He ignores the science, he ignores the facts, and he just arbitrarily says, "I'm taking away the waiver. I want to change the rules." Well, under our regulatory scheme, you can't have a rule unless you have some substantial evidence to justify it. Well, that works in reverse. You can't just on a whim take the rule out, and that's what Trump appears to be doing.

SHAFER: Yeah. I want to ask you about the [California] Supreme Court. You made four appointments--a majority now. And none of them were judges. They were all 02:28:00law professors or lawyers, but none of them had been on the bench. Was that a deliberate thing? What is it about those four, and the fact that they weren't judges? [Goodwin Liu, Leondra Reid Kruger, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, and Joshua Groban]

BROWN: I thought they were very intelligent. They represented a variety of views. But in the context of that variety, they were extremely skilled and knowledgeable and able. So I think that the supreme court could use that. These are difficult questions. So I thought put some really outstanding scholars on the bench, and that's what I did.

SHAFER: Did you feel like their lack of judicial experience was a slight negative?

BROWN: Well, it was a factor. But then they would have had the experience that they've had. And there'll be plenty of judges--judge is one form of experience.

SHAFER: Yeah, you--obviously, it's a diverse group of people, and--Leondra Kruger was sort of out of left field, to a certain extent. She was from California, but was working, I think, in DC as an attorney.

BROWN: For the president.

SHAFER: Yeah, so how did--how did you, how did she get on your radar? Evan always joked that I'm the only person that cares about this stuff.

BROWN: Yeah, you probably are. I was looking for outstanding candidates. Now, men, women, people of color, scholars, working class--whatever. Just who is extremely intelligent and an accomplished lawyer? That was my question. And she 02:30:00popped up. As soon as I met her, I was very impressed.

SHAFER: You knew right away? You had a sense?

BROWN: I knew right away.

SHAFER: There were criticisms, as I'm sure you heard, that--

BROWN: Very little, as a matter of fact. One story in an obscure legal publication, I think.

SHAFER: [laughing] Well, the criticism I heard was that he had to go three thousand miles away to find a qualified African American for the supreme court. Did you--

BROWN: Is that fair? I would say today that most people think she's an outstanding jurist. I don't think you've heard a peep of criticism. Very independent, very well reasoned, very well prepared.

SHAFER: A little more conservative maybe than the other three--

BROWN: A little bit. But it isn't just conservative/liberal. It's wisdom, insight, understanding all the ramifications. At the same time, understanding the legal principles at hand.

SHAFER: And you waited quite a long time to appoint Joshua Groban.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: Was that just because he was on your staff and you needed him, or was there, there was some--?

BROWN: I was looking for somebody. I kept looking. So--but there it is.

SHAFER: Yeah. What did you learn from the first time you were governor? Obviously, you left, and three of the judges were recalled or not confirmed.

BROWN: Well, you have to have a judge that is not going to be so wild they recall him, because then he'll take a few others with him. So that's kind of an obvious lesson. But I appointed many judges--six or seven judges the first time, and a lot of them were quite good.

SHAFER: In retrospect, again, a criticism of Rose Bird was that she--I think she was the Ag. commissioner? I mean she really kind of--

BROWN: No, it wasn't that. It was that she ruled against insurance companies and she ruled against the death penalty. Those are the two that--and mostly, the civil judgments that she rendered--that stirred up the money. And then the 02:32:00reversal of so many death penalty cases then provided the energy.

SHAFER: So it was the insurance--it was the money and the outrage that came?

BROWN: That's what I think. That's what some people think.

SHAFER: Yeah, do you think that your view of what that court is, or should be, is different now?

BROWN: Well, I see the court as a steadying institution in our turbulent political life. So they had to be prepared to make important decisions. But they can't make too many important decisions, such that they get dragged into the political maelstrom. So they need real insight. I use the word wisdom. They've got to know when to hold and when to fold--and when to boldly strike out and when to invalidate the institutional framework that is.

SHAFER: Do you feel like you thought back then that there was a more activist 02:33:00role for the courts than you came to realize?

BROWN: It's hard to recall forty years ago. I thought the court was, when I served as a law clerk, it seemed very quiet in the hallways. So I thought a little bit of new energy would be helpful. I see forty years later, that the court is a stabilizing force, and that they're more about continuity than change. Although at key moments, the changes they make are crucial to the functioning of the Democratic system.

SHAFER: I'm just curious--did you talk to Rose Bird after she was recalled?

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: What did--how was she doing? What did you talk about?

BROWN: I talked to her on a number of occasions. She came by my building in Oakland.

