Jerry Brown | Interview 11 | June 10, 2019

SHAFER: So this is interview session eleven on June 10, 2019. Still at Mountain House with Governor Jerry Brown. Martin Meeker and Todd Holmes from the Bancroft, and I'm Scott Shafer. Okay, let's pick back up with 1980. And some of these things may seem very granular, but we just never know where they're going to lead. So it's 1980, the economy is starting to have some problems. And the legislature rejected your appointment of Jane Fonda to the California Arts Council as being too radical. What does that say to you about the, you know--well, first of all, why did you choose her? Why did you think she'd be a good--?

BROWN: Well, because she was a good artist, and I was trying to make the art council composed of actual working artists that had some skill--had excellent skill. And so she fit into that category as an actress, and she was noteworthy 00:01:00and controversial. But I thought that the Democrats would be able to confirm her, but they wouldn't.

SHAFER: This is just a legacy of the Vietnam stuff?

BROWN: Yeah, right. Well, not just legacy, but certain things that she did, and the pictures that were taken in North Vietnam. Those things obviously left a residue.

SHAFER: Yeah. And so--let's see, by that time you're about 34 percent in the polls, in terms of people saying you're doing an excellent job, so more people--

BROWN: An excellent--what about good?

SHAFER: Good was--I don't have that. But it says--that's compared to--50 percent said excellent a few years earlier.

BROWN: Well, 34 percent, that's still pretty damn good.

SHAFER: It's not bad. But you're, nonetheless, you're a lame duck at that point. And I'm just wondering--you know, you signed a budget that, in '81, and 00:02:00the--virtually the--actually, I'm trying to--what does this say here, a little over--okay, so the legislature really redid it.

BROWN: Redid what?

SHAFER: The budget.

BROWN: Did they? I would question that. I don't know what redid means, because the budget is so massive, that you only change a few [items] anyway. So the redid has got to be somewhat of a metaphor or a trope.

SHAFER: Well, here's a quote from Leo McCarthy in June of '81, he says--

BROWN: So this is '81--this would be the '81-'82 budget? No.

SHAFER: Yeah.

BROWN: July of '81 would be for--

SHAFER: 1981-82.

BROWN: To the following--'82, right.

SHAFER: Yeah, so Leo McCarthy--here's a quote, "He has nothing to do with the decisions that are made. He might as well be spending the session in Hawaii."

BROWN: Right. Well, he was getting ready to run for the senate, you know. Yes.

SHAFER: Uh--no, well, he ran in '92, didn't he?

BROWN: He might have run--

SHAFER: He wanted to run.

BROWN: But I ran. [laughing] So there was a little bit of rivalry.

SHAFER: Well, talk about that. What was your thinking?

BROWN: Well, no, I mean he wanted to run for the senate, just like Unruh wanted to run for governor. So these things happen--and these are old stories in Sacramento. But on the budget, so this would be in June in '81?

SHAFER: Yeah.

BROWN: I mean there were disagreements in spending. Again, because of all the different interest groups. Labor--

SHAFER: And was that a time when there was--there was less revenue at that point?

BROWN: Um, well, there's always a risk of less revenue--at least in my mind. So he said I had nothing to do with the budget.

SHAFER: I guess the point I'm thinking, the point--so he said he, meaning you, has nothing to do with the decisions that are made. "He might as well be spending the session in Hawaii."

BROWN: Yeah, well that probably refers to Evelle Younger. I really think he was thinking then of running for the senate. That was an issue. But be that as it 00:04:00may, it does express and reflects a bad relationship with the legislature. That's true. Or a difficult relationship.

SHAFER: I remember when I talked with you before you left office the last time, you were saying that this time you were--and I know you don't use this phrase, "the adult in the room," but people referred to you--

BROWN: No, I never did use that. I find it offensive, actually.

SHAFER: [laughing] Well, so did they.

BROWN: Because then you're saying they were a bunch of children. So it's disdainful from the point of view of the press, and for me to adopt that disdain would be very counterproductive. And not accurate, I might say.

SHAFER: Looking back on your first time, did you feel that the relationship with the legislature was based in part on the fact that they were more veteran, and you were newer?

BROWN: Yeah, well that's part of it. It's many things. There's never one factor only, in our multi-factored world. [laughing] So yeah, there's always a lot of things. I can't tell you exactly what '81 was, what the particular--there might 00:05:00have been some specific issues that he might have had. Housing--we get, it's hard to keep the governor-legislature relationship working overtime. It works usually fine the first couple years. But because there's 120 legislators, there's a majority from one party, so that's at least forty--or often forty-five in the assembly--you've got forty-five demands. And that assembly speaker is subject to a no vote every day that the legislature's in session. So it's a constant pressure for the speaker to keep his members happy, and the members are happy when they get their projects and their spending programs enacted. And those programs represent what interest groups are bringing pressure on, or 00:06:00engaged with, that particular member.

