Jerry Brown | Interview 17 | September 9, 2019

Interview #17: September 9, 2019

HOLMES: This is Todd Holmes with the UC Berkeley Oral History Center. We are sitting down today, again, with Governor Jerry Brown. Today's date is September 9, 2019. I am joined by Scott Shafer and Guy Marzorati from KQED, as well as Queena Kim from KQED, and Martin Meeker for UC Berkeley Oral History Center. Governor, thanks for sitting down with us again. We are going to start off looking at your run for attorney general. But before we do that, I wanted to get your thoughts on some of the state of politics in California prior to your 2006 run for attorney general. And that would be the recall of Gray Davis, which happened in 2003. What were your thoughts on Davis's recall, because it was one of the first times in, at least California history, that a governor had been recalled?

BROWN: I saw it as a perfect storm: during Gray Davis's administration, the 00:01:00deregulation, which happened under Pete Wilson before he was even elected, set the stage for the disruption of the system, through Enron, through various gaming--and through whatever other pricing phenomena occurred. The result was that the energy prices shot up, an historic high, I believe, and Davis was unable to respond adequately. And then, after the dotcom exuberance gave way to the dotcom breakdown, or fall in the market--and the elimination of all those businesses--that then, with the volatile state income tax, created a big deficit and Gray's popularity sunk. And it just so happened that this very wealthy 00:02:00Republican qualified the signatures.

SHAFER: Darrell Issa.

BROWN: Yeah. There had been attempts to recall Reagan, and I think there were scattered attempts on other governors, but nobody had the willingness to put out the money. And that's a phenomenon that has become increasingly the situation. There weren't as many self-financed politicians, I don't believe, when I ran in 1974. It might have happened a few times, but it wasn't normal. It became more the norm--big money into politics grew, and that's a whole other story. But it was different. So because of all those factors, the recall was there when Davis was very unpopular, and so that was it. It was inevitable.

A lot of the time--no one else knows whether they'd be recalled. You know, Wilson was unpopular at a certain point. I wasn't as unpopular, but I was in the low forties. Could I have been recalled? I don't know. Could others? Culbert Olson--could he have been recalled? He ran into a lot of unpopularity, and he lost his election--the only one to lose a reelection, Culbert Olson, until my father lost, but the only one to ever lose a reelection after one term. So, popularity giving way to unpopularity is regular. It is normal. What is abnormal is a recall waiting to seize that situation. So that's what happened.

SHAFER: I'm just curious, do like--he had just gotten reelected, you know?

BROWN: By a very small margin.

SHAFER: True. But do you see that as just politics? Or was there an unfairness to it, or does fairness just--?

BROWN: Well, wait a minute. Like what? Do you want to go ethical, metaphysical, political--what realm do you want to talk in?

SHAFER: Well, that's what I'm asking. Is there a fair or unfair in politics?

BROWN: I would say there's many ways to characterize political events. Is it unfair that England is floundering over the Brexit question? Is it fair/unfair that Merkel had to announce her retirement because of the unpopularity of immigration? Is it unfair that the Italians are fighting the same thing, based on immigration and other factors? Is it unfair that the Congress is polarized, and that Mitch McConnell is pursuing an agenda--first against Obama, and then to basically validate Trump? These are phenomena of our time. And I don't know how 00:05:00you want me to characterize them--they are.

What I would say is democracy, I think someone came up with the phrase, "the distemper of democracy." That was used forty or fifty years ago. So I would say there is discontent. The discontent can be analyzed--either a slowdown in the economic growth, or the inequality, or the anxiety, the uncertainty, the rising of debt. So there's many burdens, including just the way the world shows up for people in modern democracies, although Sudan is having issues, Hong Kong is 00:06:00having issues. So these things--it depends on where you want to look at it. I like to see things not as isolated one off[s]. So I would say the Davis recall was not a deviant to the pattern, which has become more general in the subsequent decades.

HOLMES: The successful recall of Gray Davis led to the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Some had joked, at that time, it was another actor turned politician.

BROWN: Yeah.

HOLMES: And this time in the governor's office, after Reagan. What were your impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger?

BROWN: Well, I don't know that I ever saw one of his movies, but I thought he was a very effective speaker on television. He was an actor that had a sense of timing, his German [Austrian] accent gave him a certain interest that raised him 00:07:00above the normal boring clichés and mannerisms of many politicians. And he was a celebrity. So we know that being well known and celebrityhood is a way to do that--[John V.] Tunney, the boxer's son, became a senator in California. Ronald Reagan became a governor the first time out. Trump was a television star. So the drama and the acting that's going into televised politics is becoming more general, so Arnold is part of that wave. So he's the second actor, the second actor to follow a Democrat--to be preceded by a Democrat and succeeded by a 00:08:00Democrat. So there it is.

HOLMES: In some respects, some had claimed that Arnold Schwarzenegger's governorship--you could see at least an attempt to return to a moderate Republicanism.

BROWN: Yes, clearly.

HOLMES: What were your impressions--and particularly his engagement on the issues?

BROWN: Well, I think he tried to be, he was--I think he was positive, and you could say progressive, on the environment. I think he was a more centrist kind of personality. He tried to do what the Republicans like--restrict union dues from the public-sector unions. He had a number of initiatives, but they didn't 00:09:00work. And that too is not unusual. Reagan had an initiative that went on a special election. And the speaker, Bob Moretti, led the campaign against him and it was defeated. Curbing overall expenditures, even though everyone, not everyone, but a lot of people think that too much spending becomes a popular issue, to curb it. And yet, when the people had a chance, all the different flaws of an expenditure limit were brought out, and he was defeated. With all the public-sector unions, of course, joining the fray to defeat it.

So Arnold ran into the buzz saw of more Democratic politics, and the Republicans didn't, many of them didn't like him: (a) he didn't spend maybe enough time with them, but (b) he didn't follow their orthodoxy, so that weakened him among Republicans. And the Democrats, because of his stance against public-sector 00:10:00unions, and the nurses and others, he became kind of a negative icon for a Democrat. So he got caught in the middle, and it proves the point that even though the parties have their flaws, having the base that occupies 40 percent plus of the electorate is very helpful, and may be absolutely essential--at least so far.

As we see in France, where Macron came with a whole new crowd. He's low in the polls. And then we have the guy in the Ukraine, which broke through all the old parties and created a new one. So that's what Schwarzenegger was trying to do, but it didn't work in California. The old ways were too powerful.

MEEKER: In 2006, you run for attorney general of the State of California. At 00:11:00what point did you decide to enlist in this campaign?

BROWN: A year or two, maybe a couple of years before. I hadn't really thought of what I was going to do after the mayor--I thought I might run for something, senate, president, something or other. But then, that became an obvious opportunity. I'm a lawyer. My father was attorney general, and it seemed like a natural next step.

MEEKER: You hadn't practiced law in a good number of years however. Did that give you any trepidation about entering into this race?

BROWN: No, but I had practiced law, three and a half years at Tuttle & Taylor, which was the top-rated firm in LA. I did bring some lawsuits as secretary of state; I participated very actively in drafting those lawsuits. In fact, I argued a case for the Supreme Court on the campaign-disclosure laws of 00:12:00California. I also helped write Proposition 9, the Fair Political Practices Act. And as governor, I considered more than eight thousand separate bills that were proposed legislation. Many of them I signed into law. So in that process, which is a unique process, very few people do that, because we have very few governors. But having a team of people to explain, discuss, argue about eight thousand laws, and then reading a number of paragraphs or provisions of those laws--that's good experience.

Also, I helped craft the strong-mayor initiative. I conceived that idea, and I had a friend who lived at my We the People headquarters who actually wrote it. But I was very much involved in that. And I also then brought an action that 00:13:00ultimately went to the Court of Appeals--well, I argued it personally before the Fair Political Practices Commission, that I attempted to strike down a conflict-of-interest provision that was a regulation adopted by the commission. And although I lost before the commission, we then got a lawyer and we won on appeal. And that bar on my being able to opine and participate in economic decisions within five hundred--I guess it's within five hundred feet--or I think it was fifteen hundred feet of my place in downtown Oakland. I won that, but that was a legal question. And so in all these experiences, I felt unusually prepared to be an attorney general.

MEEKER: There was a lawsuit that attempted to disqualify you from the race.

BROWN: Right.

MEEKER: Was that a marginal effort, or were you really concerned about that?

BROWN: I most certainly was concerned about that. I researched it, and we had a strong case that an inactive member of the bar is a member of the bar, and therefore it should be upheld. So--it was a Republican lawsuit. Also, the notion that you had to have five years of experience in California law, that was adopted, I think, in 1966. And I always thought it was questionable. A lot of these rules, these barriers to entry, I've always thought were a little dubious. But if you ask me, yeah--oh, you have to be concerned. You never know what the legal outcome is, but I thought we could win--and we did win.

MEEKER: Was this the first election that Anne played a significant role?

BROWN: Yes.

MEEKER: What was her role?

BROWN: She was the campaign manager. Well, [Averell] "Ace" Smith was also the 00:15:00manager, but Anne helped raise the money, helped organize things--organize the campaign and structure the activities. We had people--I think [Joseph P.] "Joe" Trippi did some of the film, and Ace was there every day working. But Anne was also there every day working.

MEEKER: You didn't spend a whole lot of money on this campaign.

BROWN: I think it was $5[million] or $6 million was all I could raise. Oh, that was highly challenging. It's not that easy to raise that money. So no, that was a full-time effort for maybe a year or a year and a half. That's all I could raise, and [Rockard J.] "Rocky" Delgadillo kept pace. He had a very good fundraiser, and he was city attorney, and he was able to leverage all that. So yeah, I found it challenging. And I didn't spend all my money, by the way. I did 00:16:00save a few hundred--I didn't save enough, but I did.

MEEKER: This would have been another Northern versus Southern California primary campaign, that we seem to be seeing a lot of in the Democratic Party.

BROWN: Yeah, but I had connections in the south. I'd lived in LA for twenty-three years, and lived there as governor, but no, I guess that's true. I don't know if you want north and south. A lot of it's known. You know, you talk about the known Newsom/Boxer/Feinstein, myself. I mean we were all well known. So is it north/south? Or is it just name identification? I would tend to say it's more name identification, just the circumstances of who ran.

MEEKER: From your recollection, what were the key issues in this campaign?

BROWN: [slight pause] Yeah, it's hard to say what the key issues--I mean the 00:17:00issues were the TV ads. Whatever those TV ads were. Take a few surveys--I mean basically the issue was I was better known than Rocky Delgadillo. I don't think the attorney general--I don't think people in these so-called down-ballot offices--there could be an issue. Crime is always kind of lurking. Rocky Delgadillo tried to make abortion an issue, but that didn't go anywhere. First of all, it's hard on $3 [million] or $4 million of TV ads--we spent $8 million the last week against Whitman, so $3 [million] or $4 million in a whole campaign doesn't get you too much communication.

SHAFER: I think you were the first candidate for attorney general, who opposed the death penalty, to win.