SHAFER: When you were mayor.

BROWN: I saw her in Palo Alto--maybe before I was mayor, and saw her at a party 02:34:00in Los Angeles, so I talked to her from time to time.

SHAFER: Yeah, was there any reflection about all that? Or--

BROWN: Oh, that's not the kind of thing you say, "Okay, Rose. How do you feel without a job?" No, I didn't raise that point.

SHAFER: Yeah, jumping around a little bit, because we've covered a lot of territory, and there are some things we haven't covered. We talked about the 2016 election. Did you consider yourself running?

BROWN: Well, I always consider myself running. But it didn't seem plausible to me at that point. I can't tell--whether it was because I was governor, because of where I was in my political career, campaigning from California. Certainly, the way these primaries--as you see how they're going, you have to start very early. And if you're in an important position like governor of California, then 02:35:00you have to neglect your duty. And once you do that, things--people get very unhappy

SHAFER: You have some experience with that?

BROWN: Yeah, I've experienced that. You can often do your job--well, it depends what was going on. We had some important things that came after 2016. Well, in 2016 we had the, we had Prop. 57--was that 2016?

SHAFER: That was--yeah, that was 2016.

BROWN: So that was an important--criminal justice reform. I was in the middle of some very important things.

SHAFER: If you'd been younger, do you think you would have given it more serious thought?

BROWN: Well, I was enjoying what I was doing. I was doing things that were very important. Climate change, prison reform, those were significant initiatives, so to run off might--I don't know. I don't know how much that influenced me. I 02:36:00think it definitely played a role. So running in '76--first of all, the campaign was much quicker. I declared in the middle of March. You know, before we are--well, we're in September? March is still a long way off. So that's a different ballgame. Now they jump out so early, that for an incumbent officeholder, that's pretty challenging, if not impossible.

MEEKER: In 2016, there was an implausible challenger to the frontrunner, who became surprisingly plausible, in the person of Bernie Sanders.

BROWN: Yeah.

MEEKER: Who also, in some ways, campaigned out of your 1992 playbook. How closely were you watching his campaign to get the nomination?

BROWN: I don't know. Not overly. Being governor of California is very 02:37:00interesting. And it was more interesting this time around for me than it was the first time, because of all the initiatives that I was engaged in that I thought were important. And certainly, they were challenging intellectually and politically. So, but Bernie also was--yeah, he was attacking. But he's attacking--he's an independent, he's from Vermont. He's really attacking the whole system of incumbency. Now, when I did that in '92, I was in an office. It's different when you're the governor of the largest state, all of a sudden to turn against the entire establishment of which you're a very prominent member. So it's a little less--he was quite aggressive on the status quo. And I would be 02:38:00very critical of the status quo, but I don't know that I had the appetite that he had to go so hell-bent against Hillary Clinton. And he attacked a lot, and that's the only way he got ahead. So that's what people wanted. But sitting here in Sacramento, I didn't feel that I wanted to do that.

MEEKER: Did his campaign give you an opportunity to reflect on your '92 campaign?

BROWN: Oh--not really. But the point is, I'm trying to think now--I mean that's such ancient history that I don't give it much time at all. What I would say is you stimulate, as you bring up the question, to go after the presidential campaign would have been a persistent, repetitive, nationwide assault on Clinton. And it didn't look, to me, that that would be successful. So I would 02:39:00end up doing great damage to the Democratic nominee, and that didn't seem right. So it seemed like this was her time. She was highly competent, and, no, I just didn't think that was the right thing to do. And I think Bernie did not--it seemed at the beginning that he was going to not go anywhere. And part of the success was he tapped into the moment, and part of it would have to have been Hillary's weaknesses as a candidate. Neither of those were very predictable at the time. Plus, he's in a job where all you do is vote yes or no, and that seems less than being the head of a big government like California. So those were some of the reasons. Had I been not holding office, who knows what I would have done. And if Hillary had not been the candidate--

[side conversation deleted]

SHAFER: Okay, we were talking about Hillary. You didn't want to go after Hillary and damage the nominee, and all that, and it was her time.

BROWN: Yeah, and she'd been in that world, and then here I was over in my own universe here, as governor of California. So it just seemed not appropriate.

SHAFER: Did your previous tangle with her in '92--?

BROWN: Oh, no--I know what I wanted to add: my name is pretty strong in California. I respected--the Clintons were very powerful. Now, it turned out that she lost to Obama and Trump, but in the primary, she still won--and she won California, significantly. So to go run off and challenge her, and lose, and neglect my job and my Prop. 57--when you really think of it, there was many reasons not to do it.

SHAFER: A lot of downside.

BROWN: And she was prepared. I thought Hillary was as prepared as anybody's 02:41:00going to be to be president.

Holmes: Governor, just to piggyback off that, did your previous experience, particularly in the '92 campaign and the other runs for president influence your decision, as having that life experience--?

BROWN: Well, after you do it three times, you're a little careful for the fourth. So you want a little more certitude than just jumping off, like you do maybe the first time.

Holmes: But also having those years of experience to reflect, or maybe see what you didn't before, like the attacks on Bill Clinton. Because you really tangled in '92. So years later, did that impact your decision of not wanting to do that again to the Democratic candidate?

BROWN: Well, we've done that. But I mean there are a lot of reasons. A lot of reasons, and that was just one of them. I mean I don't want to repeat what I just said, because that would be silly. But--it's not that easy. How many 02:42:00governors of the West--well, that fellow [Jay] Inslee ran there. But it's, I'd have to go back over the whole thing all over again, so it doesn't make sense. What is your question? We fought the last time, so do we want to fight again on a rematch, or something?

Holmes: No, you've pretty much answered my question. The question was with years of experience, were you more cognizant of maybe the effect on the other candidate against Trump and what that could have done?

BROWN: I think there was a variety--look, you guys act like you can parse decisions into five pieces--and first piece, second piece, third piece--et cetera. It doesn't work that way. You don't run for president--for nothing. You have to have pretty strong reasons. So I think I outlined why a successful fourth-term governor, in the middle of important work, would hesitate to 02:43:00challenge an icon--essentially Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primary. And the fact that Bernie did as well was certainly completely unforeseeable at the time. And he had very little to lose, and he went out there and swung for the bleachers or for the far field there, for the fence, and he had some kind of success. But he didn't succeed, and Trump got elected. And Trump is now doing all these terrible things on treaties--nuclear treaties, Russia, and climate change. So just on many levels, I think challenging Hillary was not such a good idea.

SHAFER: Do you think your three presidential runs, like what--was it a net positive? Like how do feel like it--overall. I know you feel like maybe 1980 was 02:44:00a mistake?

BROWN: Well, I didn't get out fast enough. Yeah, when Kennedy got in. Well, I think they were all interesting in their own right. I certainly--running for president, you learn things. You prepare, you talk to experts. I talked to military experts, budget experts, tax experts. So yeah, it's all part of my postdoctoral training. [Shafer laughs] Postdoctoral in the sense that I am a juris doctor, so everything after Yale is postdoctoral.

SHAFER: So it was more of a--almost like an academic, like a--

BROWN: No, it was a real world. Learning is not just the academy. The academy is a subset of the general universe of learning. And certainly campaigns is both a competition in itself, but also something you contribute to and you learn. Teach and learn, as a matter of fact.

SHAFER: When you think about governing versus campaigning, is there--they're 02:45:00obviously very different, but there's overlap.

BROWN: No, they're not very different. They're very similar.

SHAFER: How so?

BROWN: I know [Mario] Cuomo said you campaign in poetry and you govern in prose. Well, but they're all campaigning. It's campaigning all the time. You've got to be cognizant of the press--the overarching concern is the press. And even when you govern, you're aware that if you screw up, then that's a story. If that's a story, that's bad. [laughing] So then you're thinking of the next election.

[side conversation deleted]

SHAFER: There were some really horrible wildfires in California, in your last couple years. First of all, just--how do you, as that's going on, what are your priorities as governor?

BROWN: So look, when it comes to fires, they've been around historically, but these fires are unprecedented, particularly Paradise. But Redding, Santa Barbara, Malibu--these were quite shocking, and there's a lot of human 02:46:00devastation and tragedy. And so that's the most obvious. But going forward, it looks like this might be something that happens more and more. And if that happens, that will be a real problem for California, in terms--well, we've seen the problem for PG&E, but that was just three or four fires. What happens if these fires happen every couple of years? Then you're talking $10-$15 billion, and that will be a problem. Then they're going to have to--who knows what, but they're going to have to get at thinning the forest, hardening the wires, doing some--well, it's not conceivable, because we never had this problem. So yeah, fires are maybe the first and most serious warning from climate change.

SHAFER: I can imagine that as that's happening, you want to stay away--you don't want to bother the Cal Fire [California Department of Forestry and Fire 02:47:00Protection] folks. You want to let them do their job, but what role is there for the governor at that point, when that's happening?

BROWN: Well, normally governors show up at fires, tragedies--so you show up.