BROWN: Right, but I didn't emphasize that.

SHAFER: Well, of course not. But I'm just wondering--like how did you think 00:18:00about it? Because your opponents were going to raise it, right?

BROWN: Well, did they? Rocky Delgadillo didn't.

SHAFER: Well, that was in the primary.

BROWN: And I don't know how--they'd try to bring up some of my liberal positions. But again, the Republican fellow--

MEEKER: [Charles S.] "Chuck" Poochigian.

BROWN: Poochigian. I mean, he was an unknown character from Fresno. He had a hard time getting the word out. I think I've mentioned before in these interviews, but a classic case was when Gray Davis ran for treasurer in 1974 against Jess Unruh. Jess Unruh lost to Reagan, but he was on the ballot. He was a somebody, and the old rule is you don't beat somebody with nobody. And so the somebodies generally prevail. I was the somebody, and Poochigian, from the point of view of public awareness, was not anyone that people were familiar with.

SHAFER: And other than seeing it as a political opportunity, because it was--I 00:19:00know you've mentioned before that you've never, I think--I could be wrong. But I think you said you've never run for a seat that wasn't open. You never ran against an incumbent.

BROWN: Well, certainly, that was a certain luck too, that continued--

SHAFER: Well--and strategies.

BROWN: That was a strategy, but I didn't create that. I didn't create term limits so that Lockyer could vacate to open the space for me. I didn't get Elihu Harris to say, "Well, I'm not going to run for a third term as mayor." So they were there, and it was just part of the--being fortunate.

SHAFER: Yeah, but how did you think of the office of attorney general? Did you see it--were you already thinking about four years down the--

BROWN: No, I was not.

SHAFER: Not at all?

BROWN: Well, I might have been, but not the way I remember it. I thought it would be a very good office. I'd enjoy it. Anne was a lawyer--I like legal questions. So I thought it would be--and my father was attorney general, and I always remember that he loved that office, and that when he had it, he was very 00:20:00popular among a wide swath of people. Once you get to be governor, you're a Democrat, you're not a Republican--and the issues have that partisan glow to them. And it's very different than attorney general, which can be everybody's friend. Just like the district attorney can be everybody's friend. In fact, my father's supporters, when he was running for district attorney, were a much broader and included conservatives, some of whom, many of whom maybe were there for attorney general. But now when you get to governor, you've got to take stands. And there are labor unions and there's taxes and all. There's oil, and there's north/south, there's water. All that becomes very partisan, much sharper. You, whereas AG is a--I knew that it was an office, I just remember my 00:21:00father loving it a lot. And I thought well, this would be a good office.

SHAFER: And did you see--like when you ran for governor the first time. We've talked about this.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: That you looked for things that you could do that--but for you not being there wouldn't happen.

BROWN: That's after I was elected, I think.

SHAFER: Right, but did you think--like did you think of the, like as you thought about attorney general, did you think--other than I think I like this, did you think--oh, I could do this, that, and the other thing--or not really?

BROWN: I don't know if I thought--first of all, you have to understand I spend a lot of my time reading and talking to knowledgeable people. I want to emphasize that. I read a lot of material, and what I don't read, I gather from knowledgeable people whom I spend a lot of time with. So I'm not taking the kids to the zoo or soccer games or watching the Raiders play the 49ers. I do that occasionally, but very occasionally. I'm not watching sitcoms. I'm not going to 00:22:00the movies. So when you're however old I was, I think I was in my 60s, right, that accumulates a lot of knowledge. And I'm certainly reading the LA Times, the Chronicle frequently, and so I'm knowing a lot of things. So whatever there is to know--I knew the attorney general had water. I knew there was issues of criminal justice. I knew there were environmental issues. So I knew all those, so it wasn't like I had to get briefed on, or that I said this or that--no, I mean the job was there.

I'd come from an older school. When my father ran, the only thing I can remember him saying [is] that he didn't like the incumbent, and that he was more able. That was the phrase they'd use--he's more able. But he didn't talk about giving back. He didn't have some issue. He was running for DA--well, I think that yeah, 00:23:00he thought the guy was somewhat corrupt or something, the DA that he ran against in 1943. But in general, running for office is an activity that often lawyers, or people who are interested in politics, do. And if you're a Democrat, you have certain things that you're drawn to. And if you're a Republican, you have other things you're drawn to--and that's the way it is.

Now, it has become kind of a cliché or a common undertaking to say, first of all, you've been urged to run, and to give various rationales for why you've been urged to run and what you're going to do. But that isn't the way I've experienced the political world. You know, when John Kennedy ran, what did he say? He said he's going to get America moving again. But I don't know, was that why he was running for president, to get America moving again? Or was he running because he wanted to be president? Is there any doubt? He wanted to be president. If you could be president, you might want to do that. And how much 00:24:00rationale, in your own head, would you need, if you could have "Hail to the Chief" when you walk into the room. [laughing] If you could have Air Force One. If you could deal with war and peace. Right--so I think these jobs are sufficiently attractive that you don't have to have a whole series of whatever you call these things. Things you're going to do, or things you think you need to do, or things that people are calling out to be done.

Now, there are occasions when they jump. Like when [Roberta F.] "Bobbi" Fiedler ran against James Corman in LA, and her campaign was bus stops. So she was very clearly running to stop busing, okay? I think Quentin Kopp had something like that when he was running for supervisor. So there are occasions when it's clear--maybe stop the war in Vietnam. That was when I was part of the campaign to stop Lyndon Johnson in '68. Okay, there are clear goals. But there are a lot 00:25:00of times--no, that office is there. I'd like to do it, and I think I can. And of course if your father has been doing that, it's kind of a natural thing. So maybe if you've never had any family involved, it might be more remote. But when it's just been part of the environment, and people talk about it, and the people may not all be politicians, but they're labor leaders, they're contributors, they're--whatever.

So it seems to be, maybe you have relatives that were in the press business or maybe the--I talked to the woman who built my fence. And she's welding there, and she has a little welder in the back of her truck. And I said, "What does your father do?" She said, "Well, my father was a welder." Okay, so I don't know if she asked herself if she was going to do good, because fences are 00:26:00important--good fences make good neighbors. I think she probably became a fence builder because it was an opportunity. It was there, and she knew how to do things. She liked to--so I'm saying that being governor may not be that much different than fixing fences.

MEEKER: So you are elected by a substantial margin in November of 2006. You get started in the following January of 2007. Can you talk a little bit about process? You're entering into the position of--

BROWN: You know, I want to warn you on process. It's not the first thing I think of.

MEEKER: [laughing] I've heard that.

BROWN: Well, because I don't know exactly what it is. A process--you know, when you go to take an academic course, what are the three this or the five that--you have a lot of process questions. But when you're down on the playing field, you know, if you're a football player, they throw the ball, and if you can block it or catch it, whatever the case may be. If you're attorney general, stuff happens. Countrywide is sitting there--can we go out and sue them? Or, whatever, 00:27:00there was a number of--the cases are there, the issues to deal with. The waiver, which is still an issue--the EPA waiver. It allows California to impose more strict standards. Applying that to greenhouse gases--that was an innovation, and the Bush people resisted it. As attorney general, I represented California in advancing the claim that the waiver was appropriate.

MEEKER: We'll get to those issues in just one moment. I think the thing I was most interested in is you, as attorney general, top attorney for the State of California--

BROWN: Yeah.

MEEKER: You have a number of attorneys, presumably, working for you.

BROWN: Yeah, right.

MEEKER: Who is setting the agenda there?

BROWN: The agenda sets itself. First of all, the attorney general has to defend all the different departments--the prisons, there's a whole prison law section. You have a tort section. You have regulatory, you have anti-trust, you have the 00:28:00guns, you have the gambling. They had two people. So it's all running, and then you hear about cases. Lockyer had something he called packages, and every week there'd be packages, and the attorney general was supposed to sign off on those with his signature. So that really sets the agenda. I was interested in the environment, so I did part of that. I was interested in prisons, so I did some of that. So I mean you don't show up on a blank slate. You know, you show up in the second act of the play. It's been running before you got there, and it's going to run after you leave. So there, you step on the stage and you start--you get in the play, get in the action. Now, I had ideas, and then we drove things. In fact, the Countrywide--the staff was not moving on that, and Anne played a major role in that. To push that, because that was something they weren't ready 00:29:00for. So there were things that I knew because of my experience, that I could--that I could do.

MEEKER: Well, the Countrywide thing hadn't really erupted yet in 2007.

BROWN: Yeah, no. Well, I don't know. Tell me what happened in 2007.

MEEKER: Well, the Global Warming Solutions Act enforcement passed in 2006.

BROWN: Oh, we had letters, yeah. Ken Alex had a lot of the environmental section. We would file letters; when people did their general plans, they had to include consideration of greenhouse gases. So I think that was a unique--I don't know, I think Arnold may have done that. I'm not sure. But I did maybe 120 of those--over a hundred letters. And so that was something I very much was engaged in.

MEEKER: There were antagonists who attempted to overturn that particular law.

BROWN: Right.

MEEKER: And so you, as attorney general, were in charge of combating that. Who were the antagonists, and what were the issues?

BROWN: I can't remember. Maybe like--give me a--

MEEKER: Well, the California Chamber of Commerce was one group that sued.

BROWN: That was on Prop. 26?

MEEKER: Yeah.

BROWN: Yeah, that was a campaign. Yeah, we had a whole series of events. If you know what they are, I can probably comment on them, but I haven't thought about them much over the last ten years.

MEEKER: Well, the Chamber of Commerce sued, claiming that this act formed an illegal tax on business.

BROWN: Oh, that was the cap and trade.

MEEKER: Yeah.

BROWN: Then I guess I don't particularly remember that lawsuit, but I knew the chamber--yeah, that went on for a few years. We ultimately won that--later. Maybe we won it when I was governor. I think it took a long time. I remember when I was governor, like just a couple of years ago, there was a final decision--maybe three years ago. And that's when we did an extension.

MEEKER: Well, the cap-and-trade provision was a key provision of that act and also one of the more controversial ones.

BROWN: The question was, was it a tax?

MEEKER: Yeah.

BROWN: If it's a tax, it would have to have a vote of the people.

MEEKER: Yeah, and it was ultimately decided that it wasn't a tax.

BROWN: I can't remember. It was decided, it was upheld--I mean whatever it was was valid, but we felt that it was expiring in 2020, and therefore we had to go get it renewed. But I don't think it would serve any great purpose to try to remember the lawsuit and its fine points.

SHAFER: You said--and of course it is the job of the attorney general to defend agencies and laws.

BROWN: Right.

SHAFER: And ballot measures.

BROWN: Right, and most of these are the thousand deputies. The thing is a machine just running--it's running fulltime.

SHAFER: But one decision I suspect came up to you is Prop. 8, and whether to defend it, because that was a case where you decided not to defend it. Can you 00:32:00talk about that decision? Marriage equality.

BROWN: Right. Yeah, yeah, there was a challenge on that. Yeah, there's many iterations of the gay marriage business. I think it just became, I can't--what was the circumstance that Prop? Where was the--oh, this was on appeal to the Supreme Court?

SHAFER: No.

BROWN: Well, it became that.

SHAFER: It became that. But so it, but it was, so--

BROWN: I didn't appeal.

SHAFER: Yeah.

BROWN: And the question was did we have a duty to do that, because how do the proponents ever get their day in court? And then they let the intervenors--and that's, I do remember. But there were many iterations of the gay marriage thing.

SHAFER: Well, the one I'm thinking about was the federal law. So the state Supreme Court upheld Prop. 8.

BROWN: Yes. And we argued to invalidate it under fundamental fairness, and we 00:33:00lost. It was not a very impressive argument before the court.

SHAFER: So then it came up in the federal courts.

BROWN: Right. By that time gay marriage was developing greater strength in the public mind.

SHAFER: And so how does that--I mean if the AG's job is to defend laws--I mean Kamala's [Kamala Harris] been kind of hit on this, and she says, "Well, it's just my job to defend it." How do you decide? It must be a--it's got to be a fairly--

BROWN: Well, Lockyer upheld the ban on gay marriage.

SHAFER: Right, exactly.

BROWN: He did, and I think I continued that.

SHAFER: Upheld the ban.

BROWN: Yes. And then when Prop. 8 came along, we moved to strike it as violating a fundamental fairness of the Constitution. And then the federal case was actually--there was a trial.

SHAFER: Right.

BROWN: And there was a finding at the trial level. And then it went up on appeal. And we--yeah, we did. Well, we didn't--I think when the Prop. 14 was 00:34:00there, [Thomas] Lynch did not--in fact, I think he opposed it before the Supreme Court. That was the fair housing in 1964.

SHAFER: But I mean it's a rare thing, for an-

BROWN: It is a rare thing.

SHAFER: Yeah, and so I'm assuming that there was some discussion about it, because it doesn't--it's certainly not something you left to the deputies. I mean that was a decision you would--

BROWN: Right. It was a political decision.

SHAFER: Say more. What do you mean?

BROWN: Well, this was the vibe at that time. So, it seemed like that was the right thing to do. That marriage equality had become recognizable and supportable, and it was assimilated into the whole regime of rights. And so, at 00:35:00that point, I didn't think we should uphold the law.

SHAFER: It was part of the zeitgeist?

BROWN: Yes, it's part of the politics, it's become something that seemed reasonable, seemed right.

SHAFER: Was that a tough call?

BROWN: No, no. Why would it be a tough call? In the state of California, for the Democratic Party? I don't think so. Maybe if you were in Colusa County, running for county district attorney it might be a tough call.

SHAFER: Could be your next career.

BROWN: Yeah, no--I don't want to go to the office every day.

MEEKER: Were there individuals who you engaged with on this particular issue?

BROWN: I can't remember--I don't know. Maybe the lawyers did. We didn't. We've got to decide a lot of things. But that didn't take a lot of thinking. It didn't seem like--

SHAFER: Prop. 8.

BROWN: Well, we'd been down that road before, went up and down. First you 00:36:00defended the ban, then we attacked Prop. 8. So this was after several years of debate, so it's been pretty well--it's been well argued and thought about by the time that case came up. And it also was at the trial level, so there was a lot of talk here. This wasn't all of a sudden a big surprise. You had time, a lot of time to think about it.

MEEKER: There's one element of the legal maneuverings here, and that is that this eventually becomes the Perry decision at the US Supreme Court. And the Perry decision was really decided on a technicality, in that those who--

BROWN: You mean they dismissed it.

MEEKER: Right. They dismissed it, because basically those who were advocating for the position were determined, by the US Supreme Court--

BROWN: Not to have standing.

MEEKER: Not to have standing. If it had been the State of California supporting 00:37:00it, there would have been standing, and it could have, in fact, decided the national issue--

BROWN: Right.

MEEKER: --two years before. Were you thinking about these potential implications at the time?

BROWN: Well, I mean the implications were the mood was to not defend. Prop. 8 became very unpopular in liberal/progressive circles. So who wants to touch that thing?

MEEKER: Okay, so defending it, even though it could have meant an earlier constitutional settlement of it--

BROWN: That would be so subtle. Who would understand that?

MEEKER: Okay, so that was untenable.

BROWN: And that would be reviled in certain quarters. And what politician likes to be reviled, at least while he's in office? [laughter]

MEEKER: Did you hire your own attorneys, or was it just a continuity from Lockyer's time?

BROWN: [James M.] "Jim" Humes was the head of the civil division, and I promoted 00:38:00him, and there used to be two. There was one section by exempt appointee, and then there was Jim Humes, and I think there was a criminal law section. You know, I made Humes one over all, and then Anne was my senior advisor in all this. But I did not bring in this host of lawyers like subsequent AGs did. I think we had nine exempt appointees, and I don't think I got more than seven. And they were more press and appointments. So yeah, I didn't feel that--the attorney general is a law office. It has political dimensions, but I felt I knew politics enough that I didn't need a lot of assistance in that realm. The intersection between the law, and maybe my political interests, I thought Anne could handle. In terms of managing the office, Jim had the experience. This 00:39:00world of the attorney general is a specialized field, and there are many different aspects of how that office works.

And therefore, to me, it only makes sense to take the people who are there and know what the hell they're doing, just as when I became governor. And I thought to myself--someone proposed a former Bank of America guy to be my director of finance. I thought well, wait a minute. We've got these fellows, Ed Beach and Roy Bell, and they'd worked under my father's guy and under Reagan, and I said well, why don't they just work directly for me? So I am very sensitive to, and aware, that the civil service, the bureaucracy, the institutional activities of government are highly specialized and are full of senior people, and therefore, 00:40:00to bring in amateurs is hazardous. Now, we do do that in the health department. But corrections, we always take to professionals from within. So, and anyway, I did not see any need to bring a lot of political advisors, and subsequent AGs have felt that need. I didn't see what the point was.

Just like Lockyer, because he was a legislator, loved to go over to the legislature and promote bills. I thought we had enough laws. I didn't have any interest in promoting more laws. I thought my job was enforcing them or advocating or suing different people, or the president, or whatever.

SHAFER: Quick last question about Prop. 8. Schwarzenegger originally, I think, supported it, and then by the time it got to the US Supreme Court he flipped and said no.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: Did you two have a conversation about that at all?

BROWN: No, I doubt it.

SHAFER: You doubt it.

BROWN: No.

SHAFER: Okay. Another issue that comes before the AG, of course, is the death 00:41:00penalty, defending it or not. And of course you have a long history of being against the death penalty. There were no executions. There was a case that came up involving Albert Brown, Albert Greenwood Brown. I think there was a protocol issue about the drug protocol. How did you, as AG, think about that? And did you think what can I do to stop an execution?

BROWN: Or defer. Well, we did. But I'm not quite sure how that--we defended. The attorney general's job is to defend the death cases on appeal, and he does that--and we did that. And Lockyer did that, and every other AG has done that. That's just the way it is. You defend because people have a right to a lawyer. And the lawyer is not the DA; the lawyer is the attorney general. So we did that. I think as AG we defended all the cases, without question.

SHAFER: But--did you think about ways to defer the executions?

BROWN: I'm not sure. I don't remember that case.

SHAFER: Uh--okay. We'll come--I want to come back to that whole thing when you're--when we get to the governor's office.

BROWN: Yeah, as governor, we certainly were not in a rush. But as AG, I don't know how that would come out, because the AG--the line, people, under the head of the criminal division, they handled all that. And they're fairly conservative lawyers in that division. There was a guy from Berkeley that they called--I think they called him Dr. Death or something, but he was in charge of the death penalty--and all the criminal cases. But that's what they do. They defend all the state agencies. It's not appropriate to start injecting politics in that.

MEEKER: I think we need to talk a bit more about the environment during your term as AG. It's very interesting looking at the history of legislation and law 00:43:00in the United States, how much environmental protection comes through the courts.

BROWN: Yeah.

MEEKER: Twenty-seven of your first seventy-six news releases were on environmental issues--press releases.

BROWN: Where? From the AG's office?

MEEKER: Yeah, yeah. So clearly, this was a driving concern for you. Did you have a philosophy about how you wanted to litigate rather--protection of the environment through the AG's office?

BROWN: Well, the AG had a very strong environmental unit. I think it goes way back to Evelle Younger's time, though I'm not sure how Deukmejian and Wilson performed that. But under Schwarzenegger, there was a very strong environmental group. I didn't bring any environmental lawyers into my office. They were there. And they were the ones who were, you know, championing all these cases. I'm sure 00:44:00I encouraged them. I spent time with them. I don't know that other AGs even spent the time that I did. But I knew the environmental lawyers. I talked to them on these letters, because they'd have to get my approval to send them out. And I don't even know, after I left, whether they even sent out those letters to local jurisdictions. Oops, you didn't go look at--you have to make sure, in your formulation of your plan, that you take into account emissions. And that was under the Environmental Quality Act when looking at general plans. And then when the EPA lawsuit--that was a big deal. I remember arguing that both in Washington, before the EPA, and in Sacramento. So I had to talk to the people, the lawyers, about that. And then we had one on automobile emissions, which we lost, and which was kind of dubious, but I thought was worth a try.

So I did get into those lawsuits. That was a field that was available. It was important, and it could be done. I thought that was more important than some of these other lawsuits. I mean some of these things--I know they were after, they were trying to stop Clorox from advertising on--using the Red Cross somehow. They had some formula, and some of the deputies said that you can't do that. Clorox is a toxic chemical, or some damn thing--and I opposed that. But there was a lot of, and then there were these cases where the disposal of returned turpentine and oily rags and different toxic things became a great bounty opportunity for the AG and deputy district attorneys. And I went along with it, 00:46:00but I was not excited about it.

So there's a lot of mundane things, a lot of little garden variety consumer issues, that I thought were not big issues. That's why the environment struck me as a big issue, as did the Countrywide case.

MEEKER: Well, the big issue was the federal waiver.

BROWN: Yeah.

MEEKER: And this would have been the Bush Administration EPA. Can you describe what it was like engaging with the Bush Administration EPA?

BROWN: Well, I don't know that I ever engaged with them. We were just engaging with my lawyers and the paper they file. It's the same thing today. Trump's trying to do the same thing, more aggressively and more--not as professionally.

MEEKER: Did the Bush Administration seem like an antagonist toward this cause, or were they just asking to be pushed along?

BROWN: Well, they didn't want to grant the waiver. I don't know where they stood on the case. You know, the question, under the Global Warming Solutions Act, or maybe it was under the vehicle emissions Pavley bill. I think it was the Pavley 00:47:00bill, which regulated auto emissions based on greenhouse gases. The question is, was a greenhouse gas a pollutant? And that was a question, and it was different than sulfur or oxides of nitrogen or carbon monoxide, all that. So those are called criteria pollutants, and the greenhouse gases is something different. CO2, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, black soot--those were greenhouse gases. California was a plaintiff as well as Massachusetts, and it became Massachusetts v. the EPA, and that was won by one vote: [Justice Anthony] Kennedy, five to four. Had that gone the other way, we couldn't have regulated greenhouse gases. So that's how close it is. So if that were the Supreme Court today, they 00:48:00probably would have said no. Greenhouse gases are not--what they had, they said an endangerment finding. And they're not endangering--like sulfur and carbon monoxide. So yeah, that's a very fragile ruling, and I'm sure Trump is going to try to get that one going again.