SHAFER: Were there any strategic decision that they ran by you, or they--?

BROWN: No.

SHAFER: No, they just go do their thing.

BROWN: The fire--no, there's no--not that I know of. They have the fire department; the mutual aid that we have in California, where the city, the county, and that state are linked together, depending upon the challenge of the disaster. That works. Works as planned, and governors just show up and talk a little bit. So there is a role. Perhaps creating a sense of confidence on the part of the people affected, but there's no operational role that governors have.

SHAFER: Showing appreciation for what they're doing, and all that, I guess.

BROWN: Well, that's for the firefighters, but you also have the people who are the victims. So it's somewhat helpful to both.

SHAFER: Yeah. You know, we've talked about this before, but there are some politicians who seem to be good comforters-in-chief sort of. How do you feel about that part of your role?

BROWN: Well, that's part of the role. You've got to carry on here in front of a camera, and you have to be able to display the appropriate emotion and feeling. So that, in itself, is challenging. Some people probably don't know the difference between whether there's a camera or not, because they're always projecting something or other that comes out of their sense of attention getting.

SHAFER: Was this something that you more felt you had to do than you wanted to do?

BROWN: Yeah, it's a little hard to go to perfect strangers and talk to them as through you're--they're a close confidant or associate. Yeah, I find that--I 02:49:00find that challenging. And some politicians are pretty good at it. But are they good at it because that's what they feel? Or are they good at it because they're good at displaying themselves in front of people and cameras?

SHAFER: Acting.

BROWN: Yeah. And you've got to be a good actor. No question. No question about that.

SHAFER: So you mentioned PG&E.

BROWN: Well, I will say--there is a question. I don't know if Abraham Lincoln thought he was an actor. That's too long ago to figure that one out, but you could be so authentic that it would be incredibly powerful. But to the extent you can't be 100 percent authentic, you need to be able to at least act as close to authentic as you possibly can.

SHAFER: [laughing] That seems like an oxymoron. [laughter] Acting authentic.

BROWN: Well, you've got to give them what they want.

SHAFER: Obviously PG&E was a big--I don't want to say victim, because they are 02:50:00also in some ways the perpetrators of the problem. But how did you think about the bankruptcy and apportioning responsibility and cost--how did you see that kind of formula?

BROWN: Well, I did propose that we change the rules so that PG&E could be held accountable based on their responsibility or their negligence or their lack thereof. That would require modifying the inverse-condemnation rule, so called. We proposed that the legislature had no interest in it, and that was under the influence of trial lawyers, who want to sue and have the rules of recovery as favorable to the plaintiff as possible. And secondly, the insurance companies would like the utility to absorb as much of the bill--because what they don't absorb, maybe the insurance companies do. So the insurance guys were able to get 02:51:00most of the Republicans; the trial lawyers got enough of the Democrats, and got them strongly enough--I don't say a majority, but enough so that there was no appetite in the legislature to do that. And they still haven't done it.

But the great problem is that while people want to punish PG&E, that if they go out of business, then the taxpayer--the consumer--will have to pick up the legacy. So who's going to pay for the wires? Who's going to pay for the power plants? Pay for the whole operation? That'll fall back on the consumer. So that's why I think a more balanced/mixed strategy is called for. And they'll probably get to that. Right now, they're using money.

SHAFER: Well, how would you describe the utility's behavior in terms of--?

BROWN: I haven't looked at it. I mean the fire people said it was the utility's wires, in one case. In another case, not. PG&E appears not to have taken safety 02:52:00as much--with the gas explosions in San Bruno--there's a lot there that people should look into. But I'm not here to pass judgment on that. These are all serious questions, and I don't walk around in my head with all of the answers that lawyers are spending millions and tens of millions of dollars to figure out, one way or the other.

SHAFER: Do you think that in a situation like that, with PG&E, that the governor and the legislature--like how are the roles and the responsibilities different?

BROWN: Well, the governor has the broad picture and lays out what he thinks should be done, and the legislature will react more to the interest groups. That's just the way the legislature is. It's closer to people, closer to pressure. The governor is apparently a little more removed. Although the legislature can do things and get away with it, because there are so many of 02:53:00them, whereas when the governor does something that becomes unpopular, he gets nailed. So on the one hand, the legislators are more vulnerable to pressure. On the other hand, they're less vulnerable to political reprisal on the part of the public when something goes sour.

SHAFER: Of course you'd have a hard time selling that with Josh Newman, but that was an exception, I guess.

BROWN: That was the exception. The fact that he was elected was an exception.