MEEKER: Do the attorneys ever get entrepreneurial, particularly around issues in the environment, in which they'll bring--

BROWN: They get very entrepreneurial when it comes to going after Home Depot and Target, that they didn't have the proper procedures under the toxic waste laws. And I thought that was overly zealous.

MEEKER: Okay, and did you try to rein their activity in?

BROWN: I did try to rein it in, but not very successfully, because they're very confident and--you know, they want their $25 million fine. And I thought it was excessive. But then, on the other hand, it's toxic material, and the lawyers were all enthused about it. But I did try to slow that down, but I didn't. You 00:49:00always wonder now are you trying to protect big business? So that doesn't sound good. But it did seem excessive, and there was a bounty. The DA gets money and the AG gets money. And these are big rich companies, so why not grab money? But at the end of the day, they didn't pay $25 [million]--I think Walmart paid $40 million, and they put in an 800 line you could call if there was a problem, as I remember it, but very interesting.

The Home Depot case--I said where is the, what's the harm here? And they had a little video of an explosion, some kind of a big container of some kind, a large--one of these kind of things that you put garbage in. They said, "It exploded." I said, "But is anybody hurt?" They said no. "And were any animals killed?" "No." "How about a mouse?" "No." And so that was it. So I said, "Is 00:50:00this $25 million, for what--? And--[making a growling sound], they said, "They're a big company. They don't notice it unless--you've got to sock 'em hard enough so they notice it." I'm told by Home Depot they spent $25 million defending, and maybe they were wrong. I'm sure they were wrong in some sense--well, they were. But how wrong? So at the end of the day, I think they have a book on how to treat returned Roundup, and there are some serious chemicals, and they have this book and they have the 800 line, and they've trained their people. So that's a good--but how good? And so I wondered about that.

So part of my skeptical mind: you know, this adversarial system, people get charged up. So yeah, the companies are trying to minimize costs, the AG's trying to protect the public interest. And it becomes very hard to thread--I found it hard to thread my way through the competing claims. In fact, Mickey Kantor 00:51:00called me and said, "I want you to meet with the lawyer from Home Depot." And I called our lawyer, and they said, "Oh, you can't meet with that lawyer. You're undermining us." So then I got a call a week or so later, and they said, "They're in the outer lobby." I said, "Okay, well, I think I'm going to meet with them." So I called the lawyer and I said, "Get up here so you can sit in the meeting." So anyway, they made their case, and they made the case that it was stupid, this rule was. And I kept saying, "Well, what do you think about that?" He [the AG's attorney] wouldn't say much. So, was this a perversion of justice? Did the attorney general's meeting with the lawyers for Home Depot--I thought it was damn interesting! I thought they made a better case than my own side. But I went along with the lawyers, because on balance that seemed a more cautious approach. But do I intellectually know where the real best point to land? No.

MEEKER: In terms of the broader--

BROWN: I don't know. And you have so many darn cases. Normally, attorney generals don't get that level of detail. But because I'm a lawyer, and I'm very curious about things, I pushed it. But at the end of the day, they probably--the AG and the DAs probably collected over a hundred million, just on this one--because people didn't follow the rules. And they didn't put it--they had people hauling it to a dump, which is not a Class III, or whatever the hell the thing was, and that's a lot more expensive. They were trying to save money, but didn't. What it is I still don't know, but I'm curious about it, and I'm--and the AG might have been right. Home Depot and Walmart and Target, they fought like hell, and they finally had to pay money. So it gets to be a contest with the lawyers. But I think it's worth more objective people studying it and saying, "Well, what's the best way forward?" On the other hand, the generic idea there are too many toxic chemicals--yeah. That's a danger.

MEEKER: Governor, in terms of the broader scheme of things, on the issues around the environment, so this might have been--

BROWN: But I do want to underscore my concern that the complexity of these issues are not resolvable in the normal amount of bureaucratic time that you are allotted--or that you can even allot for yourself. You can't sit around and say, "Oh! Let's spend the next couple of days going over this issue." No, there's too many other things. Everybody's busy. They go home at five o'clock, they have other cases. So I basically deferred to the professionals. But I still harbor doubts as to where the wise path forward is.

MEEKER: So while this might have been small potatoes in the broader scheme of things, in terms of climate change, were you able to engage with the--?

BROWN: You're talking about the waiver.

MEEKER: Yeah--no, no. I'm talking about the Home Depot stuff.

BROWN: The oily rags?

MEEKER: The oily rags. The waiver is bigger potatoes, right?

BROWN: Much bigger.

Wait a minute--you know, whether you dump turpentine in a class--one kind of 00:54:00dump or a highly regulated supertoxic dump, it's not that big a deal, in my opinion. Climate change is affecting the whole world for generations. I mean it's the difference between infinity and finitude. It's so different. And that always interested me. And I read an article--when I was mayor maybe? No, before I was mayor--somewhere along the line. No, it was way before I was mayor. It was in LA, I think. And I remember the EPA or UN, somebody did a study, and they said the number one concern, where you really got people riled up, were toxic dumps. But actually, when you look out at the issues, I think they talked about deforestation, climate, maybe the oceans--I'm not sure. But the things that 00:55:00people were most focused on, were the least damaging, from a fundamental sense.

And even today, climate as climate is not a salient issue. That's why Schwarzenegger liked to talk about his air pollution poisoning your lungs. But the idea that you're going to trap heat and warm the planet over decades, that is still an issue that is not available or debatable in contemporary politics, in the broad sense. And so you always have to link it to either anti-Trump, all companies' misbehavior, or asthma inhalers for millions of poor kids and elderly. If you just try to talk about CO2 rising and growing to 410 parts per 00:56:00million, whereas not too many decades ago it was 350 parts per million, you get nowhere. There's no traction. And that is the tragedy of where we are. We've got a big problem. It's getting worse. But it can't easily be talked about in its true terms.

MEEKER: Did you have any other ideas about how to use the attorney general's office to fight the threat of climate change?

BROWN: Just what we did. We had some pretty imaginative and aggressive people. And I did talk with the environmental section. There's no question. That was the section that I spoke with, paid attention to, and many of them came over when I became governor.

SHAFER: So 2008 there's the mortgage meltdown, 2008-2009.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: And you--Countrywide was a big player in that, and your office filed a lawsuit.

BROWN: Yes. The last day before they were taken over by--federally regulated by Bank of America, then we couldn't sue them. But it turned out, he got indemnified and you couldn't make them pay any money anyway, so they settled. 00:57:00Bank of America settled.

SHAFER: What were your thoughts about the importance of that case?

BROWN: Well, I thought it was important. Yeah, mortgage meltdown. What--big important[ce]. Millions of people were--I don't know how many people were losing their homes, but it's pretty amazing. It's a horror that it happened. We still never did right by people. You know, all the banks get bailed out, all the rich people get taken care of, and then--I don't know how many millions of people lost their homes.

It's pretty incredible, to this day. It probably feeds Trump's populism, and it was an example of the Democratic Party as well as the Republicans being pretty sensitive to the powerful and not sensitive to the vast number of struggling homeowners. In part, because it's so much easier to take care of the banks. You just shove a little mysterious money to them. I don't know how it all works, but they do it. To all of a sudden forgive the debt of millions of people? That 00:58:00would have taken a radical, bolder kind of political move which didn't happen. Never happened--to this day.

SHAFER: Is that something you would have liked to have been able to do, as AG?

BROWN: Well, I stuck with my role--that's a complicated question. How do you do that? You know, you're talking many hundreds of billions. I don't know how far I thought through that. I knew we wanted to go after Countrywide, and there was a lot of resistance in the office to that. The consumer division was not making any progress. In fact, the people who were there, ultimately had to be removed, and Anne decided all that.

SHAFER: Why were they resistant?

BROWN: Just because they hadn't done it before. It seemed beyond the scope of the office, beyond their capacity. Assembling the facts--it was hard to prove, 00:59:00the fraud. It was not something that was possible. It was easier to find someone argues in a motel, it's $50 a night, but when you get there it's really $58. Then they go after that sign stuff and oily rags. There's a lot of routine stuff that a lot of the lawyers do, and it's become--there's a lot of stuff going on. And it's a function of all these laws that we're getting, which I've, you know, I've expressed my concern about the excessive legalization of our lives, and that shows up in the attorney general's office enforcing all these rules. And for the people who get enforced against--it's expensive. And they're not all big oil companies or big banks. Now, there are a lot of little things. So we have 01:00:00problems of Wells Fargo, and there's these phony accounts, whatever they were doing there to generate revenue. But then there's just a lot of ordinary people, and then they get caught in the maw of the legal process driven by the AG, so I was sensitive to that.

There was this thing called [California Business and Professions Code] §17200, which means you can't defraud, and you don't have to show any damage. You can just say it was a fraud. You know, like there were the famous cases, like--roofs, they said the roof won't discolor. So then they sued. It started discoloring, and they'd sue on that as a general fraud. There are several cases on §17200 that--it's a very broad statute, and the AG can be suing people all day long, so it does take restraint, from my point of view.

HOLMES: Governor, in regards to taking action against Countrywide, as well as Edward Jones, how would you compare that kind of action as attorney general versus, say, on the federal level of the Obama Administration?

BROWN: Well, I think the Obama Administration, the federal authorities, have more power--a lot more power. The comptroller of the currency, the banking regulators, commodities exchange--those people have real power, and the AG was limited. And that's what we faced right from the beginning. This is a very difficult matter to bring by the attorney general. We were a bit player.

HOLMES: On that same note, so what was your view of the Obama Administration's actions in dealing with the financial crisis? Because according to most records, the DOJ didn't issue any indictments--

BROWN: Well, because they were hard to prove. White-collar crime is a lot harder 01:02:00to prove, you know. It just is.

SHAFER: As a political matter though, like as you said, Trump kind of uses that to, you know, stir up the populists' resentments toward the wealthy, or whatever. I mean do you--?

BROWN: Well, I mean the fact is that since the 1970s, the CEOs have had a gigantic increase in their salaries and benefits relative to the average person working in their companies. And the number of billionaires, the number of people with private airplanes, all the concentration of wealth--and that is causing a lot of trouble. And on top of that, you have people with big student debts. The housing prices, and certainly the job market, the destruction of businesses as new businesses emerge--all that is creating a lot of anxiety.

Now, whether Obama could have--yeah, I mean some people say that he should have taken on the banks, the Wall Street--I've thought that. I've heard it, but I did not take the time to probe how you could do that. I think you'd have to ask Elizabeth Warren about that. That's her specialty. But that didn't happen. And Obama's a smart guy, because he couldn't--he didn't, he'd feel he had to save the economy, or Bush did, and then Obama. They thought they were doing the right thing. It just so happened that since things were stabilizing, McConnell and the Republicans--and I suppose the Koch brothers, and the other people who play in that Republican game, just decided well, they can destroy Obama and the liberals and bring about a conservative regime, which is really what they've done.

So could Obama have been more of a populist? That's what some people say. But I 01:04:00don't think that is an obvious--to really speak knowledgeably, in the way that I like to understand things, I did not do that. I had plenty to do as governor of California or as attorney general. I think I spend more time on issues than most people--I mean most people in my profession. And yet, you can't know everything about everything, and so whatever the federal government is supposed to do, that's them.

And, for example, the Glass-Steagall--should that have been, under Clinton I think they got rid of that. Okay, I knew about that. I talked to him a few times. But did I dig into that? No.

HOLMES: What was the Schwarzenegger's Administration response to you, as attorney general, going after Countrywide?

BROWN: They didn't say anything. You know, you've got to understand, every 01:05:00politician is advancing his career. They're fully occupied with either raising money, making noise, going to fires, or doing whatever they do in their private life--and they're not sitting around having civics discourse with their fellow politicians. It's a fairly individualized business--certainly at the executive level.

HOLMES: What was your relationship or interaction with the Schwarzenegger Administration as attorney general?

BROWN: It was good. We got along with them fine. I think he wanted to build eight prison hospitals with yoga studios, and I wrote them a letter and I said you shouldn't do that, and he didn't. He only built one. And then we couldn't fill the damn thing when I became governor.

SHAFER: There's an old joke that AG stands for aspiring governor. Did that apply to you?

BROWN: Well, not when I first ran. But particularly in the prison area, I felt 01:06:00I'd rather be governor to handle the substantive for that. That interested me--because it interested me, because when I--well, first of all, when I was governor and before, watching Reagan, there were times when there were only eighteen thousand people in California's twelve prisons. And they would also go up, because it was kind of a moving target. The prisons went up, then went down, because of the indeterminate sentence, and they could adjust it. It was under twenty thousand for a few years under Reagan and under me, although at the end of both our administrations it got closer to thirty thousand--or maybe with me it might have gotten above.

So then when I see under Schwarzenegger it's 173,000, and you've got thirty-three prisons. And wow, that's a huge increase. And if you look at the crime rate, which I do--and I would say okay, let's see the criminal statistics 01:07:00from the FBI. And the AG put the--I used to put those out. My staff did, the professionals. And in many ways the crime rate's no different today than it was then. Now, the actual number may be a little higher, but it's not 100 percent, and yet the prisons went up 500 percent. I've read material on this, that they say it's not the crimes, it's the crimes reported on television that drives these laws. And so that interested me, in being governor. Do something about it, and I did when I was governor. Did quite a lot, as a matter of fact.

SHAFER: So, I think it had been twenty-four years in between your two times as governor. How did you--did you think, how did--did you think differently about the office going, you know, the second time running in 20[10]--

BROWN: Well, yeah--how old was I in 1974--

SHAFER: You were thirty-six.

BROWN: And then what, in 2011--

HOLMES: Seventy-two.

BROWN: Seventy-two. So you haven't got to be seventy-two yet. You don't know what that looks like, but it's different than when you're thirty-six and not married, a young governor. That's one world, okay? The whole world opened up. So yeah, it looked different.

And also, I'd been mayor of Oakland. And I got a first-hand view of different constituencies--Sierra Club, antiwar kind of people, anti-height people, "fifty feet's too high," I think we've talked about this before. When I was mayor, I was shocked, when I would say, "You know, don't you want to be like New York City, and tall buildings and thriving restaurants, and late at night people are on the streets?" This lady with a New York accent says, "It's why I came to Oakland, to get away from New York." So I did see that whether it's the union 01:09:00that we have to negotiate with as mayor, the environmentalists--so called, because they weren't talking about toxic material, they were talking about the height of buildings or where you're going to put an apartment, or the people who opposed the urban warfare exercise that I approved, or the Board of Education that voted down my military school that I proposed. I developed a more nuanced understanding of movement activity. And just because you have a lot of enthusiasm and the flag is of the left or of the progressive, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to agree with it.

They built that building on Lake Merritt, and it was one of the first buildings 01:10:00during--starting in the recession of the late eighties and the earthquake, nothing was being built. You're talking about a couple hundred units a year. And the downtown, there were just empty little places. It was pathetic, if you compare it to what it is today. So I wanted to get things going. And then I remember this one thing, the progressive representative Russo, John Russo, he represented them and then he became city attorney. He voted no. And the local people thought that they didn't want a building on Lake Merritt. And then the people who lived in the apartment next door made them bring down a couple of stories so their view would be preserved, and this was called the environment, but it didn't sound that way to me.

And so I was promoting the building of condominiums, apartments--I wanted more people in downtown Oakland. That was my ten thousand--and we probably have 01:11:00pretty close to that now, because that was the way I grew up in San Francisco. I'd been east to Yale, I'd go to New York City, walk out at night at eleven o'clock in the summer. It's warm, and the streets are full of restaurants--it's activity. So I saw trying to say, "Oakland, come on!" [laughing] It's like Williams or something. There's nothing going on there. So that was where I was coming from, and a lot of people resisted that. Just like the military school, "oh, you know, we can't have a military school." Well, I wanted a framework of discipline, of honor, of enthusiasm, as a counter pressure to the kind of behavior that was leading to very low performance on the part of many low-income kids of color. So I thought I had a practical, clear idea. And people, for very abstract ideological grounds, in my opinion, opposed me.

So that's when I developed a keener eye for who I'm going to listen to, and who 01:12:00I'm not. So they can't just wave their flag and say, "I'm on the side of the angels. Do what I want." What I find is that everybody claims they're progressive or they're environmentalists or they're pro-poor people, and say, "Now, gimme. I want money and I want rules. I want the coercive arm of the state to push around the people that I'm currently fighting with." So I developed a more nuanced view, and that's why I vetoed a number of bills that liberal legislators liked, because they didn't make sense to me. And a lot of that was based on my experience in Oakland. And my greater life experience--as I saw more, and I lived in different parts of the world and talked to a variety of people, I brought a more experienced eye to these questions.

SHAFER: So did it make you more skeptical then, of groups like the Sierra Club, perhaps?

BROWN: Well, skeptical is one word. I think more clear and more comprehensive in 01:13:00my understanding of what was at stake.

SHAFER: But it's--you said you had a more nuanced view of these grassroots groups.

BROWN: Well, because people make a general thing. You know, no cap and trade? "No. We're the Sierra Club. We say no. And we're progressive, we're green. John Muir founded us. We have trails. John Muir Trail." You know, stop--well, no. Cap and trade, I thought, was a reasonable step that Schwarzenegger made that Democrats agreed with, and I wanted to renew it. But Sierra Club said no, as well as a number of other people. Just like the NRDC says no on the tunnels. But what is the real objection? I listened, but unless you're just knee jerk and someone raises the flag. It's kind of a yes, sir/no, sir.

And a lot of the ones in the legislature do not think, and they go along. I remember talking to a legislator recently, about the bill that would subject 01:14:00Catholic priests to interrogation about matters that were expressed in the confessional. And this guy happened to have been a Catholic, and I said, "Well, why did you vote for that?" He said, "Oh, I didn't want to vote for it." I said, "Well, did somebody call you? Did some powerful person or--?" "No. It's just--that's the mood." That was the mood. Now, it later got held up by another legislator, but I found that very interesting. That here's a bill that he wasn't even drawn to, but it was the mood. So there's a lot of mood music in the legislature, and if you take it seriously, you're going to do things that I don't think make sense.

So therefore, I reserve the right to think for myself, and I did that. Now, because these things are complicated, they have many elements. You can never be sure, absolutely sure, because there's too much going on here. Here in 01:15:00Sacramento, you're talking about things all over the state. But I did have enough, because unlike when I was governor the first time--I didn't know the full implications. There was just a lot that's hard to grasp, even though I was secretary of state, my father was governor and attorney general--I knew a lot. But there are so many of these bills. They're coming by the hundreds! And can you have an informed opinion about every one of them? The answer is no. And they are directed mostly by interest groups of one kind or another. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're bad. So I would just say my capacity to evaluate, discern, and judge, increased significantly from the age of thirty-six to however old I was--seventy-two.

SHAFER: And what about the fact that you were married--how did that change things?

BROWN: Well, it changed things in my life. I'd go home earlier than I did when I 01:16:00was not married. Yeah, I mean it changed a lot of things. But Anne was quite collaborative in what I was doing. For example, on the veto that I did of the change of the statute of limitations bill, whether or not you could sue an organization for not properly controlling--in this case the priests--and I vetoed that bill, but it was kind of complicated.

It's complicated because the statute of limitations had been changed not once, but several times, increased, given more time to bring lawsuits, and allowing lawsuits to be brought, even though the case might have been thirty years old--or older. So I said this doesn't make sense to me. But Anne said, "You've 01:17:00got to sign that bill." Everybody in the office said, "You've got to sign that bill." My legislative leader said, "Oh no. You've got to sign that." I said, "Well, I don't know about this bill. I think this doesn't seem fair to me." Because the church had spent--I don't know how many, over a billion dollars at that time.

So I gave it to my wife, and she read the cases, because there were a number of cases on the statute of limitations. Finally, she said, "You know, you're right. This is not fair." They opened it up, they said everybody bring your lawsuit in. The church didn't defend, they had no adversarial--I guess they argued about it, but they paid out. So now, a few years later they say, "Now, let's do it again," say they wanted to open the statute. And after Anne read it, she said, "No, I think that makes sense." So she helped me write that veto opinion. She wrote most of it, as a matter of fact. I wrote the part about the Roman law, that they had limits on when you can bring--I thought it was good, because I wanted to get 01:18:00the idea that putting a limit, even on a case that might have been justified if timely brought, is still righteously restricted. And this didn't happen like twenty years ago, but thousands-of-years-old judicial systems have done this. So I found that interesting. Anne helped, and so I vetoed it, and that was that. By the way, there wasn't much noise one way or the other. But I think that's an example of how she played a role, and being married, at least in terms of the office. And she helped--she urged me to do, pick Nancy McFadden. And that was a big thing.

SHAFER: She knew her from having been--

BROWN: No, I don't know. I think she just met her. No, I think my sister Kathleen came up with the idea of Nancy McFadden.

SHAFER: So California was kind of a mess, and there were all these articles--like is it governable?

BROWN: Right. There were all these articles.

SHAFER: California crackup.

BROWN: And by the way, they've all been forgotten now.

SHAFER: Yeah, but before we get to that--

BROWN: This is completely forgotten. Nobody even knows that's--you have some prehistoric memory nobody else does.

SHAFER: [laughing] So--you had been governor, and you had been mayor.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: And you had been AG and--so you had a chance to think, maybe learn, from being governor the first time.

BROWN: Yeah, yeah.