SHAFER: Yeah. To what extent did the experience that California had with deregulation and with Gray Davis being recalled--was that instructional for you at all?

BROWN: No.

SHAFER: Not at all. Just totally different.

BROWN: Well, I don't--what, the deregulation? Well, like what was the instruction?

SHAFER: Well, just that like when you mess around--

BROWN: Well, I'm very aware: if you get down into the low thirties or something, and some rich guy wants to buy a million signatures, you're in deep trouble. That's like obvious. So it's more obvious today than it was before Gray's 02:54:00recall. And there are a lot of people who were unpopular. My father was unpopular after the Chessman decision. If someone put a recall out, he might have been recalled. A lot of good people might have been recalled, through the years. So usually you get four years to recover. Pete Wilson might have been recalled, when he was at his nadir of popularity, like the tax. Maybe somebody could have knocked him off for that.

SHAFER: Yeah, I'm interested in this whole concept of unintended consequences.

BROWN: Okay.

SHAFER: You know, and I'm just wondering--that seems to be what happened with deregulation. No one really--it was a unanimous--

BROWN: Because when the herd moves across the plains, they all move together. And there's a thought, the closest term I can think of at this moment is plausibility. At that moment, deregulation was totally plausible. And there's not really room or appetite for incisive, insightful thinkers deviant to the 02:55:00herd, to the norm, to the mood, to the enthusiasm. A lot of this is mood music. When the music's playing, if you get a sound--off-note, it's not going to be received well. And it wouldn't be heard anyway. Not by the press, not by anybody. So that's the way it is. So there are times when that's, with these crime bills. When the times come, you pass them. You don't pass them, they do an initiative and they pass anyway. Politics, popular government, as de Tocqueville pointed out, has its challenges and its problems. That's why the founders wanted more elite elements in charge of things. And now we're casting our lot with what Federalist Paper No. 10 would have been appalled by.

SHAFER: Do you feel that democracy is in the greatest peril that it's been in since you were in public life?

BROWN: I don't know. What is democracy? We haven't had a democracy like this before. Even in England, the prime minister in England was picked by a subset of the electorate, very small. So it's not pure one person, one vote on every issue. We have courts, and we have electoral college, and we have voting requirements. And we've had more requirements in the past, so we're moving toward more populism, more mass decision making. But mass decision making is hard to--well, mass decision making, by definition, is millions of people deciding something. So they're not in the same room, they're not talking to each other. So manipulation and technology is implicit in the very notion of a mass 02:57:00democracy. And once you say that, then a smaller subset is going to control those mechanisms, those levers of influence. Because how else is the mass going to work? They work through a political party, they work through television ads, they work through mailings, they work through news. All of which are influenced by various factors.

So, but we've had different ways--some people are even saying we should reduce the [voting] age. Eighteen is too old, you should get down to sixteen or something. People say that people who aren't citizens ought to be able to vote. Well, there's pressure. If you've got a problem, add more people into the electorate. But the more you add, the more the mass grows, and the more the challenge of communicating with the mass, or the mass making some kind of 02:58:00coherent decision becomes problematical.

SHAFER: And expensive.

BROWN: And expensive--well, but it's not expensive for the billionaires. It's expensive for the--well, it becomes prohibitive to anybody but the organized lobbies or rich people.

MARZORATI:Oh, well just on the PG&E thing, do you think that--just talking about unintended consequences, like there was a loophole basically left that didn't address fires in 2018. And then two months after the law is passed there's the King Fire. Was that purposefully done? Like how did it end up that that was not--

BROWN: What's the loophole?

MARZORATI:Basically, that the rules created in that bill didn't address fires in 2018.

BROWN: Well, because that's as far as they wanted to go.

MARZORATI:Who?

BROWN: The legislature. They couldn't go any further. So I don't know--what's your--?

MARZORATI:That's not answering the question.

BROWN: Well, I don't know if it's a problem. It's just a fact. When I first 02:59:00proposed my bill, people didn't even want to look at it. It's the last thing they wanted. And then we got some kind of a bill, and then Governor Newsom took it a little further, put money on the table. But of course that's one of the issues. Do you hand out money to the taxpayers through the bond system, the borrowing? Or do you cut costs? Cutting costs is denying recovery. In the medical malpractice, we had proposals to fund all the malpractice recoveries. But instead, we chose to restrict malpractice recoveries, so you could only collect $250,000 of nonacademic damage. That became quite controversial, but it happened. So that's always: do you restrict, or do you try to subsidize? And usually, you come up with some kind of a combination. And that's what we're doing with PG&E.