SHAFER: So how did that affect the way you were thinking about what you might do the second time?

BROWN: I don't--that's too, I can't respond.

SHAFER: Well, I mean for example, I know we've talked about the determinate sentencing and--

BROWN: Oh yeah. Well, that one.

SHAFER: So that's maybe too specific. But you ran commercials saying, with some very clear specific things that you would do and wouldn't do.

BROWN: Not really. I just said--

SHAFER: No tax increases without a vote of the people.

BROWN: No smoke and mirrors, be honest about the budget.

SHAFER: That's pretty vague.

BROWN: And no new taxes without a vote of the people. That was it. Pretty general. There it was. So no, I did not know how to solve the deficit. In fact, 01:20:00I thought about the idea of--what is this going to mean? Because having a deficit is not going to be very popular or pleasant. But I decided I wanted to be governor anyway, but I didn't know how I was going to solve it. And we went about it in restricting--cutting, cutting a lot of popular programs, that if you really look at it, you'd say, "gee, do you really want to do that?" But we did. And then, of course, the business cycle came back. And you never know. Just like people don't think there's going to be a recession, people forget there's usually going to be a recovery. That doesn't mean it'll really happen. But that recovery came, and then we got the tax increase, and the problem got solved. But the economic recovery was really important.

SHAFER: Did you--was there any doubt in your mind--?

BROWN: About what?

SHAFER: Like about whether you wanted to be governor. Did you want to go--at that time?

BROWN: Well, that--I don't. No, after being attorney general, somewhere, after a 01:21:00couple of years, yeah, I want to be the governor now. Looked like that would be--it would be good to do that. Yeah, it looked interesting. I mean from the environment, from prisons--that's, I mean the budget was the least interesting

[side conversation deleted]

SHAFER: [Jerry Brown returns the interview area.] All right, Governor.

BROWN: All right.

SHAFER: So, there's a primary. And this is before the top two--and Newsom had already been in, he was in. You decided to get in afterwards, and he stayed in for a little more--

BROWN: Well, I knew I was going to get in, but I didn't want to run too soon. I wanted to raise money as attorney general.

SHAFER: Take advantage of that.

BROWN: Well, I don't [know] if it's an advantage, because you can raise less. But there's an advantage in not starting the campaign. Certainly, if the campaign--you start it too early and you're spending money, you're getting scrutiny, there's back and forth. You don't need to. It's so long, that's a real infirmity in our political campaigns.

SHAFER: So when Newsom jumped in, I mean did he say--did he talk to you before he jumped in? Like, "Hey, are you going to run?"

BROWN: No. You think all these people talk. They don't talk. No one talks to me, really. I mean candidates--they just do what they want. They talk to their little intimate circle, and then from there they decided whatever the hell they're going to do. I mean Rocky Delgadillo didn't call me and say--do you?

SHAFER: Yeah, but you had a relationship with Newsom. I mean your family--

BROWN: No, I didn't. I didn't even know Newsom existed till when I was down in LA. I mean he was conceived and born while I lived in Los Angeles. I don't think I saw his--I made his father a judge, but that was like in the seventies.

SHAFER: Right, but he was mayor when you were mayor, wasn't he?

BROWN: Right, but you know, we don't pay a lot of attention. I don't know whether you know it or not, but politics is a very self-referential business. And you like to read stories about yourself, and only about others insofar as they relate to something that might interest you, or if it's a general topic. So 01:23:00San Francisco had their activities, and I'd read about [Aaron] Peskin, and this one and that one, but I was interested in my 10K [plan] and the murder rate and what have you. So he ran, I remember I was already mayor when he ran. But I remember when Willie Brown appointed him, but I don't remember when I became aware of his existence.

SHAFER: But clearly, you were aware of his existence when he was running for governor, when you jumped in, right?

BROWN: Yes, but I mean do I know mayors in LA? I mean yeah, I meet them from time to time.

SHAFER: Okay, did you, how did you think of his candidacy when you announced you were running? Did you think this is something I have to dispense with?

BROWN: Did I think?

SHAFER: Did you think it was like something to brush off your shoulder?

BROWN: I can't remember. That obviously didn't deter me. I was running one way or the other. Yeah, I thought he could--that if I'm strong enough, that he might not run.

SHAFER: That he would drop out.

BROWN: Well, yeah, because, he had a pathway, which he took, and it worked out, 01:24:00and exactly what I said.

SHAFER: Lieutenant governor.

BROWN: Yeah, why not? And in fact I told his father that.

SHAFER: That he should run for LG?

BROWN: Yeah, and I think it turned out to be correct.

SHAFER: I remember talking to you when he was still in the race. And you were running, and you said something along the lines of, "Well, I don't need a political consultant to tell me what kind of hair gel to use." It was kind of disparaging, kind of a back of the hand--

BROWN: Well, but that's just normal gossip. [Shafer laughs] That doesn't mean anything. That's a little bit silly.

SHAFER: I mean did you view--?

BROWN: No, I don't think that was a serious political observation.

SHAFER: Was it indicative of, you know, that you thought maybe he was a lightweight at the time or needed more experience?

BROWN: No, but I don't get those thoughts. The people are there, but my father thought Reagan was a lightweight. Is that--this lightweight/heavyweight, this, that, and the other thing. No, that is another person there that you need to 01:25:00evaluate what that means and react accordingly. So all this kind of personality, kind of like young girls in grammar school talking about things. That isn't the way it works. It's somewhat professional.

SHAFER: [laughing] Somewhat.

BROWN: Well, because there's a lot of emotion in politics. So where there's a lot of amateurishness, and there's a lot of a lack of evidence to what you're doing, there's a lot of uncertainties. So, I can't recall exactly. Obviously, I'd prefer to have him not in the race, because Meg Whitman had a lot of money. And it turned out it was pretty crucial that I could sit there and save the money, because I only raised $35 million, and she spent $173 million. So a primary race where I spent a lot of the money, which I might not have done--but he would have had to do something. I don't know how much more he could have raised. I don't know that it would have--how much would he have raised? It's not that easy for a primary: $5 million?

SHAFER: Well, especially after you got in, right?

BROWN: Right, but I was thinking of getting in, I think, before he got in. But I strategically did not want to jump in too soon. First of all, because you're doing your AG, and you have to do the attorney general. There's a job, you do things and you make news--and you can raise money. Everything's going along fine. Why create another set of responsibilities called running for governor, when you can quietly pursue that objective?

SHAFER: On paper, Meg Whitman was a fairly attractive candidate. You know, CEO, moderate--

BROWN: What is on paper--you mean the record?

SHAFER: Yeah, well--the image. A woman, different kind of--not a career politician like you were/are.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: How did you assess her as a--?

BROWN: I thought she was very formidable, until my first focus group. And then it turns out that she didn't come--we ran her commercial, we ran one that I 01:27:00prepared for that, and then we ran a [Steve] Poizner. Poizner did not do well. Of course, it's only like fifteen or twenty people, so I was kind of dubious of the whole operation, what it really proved.

SHAFER: What did it tell you?

BROWN: Well, we ran her commercial. I was doing better, and these were supposedly swing voters.

SHAFER: And what was it--?

BROWN: And I didn't believe it. I was skeptical, but I think Jim, the guy who was doing our polling, and his wife, I think they were impressed with that. That she didn't do as well, and that I seemed to do well. But I didn't know what that meant. Maybe because I did the little video piece that we used--well, I prepared it. We just took one of her commercials. So it came out that I had a very good chance. But I didn't take that to the bank with me. I mean--that was, at least I 01:28:00didn't feel more anxiety, but I didn't feel that much confidence.

SHAFER: There was kind of a key moment in that campaign, where it was reported that she had hired an undocumented immigrant--

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: --as her housekeeper, didn't pay her properly, I think, then fired her. I've worked in campaigns, and I've worked in government. I know those things don't just pop out of nowhere. How did that come about?

BROWN: I think this maid complained, and so she got--she, no, she actually initiated this, as far as I know.

SHAFER: We talked to Steve Glazer about it.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: [laughing] He was a little cagey, as I remember, but--

BROWN: Well, we had nothing to do with it.

SHAFER: Really?

BROWN: Nothing to do with it. No.

SHAFER: But the timing was really helpful. It was right before the debate.

BROWN: Yeah, but I didn't--it happened. She contacted some people, and then it 01:29:00all unfolded. She got that lady, what's her name--the lawyer.

SHAFER: Gloria Allred.

BROWN: Gloria Allred. And of course, I knew Gloria Allred. I knew her in my last campaign.

SHAFER: You must have kicked your heels when she hired Gloria Allred.

BROWN: Well, that was a point. But here is the problem. It's very contextual. Poizner was attacking, going to the right of Meg Whitman on immigration. Whitman was feeling she had to do something. You know, you're in a primary, you've got to win. Your consultants always are pushing you--so she was caught with that. And how did she handle it? You know, she didn't handle it as well as she should have. But those things are not easy. A lot of people hired illegals--a lot of 01:30:00people, and I guess ever since that Zoë Baird--

SHAFER: Baird, yeah, the attorney general nominee.

BROWN: I remember we were looking for gardeners in Oakland, and everybody you hire, they're speaking Spanish. "Let's not hire a gardener." Well, how the hell are we--we're not going to be sure of this. But we had all that lesson, you know, and Whitman probably never ever knew who Zoë Baird was. Well, I followed that and it was under Clinton, I think, for AG. So, you know, that was a very unlucky break for her.

SHAFER: And a lucky one for you.

BROWN: A lucky one for me. Now, I think I would have won even without it--

SHAFER: Although that issue--

BROWN: Because she never got more than two points ahead of me, as far as I know. Now, there's polls--you know, I read the polls on Real Clear Politics, and you've got Biden ahead of Sanders and Warren by twelve/fourteen points. Other 01:31:00polls, they're neck and neck--and they're so different. So polls give me a lot of unease, because they seem to--they're accurate. But having said all that, a preliminary skepticism about polls, they did seem to show that the race was close. And since she was taking all those TV ads out, and she was so attractive--I found that curious. In fact, it is hard to believe. Every week during the summer--this was later--that she was just ahead by a few points. We were both in the low forties, really interesting. So I said, "Well, let's not spend any money. Nothing's moving, so let's not rock the boat."

And then as soon as I started spending, I went up a point after a week, by our own internal polls, and I kept rising. So that was kind of a textbook case of looking at the poll, reacting to it, sitting tight, and then when the time 01:32:00came--because I didn't have the luxury of $173 million. I had maybe $28 million/$25 million. I ultimately got to $35 [million], but I had to be very careful. One of the things you learn, that most politicians, a lot of them do not get--I don't know that I got, I didn't get until later in life--most people aren't paying attention. And so if you're advertising too soon, well, that's a complete waste of money. But when everybody's talking, and all the political class thinks there's a lot of reacting going on in the electorate--now, maybe there is. See, that's why it's a very uncertain business, and it's a judgment call.

SHAFER: But here's a headline from the LA--July LA Times of 2010: "Brown's 01:33:00Frugal Campaign May Be Too Little, Too Late."

BROWN: Well, they would say that, because that's just journalism. You've got to write stories. [Shafer laughs] And who was saying that? They want to write that, and then they go get somebody to say that.

SHAFER: Garry South.

BROWN: Well, Garry South has never said an intelligent word about me in his entire life. [Shafer laughs] I met with him once, and I decided not to hire him. That was when I was running for governor, or maybe AG.

SHAFER: Yeah, he was Gray's guy.

BROWN: He was Gray's guy. By the way, that's another thing--certain reporters, that was the LA Times, yeah?

SHAFER: What were you going to say, certain reporters--?

BROWN: Well, I said certain reporters used certain spokesmen. He's the go to, you can get a quote from this guy. So there's a certain artificiality about the whole thing, which I understand so well now, that I didn't understand once.

SHAFER: And another issue for her was that she didn't bother registering to vote, I think, till she was forty-six years old, or she became--

BROWN: Well, that happens. A lot of people do that. I didn't do that, because my 01:34:00father ran for attorney general, the first time I knew, was 1943. And he would take me to the polls, which was around the block from Magellan Ave. It was around the corner. We had to walk around the block. It was the polls, the curtain, and you shut the curtain--it was that San Francisco voting machine. That was a big thing. So that was 1943, and then all of a sudden 1946 he's running for attorney general. And then in 1950, he's running for attorney general again, and in 1952 he's running against Kefauver for president. And then in 1954 he's running for reelection, and then in 1956 he's on the ballot as a favorite son. So every two years, starting when I was in kindergarten, my father was running almost every two years, so I was sensitized to voting, and voting was fun. I liked to go, I liked to walk there, and people were there, and the 01:35:00voting machine--I thought it was pretty neat, so that was my experience. But now, if you're a businessperson, and maybe your parents weren't voting or weren't whatever, you might not have that experience. So, I'm not saying it was out of civic duty, it was more out of personal experience.

SHAFER: What's it like--you know, you're running for governor or any office, and you're--it's like you're in the ring against somebody, and you're boxing, you're sparring, you're going for the knockout ultimately.

BROWN: Well, I don't know if you're going for the knockout. That's questionable.

SHAFER: What do you mean?

BROWN: Well, if you go for a knockout and you miss. So, maybe it's just better to go for a series of jabs.

SHAFER: Just win on points.

BROWN: I mean your homerun hitters strike out a lot--I think.

SHAFER: But how did you think, did you--was it sport kind of? You use a lot of sports metaphors.

BROWN: No. Well, it's in part sport--it's a game, it's called a horserace. That's all that a journalist can frame. Who is ahead, who's behind, who's doing 01:36:00what, how much money you have, who are your consultants? So there's a lot of that. Although people talk about politics: what are you doing it for? What's the issue? But that as a piece, but the who's ahead thing is easier to follow, and it's more congenial to the machinery of the press.

SHAFER: I mean how much does it interest you, the strategy, the formulation of the commercials? The--what you're going to--

BROWN: Some--somewhat.

SHAFER: How?

BROWN: Well, it's interesting. I mean I certainly participated. Sometimes I would write commercials, write text.

SHAFER: That's more involved than a lot of candidates.

BROWN: Well, I'm more involved, yeah. Yeah, I know the system. I've been doing it a long time. When I ran, I didn't have a lot of people. You know, I didn't have vast--well, I guess my '74 campaign had a lot of people, but it was pretty hands on with me and Tom Quinn. Then, of course, as it got later in the game, since I'd done it a lot, obviously I had confidence in my own judgment. And 01:37:00therefore, just because someone's a political consultant, it doesn't mean I think he's going to know more than me. He might, based on what he says, so it's a little different to have these people. I was running for campaigns when Joe Trippi and Glazer were probably in college. In fact, when I was running for president, I think Glazer was at San Diego State. I don't know where the hell Trippi was. So when you're older, and you've been doing this, you're more confident. Although, obviously, I listen to other people. In fact, Glazer had one good point, and this is, "Don't give oxygen to the story." I'd never heard that before. In other words, don't comment, because you're just going to add a second day, third-day story, so that was a very insightful metaphor, which I tried to take to heart--

SHAFER: Although Trump has kind of turned that upside down.

BROWN: Trump has turned it upside down, right. So all these things are of 01:38:00limited reach.

SHAFER: So, you win--easily. You win 54-41, something like that, against Whitman.

BROWN: 53 plus, I believe.

SHAFER: 53.8 to 40.9, to be exact. [laughing] You pay attention to these things.

BROWN: Uh--yes. Well, they're interesting.

SHAFER: Why is the decimal point interesting?

BROWN: What? Well, because that's what it is. If you don't have an attraction for that, you wouldn't be doing it. You know, some people are more hands off. I got the feeling that Reagan was very hands off. And I think that worked very well, so that he could tell the story and weave the dreams, we will weave a story/a narrative, whatever, and I think he did pretty well at that. So maybe into detail could be a problem, because being too detailed is not the way you present yourself effectively to the public.

On the other hand, if you don't know the details and you get tripped over them, because the people that work for you might have made the mistake, and if you're concerned about that, then you dig in, and that's what I did. I did dig in, and because I'd seen campaigns--my father had been co-chairman of the Muskie campaign. So I've seen a lot of campaigns.

[side conversation deleted]

SHAFER: You mentioned that your esteem for political consultants maybe was not as high as it was earlier in your life--

BROWN: Well, there weren't political consultants earlier in my life. Most people did, you know, a lawyer from a law firm, like Evelle Younger, somebody at the local LA, downtown LA law firm, was the chairman of his campaign.

SHAFER: But you had Tom Quinn.

BROWN: My father didn't have consultants, I think. I mean there were some professionals who worked for the party. But there were a lot of lawyers, different people. I think Fred Dutton was very instrumental. He worked for PG&E 01:40:00as a lawyer, I think, and he would write memos. So there was a more amateur quality. Now, there were professionals: Whitaker and Baxter with the great campaign against Upton Sinclair and the ballot measures. But this professionalization was growing, and it wasn't in its heyday when I ran in '74--much less in '70.

So therefore it's a new thing that everybody's got a media consultant, and you've got the--even a pollster. I don't know that my father had a pollster. He said, "Oh yeah, I've got a straw poll on this election." They call them straw polls--I don't know where that word came from. But this idea of like when--I guess it was, who was it that had daily polls in the White House? Was that Reagan?

SHAFER: Sounds like Clinton.

BROWN: Clinton, was that--but it might have been before him.

MEEKER: The daily tracking poll.

SHAFER: I think that was what's his name--Dick Morris probably was doing that.

BROWN: No, but before that. Clinton didn't start that. But that's an alien--so I'm just saying, the political business of paid people who are--that is their life profession, I think that was much less in the 1960s and '70s, so that's grown.

SHAFER: Did you resist that?

BROWN: Well, it always seemed a little odd to me, that you run a campaign, then you run somebody else's campaign. And the campaigns were more like a cause. We were all working because we believed in it. Now you're just a mercenary. I do still feel a little uncomfortable with that.

SHAFER: Well, and not to digress--Dan's not, Newman's not here, but I mean they have Kamala, they have Gavin, they have you, they have the whole--

BROWN: Well, they didn't have me exactly, that was for AG.

SHAFER: Well--what's that?

BROWN: When I ran for--Ace [Smith] was there, when I ran for--

SHAFER: Ace, yeah. Well, that's--

BROWN: He was there. But I was there, in the little office on--were we on Telegraph Ave.? I think we were. But there was Ace, there was Anne, and there 01:42:00was maybe another person. That was pretty small. So Ace would be on the phone over there, and I'd be over here, and Anne would be in there, working on the spreadsheets for fundraising, so that's not like you have a consultant campaign office with high rent, you know, and then you're sending them a check every month. That was not my experience. And even with Glazer--we're right there. And there was Glazer, there was Anne. [laughing] I think maybe Anne was downstairs, in that warehouse, and I was there.

SHAFER: And what would you do all day?

BROWN: Fundraise, talk about some press problem or event we're going to do. And you have eternal problems with volunteers, and this and that, and you know. And then I had to do my papers, my policy papers. Like I remember doing the policy paper on the weighted student formula, which became the Local Control Funding 01:43:00Formula. That was Mike Kirst, and he had another guy that helped him on that. Well, I was on the phone, and maybe Anne was typing or--and I was on the phone with Kirst, the speaker phone, working out my education plan. Then I'd be on with Cliff [Rechtschaffen], working on my energy/environmental plan. And then the union--I forget who I talked to about unions, but we actually were typing those in the office.

SHAFER: Lean and mean.

BROWN: Well, I know it was lean and mean, but why not do that? Now, because you know there's a lot of transaction costs when you have a big professional operation, because it's: this one reports to that one. Certainly in the governor's office, I like to have the, if you would call it, it's not a term I use, but if you take the term subject-matter expert. Would you rather have the subject-matter expert talking to a generalist, who then tells you what the subject-matter expert says? Or would you like to have the subject-matter expert 01:44:00in front of you, so you can ask him questions? Obviously, the latter is a much superior way to go. So that's what I do.

SHAFER: Cut out the middle man.

BROWN: Well, the middle man can be helpful, and I'm not saying--Reagan had a lot of middle men.

SHAFER: But it suited you not to have that?

BROWN: In fact, [Robert] "Bob" Williams, who is still alive, who was my legislative guy when I was governor the first time, he said that when Reagan did things they'd have a sign box and a veto box, and they'd present it to him and he'd just sign or he'd veto. Now, when I got there, I actually would write veto messages, and they might write a beginning and then I'd rewrite it. And I enjoyed writing veto messages.

SHAFER: More than signing statements?

BROWN: Well, when you sign, you just sign. You do occasional signing statements, but they're not as common--nor as impactful. When you veto, you get people's attention. You get to say stuff. You know, like--not every problem needs a law. 01:45:00That was on ski helmets. So I did enjoy that. I thought I was kind of sending forth my doctrine. As it turns out, my doctrine is not really taken too seriously or even noticed.

SHAFER: Well, some of them were.

BROWN: For a flash.

SHAFER: Yeah, and we'll get to some of those.

BROWN: I don't think people are collecting my veto messages. Even though I did put some thought into them, and I think many of them are well written and very concise.

SHAFER: Yeah. We'll take a break in a few minutes. So your inauguration, January of 2011, and you did it at the auditorium. Downtown Sacramento. I know you think about symbols a lot.

BROWN: Yeah, right.

SHAFER: So what message did you want your inauguration to send?

BROWN: I don't know, I think it was about the budget. Well, I didn't want to have some grandiose--I've always been, after the recession of '74, it wasn't a 01:46:00time for grand celebration. And now with a big deficit, a failed state, it's not a time for--so a more sober, sober message is what I thought was appropriate. And that's what I delivered. And the auditorium: we were looking at where the hell are you going to do this? And it just seemed like a--it's a memorial auditorium. It's a memorial to the veterans of World War I. It was right across the street from my apartment, and it was fine.

SHAFER: Yeah. I know you're not going to like this question. But I was there, and I remember when the oath of office was--you know, you raised your right hand, and I think Anne was holding the Bible.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: And it must have been the--

BROWN: [California] Supreme Court Justice--was it Tani?

SHAFER: Tani Cantil-Sakauye. Yeah, she had just taken office, I think, that week also. And of course it begins, "I, Jerry Brown." And you said it with sort of a vigor, and Anne laughed. What was going through your mind?

BROWN: I have no idea. [Shafer laughs] [background laughter]

SHAFER: I told you he wouldn't like that question.

BROWN: Well, I don't mind it. I don't think--

SHAFER: I mean did you think--wow! It's like been thirty-six years, and I'm doing this again?

BROWN: Well, it was certainly a pleasurable experience to come back as governor. Definitely.

SHAFER: Pleasurable how?

BROWN: Well, what words do you want? You're talking about a psychic state. Remember, nine years ago, or eight and a half years ago. Well, first of all, it's always a little nerve-racking. You've got to give a speech. They're always difficult. You've got to write it, but if you write it, it's hard to deliver--for me. I find it hard to give a written speech. But it was fun. We had the Oakland art school chorus there [Oakland School for the Arts], and we had some of the military kids there, those two charter schools. So, and that was all--and I liked the--it had a certain tradition. I guess that would be the framework--tradition. And I think, in my speech, probably I mentioned [August] 01:48:00Schuckman, right, coming across the plains. So I have a sense of tradition.

When I walked out the last night--looking at the moon, I just went, "Well, I wonder if my grandmother ever looked up." In fact, I was talking to one of my cousins. She's ninety. I was over at her house in Colusa yesterday. I said, "Did you ever hear your father," who actually lived here for a little while, this lady's father, I said, "Did they ever talk about the stars?" And she said, "No, they didn't. They worked so hard. I don't think they thought about those things." So I think about the tradition, but also the change. So I'm interested in that, and trying to just given the fact that I have this connectivity.

Given the fact that I have this connectivity to the California past and history, 01:49:00I think about it. So I was aware, and I thought it good that my aunt was there. I think she was ninety-eight at the time, my aunt Connie [Carlson]. And of course her grandfather was August Schuckman, and her mother was Ida Schuckman--Ida Schuckman Brown. So I kind of have that--the past having some connection to the present. And then how does it all fit together? Or does it fit together? Or can I fit it together? So I work on that, even today to--I have a lot of material about the Mountain House, and that old map that I got from Huntington [Library]. So it was on the--it says the Mountain House, in the 1874 map, right where we are. So I think about what was it like then, and it interests me.

Even today, I called Jason MacCannell, who worked with me. He's now working on a project on Native Americans. He worked at the state library for a while. I said, "Jason, can you find me any books on how life was in Northern California in the 1850s, the 1870s?" Well, how did they live? How was it out here with--was it just as hot? How often did they take baths? There was only, I think, one bath--one bathtub in this place. Where did they get the water? They didn't have any wells. I said, "What was it like?" And did they work so hard they just, at night just--I don't know. Now, they did have some parties here. I have records of that. So I'm interested in how people lived then, and then in this modern world how it has evolved, and what do we say about that?

I sent around an article about a woman who was seventy-four, who had a baby, in India. It was in the New York Times, and I just sent that around to a few of my 01:51:00friends. Another barrier broken. [laughter] And my friend Don Johnson [from the seminary] sent back a quote--quoting a work by [Edmund] Husserl on human beings and technology and what this was doing. So I'm very interested in the flow of history, and all of these changes, and I don't want to be just the guy who wants to live in the past. But what is this? Is this a brave new world, in one sense? Or is this emancipation, or is this fragmentation and breakdown? That's a question I have in my mind.

I like sitting here, looking at my mountain up there, my hill. I don't know that I mentioned it before. But in the Bible that Anne held during our marriage, and she read from her grandfather, who in one of the things said, "Read the King 01:52:00James Bible and look to the hills." So we're looking to the hills, and so I'm trying to kind of match the hills that have been there for millions of years with the latest seventy-four-year-old woman delivering a baby. What is that, and where are we going here, and how do you manage it? So that interests me. And I used to do some of that--so in my inauguration, I didn't have all the thought I have now--I have more thought, and eight more years to think about all this stuff. And so this interests me, you know, the uses of the past, the onrushing present, and what it all adds up to.

SHAFER: Yeah. Before we take a break, in that regard, as you were taking office, did you look back, in keeping with this idea of a throughline in history to the present, did you look at how other governors dealt with--you know, which was a major crisis in California--

BROWN: No, I didn't look to--I did read, as I have a few other times, I read the 01:53:00inauguration and state-of-the-state speeches by other governors. That's where I came across Peter [Burnett], who I quoted in 1982. So I read about those, try to get ideas--what are they, what are they talking about? But I haven't looked at other governors. I did look at some speeches by Roosevelt. I looked at the Lincoln speech--the second inaugural.

SHAFER: For inspiration, or what?

BROWN: Well, for ideas. When you sit down, and you've got to write it, what do you write? I guess everyone does it differently. And most people have a professional--have a writer, I guess.

SHAFER: You wrote it all yourself?

BROWN: Yeah, well--and Anne can correct it, and Nancy McFadden would have a role in it sometimes. In fact, all the time.

MEEKER: It seems to me, looking back on it, the theme of the 2010 election was 01:54:00elder statesman returning to leadership of the State of California at a difficult time, almost being called to serve: to what extent was this an idea that was tested out, like in these focus groups? Or was it something that was just spontaneous?

BROWN: No, this idea of call--first of all, calling. I got there--I felt called to the Jesuits. But I haven't had any calling since then. And it turned out that call was only for three-and-a-half years. [laughter] So there may be a calling, and you look back, you can frame things. See, part of what you're trying to--you know, you're trying to influence public opinion, you're trying to get the legislature to do what you--you're trying to find out what's needed, and then you try to make it plausible and acceptable. So then you try various rhetorical 01:55:00devices to achieve that goal, and it is a matter of rhetoric. I have a very superficial knowledge of rhetoric--more than most people, because I've read Cicero and Demosthenes. And I once had a book on rhetoric, and I always remembered the line that if you want to evoke tears, you must feel tears. If you want to evoke anger, you have to be angry. So the role in rhetoric--they had different ways of eliciting various emotions. It was very well refined, and I've never gotten into that in great depth. But at least I have a smattering of knowledge about it.

So I know you've got to move people if you want to get anything done. So I did think of that. Now, the reason I invoked--not the calling, but the pioneering 01:56:00spirit, the can do, that I've tried to bring--things look very formidable, if you look at the $27 billion deficit. That looks pretty formidable. The rising heat-trapping gases look pretty formidable. The international situation, the fragmentation, the stratification, with the well-off getting more well-off, and the middle getting more anxious, and the bottom falling out. Those are all very formidable.

So then you try to get analogies: where was it that people succeeded in the past? And so, the idea that people, my great-grandfather came across in an ox train of people across--that's a thought. Now, so that would be an analogy to dealing with tough problems. Yeah, so that's why I try to invoke that. Ad a 01:57:00first rule of speaking is you have to be where you are. You have to come, if you're a Vietnam veteran, and you're coming to talk the Vietnam War, people will listen to you. If you're a poet who writes about flowers and music, maybe you shouldn't be talking about the Vietnam War. Because you have to have that experiential credibility. And so I was trying to link myself with people who met and overcame great obstacles, to try to rev people up to the idea we can solve this $27 billion.

Now, in truth, it's solved by the recovery--and even more than solved. In fact, we probably didn't need that second tax increase. We would have been fine. Now, they get so much that it becomes very hard to manage. But at the time--well, I 01:58:00won't get into that. So yeah, you've got to inspire. How do you do this? And it's not very easy, if you look at--Wilson had trouble. Davis had trouble. Schwarzenegger had trouble. I mentioned all the different Democratic leaders that are having trouble. America with Trump, and polarized--I mean it's a daunting and dismaying specter that haunts us. And so there is need for encouragement and can do--we can overcome it, we can take that hill. I think that's very important, and it's very hard, because politics is not very plausible. And most of what people say is not--it's just for their followers. It's very hard to move the so-called swing voters, that one who's not part of the Trump or progressive coalition. Winning them over is difficult.

MEEKER: You referred to the powerful rhetoric of Cicero, but there's also the figure of Cincinnatus that runs deep through American history.

BROWN: Yeah.

MEEKER: People thought about George Washington in that regard, and of course also your father started that political club [New Order of Cincinnatus].

BROWN: I didn't know that much--he did mention to me, growing up. I didn't know what the hell it was, but I checked him out on Google and got a little more understanding.

MEEKER: Well, Cincinnatus was the leader who stepped away, correct?

BROWN: Right, and then he was called back--twice.

MEEKER: And then he was called back. Your decision to run again, was there any concern about being too old to still play in the game?

BROWN: Not for me.

MEEKER: Not for you?

BROWN: I didn't feel that old. I was seventy-two. It's younger than--

SHAFER: Half the people running for president.

MEEKER: [laughing] Right.

BROWN: Biden and Trump and Pelosi are all older than that right now. So it was actually a good age. I think this infatuation with youth--it comes from we want 02:00:00something fresh, a shiny new object. But it does take a long time to get a trained eye as to what's going on, and you have to--it's good to grow through things. The Chinese do that more. They move people up from mayor of this and mayor of that, and party secretary of this province--and finally they get them up to the politburo. There's a strength to that.

MEEKER: Are there figures like Cincinnatus that you look to for strength, for inspiration?

BROWN: No, I don't. I may use that, you referred to--I like the idea of Cincinnatus, because he was called. I even put out a tweet and said, "I'm back on the plow." [laughter] In fact, you can see it's plowed out there. You see that, how it's cut down? See my little weed whacker there? [laughing] So, I was out plowing last night--not plowing, but whacking down the weeds.

You know, I don't if inspiration--yeah, I don't know about that inspiration, of who I--I certainly read a lot of history. I'm interested in it.

MEEKER: Well, are there moments in your life where you've not been quite sure what to do, and historical figures of admiration have helped guide?

BROWN: No, it's really the opportunity of what's available. I mean just even restoring this ranch was an opportunity. I mean I had the idea twenty years ago, but it's luck. It's luck that my father bought it. It's luck that I could put it together, that I have a wife that loves being here. So it's luck that there was no incumbent in the attorney general, or for governor, or for mayor for that matter.

SHAFER: Do you think it was, in some ways, looking back on it, luck that you inherited a mess?

BROWN: Inherited a mess? Well, you want to follow failure, not success--much 02:02:00easier, much better.

SHAFER: Easy act to follow.

BROWN: Well, I mean Arnold followed what was perceived to be a failure.

SHAFER: And you followed him.

BROWN: And Reagan followed--followed the recession. So yeah, they jump on that. But that doesn't mean you can succeed. I guess, in retrospect, it's pretty hard for a Republican to succeed--although Deukmejian and Reagan did, and Wilson to a lesser extent.