So the governor is inevitably in a position of saying no, not to a few, but to many, many proposals that, in the minds of the proponents, are very good. So for a governor to say no, they can't understand that, because in their minds it's fine. Now, some abstraction: oh, a few years down the road we may have a recession--it doesn't cut any ice. Now, it turns out that we did have a recession coming, and we had a slight deficit--it was about a billion and a half. But that's the nature--that's the nature of this cyclical up-and-down revenue stream. And it wasn't just the money. There would be other things. Sometimes there were a lot of appointment requests the first time around, far less the second time. So people wanted to have their friends made judges, or their contributors--or workers' comp., unemployment insurance--all sorts of 00:07:00things that I didn't experience the second time, for a number of reasons. So all of that creates antagonism and tension.

SHAFER: What role did the Republicans play back then? I know Democrats were in the majority, but I mean now--

BROWN: They played a role. They'd join with Democrats on certain bills.

SHAFER: Was there more collaboration?

BROWN: I think there was. But they were friends. Some of the key Republicans were friends with Democrats, whereas now it's much more partisan. The Republicans don't play too much of a role, although in something like cap and trade, they played a very major role. I tried to get them involved, but the polarized thinking makes that difficult.

SHAFER: Yeah. There were people like Ken Maddy and they could work with Willie Brown, and they were more collaborative.

BROWN: Yeah, yeah. Well, now they have a lot of noes. No climate change, no 00:08:00taxes--what else? They have a number of other things that they don't like.

SHAFER: No high-speed rail.

BROWN: I guess most of them, yeah, would say that, although not all. See, I would say in that regard, the new always has a very hard time. Because the old, being the status quo, which is education, healthcare, mental health, prisons, law enforcement, pensions, are the existing areas that state government is involved in and is funding. I'd say all of the people in those areas feel that the state needs to spend more money. They felt that forty years ago; they felt 00:09:00it four years ago. That's the way it is.

So if you have some new program that you want to fund, that always is facing the pressure of the existing programs, that all, in the minds of the people, need to be funded, so that's what makes any new program difficult. And the legislature is all organized around these different long-term continuous spending and regulatory actions. So if you say, "Now, let's do high-speed rail," or do some kind of different environmental program, it has to compete with the people who are there. And the people who are there have lobbyists, they have experts, they have friends in the legislature who are permanent staff. They have reporters who 00:10:00have covered the event. And so when something tries to push into something new, it doesn't have the wherewithal. So that's part of the stabilizing of government, but it's also the inertia toward the status quo.

SHAFER: And what's an example of you bumping up against that?

BROWN: Well, high-speed rail.

SHAFER: But I mean the first time.

BROWN: Maybe the satellite. [pause] The conservation corridor, although they ultimately adopted that. Not so much running up against it, but the trains are running on time, generally speaking. And by that I mean the bills are being passed by the thousands. The hearings are being held, the lobbyists are 00:11:00testifying, the Finance Department is giving their view. And so that whole machinery gets along fine. The governor has a limited role on all that. So if the governor wants to start shaping legislation, you can only do that to a very limited degree, because it's their business. And if you want to get something from them, then you have to give them something. But to give them something takes money. And what you're trying to do is find the money for something new. Well, that's difficult. I mean it's not difficult--it's part of a stability. You wouldn't want constant change every year, because that would lead to even greater problems.

But popular expectation looks to the governor as driving things, and there's a lot of truth to that. But the machinery is all being operated by the legislator or the various departments. And those departments are funded by the legislator, 00:12:00and their funding goes to a subcommittee or a committee, so that committee or subcommittee chair takes an interest in what is. And so if you start trying to change it, maybe like the ARB [Air Resources Board], give them some new power--well, then you run into resistance. It's very common.

SHAFER: At what point in 1981 did you start to feel like a lame duck?

BROWN: I don't know that I ever did.

SHAFER: You never did?

BROWN: Well, I don't know what that means. That's an interesting metaphor. I mean I could think of a duck with a wounded leg or something. [laughter] So that's an interesting image, but it doesn't show up that way. I mean do you really think a governor feels like he's a duck? [laughter] So what does that mean? It's just talk. Okay, so you want me to translate saying--what? That no power, people weren't coming to you?

SHAFER: Well, people are looking ahead to '82. They're looking--

BROWN: Well, they're always--well, that's true. Other than the first couple years. I can't remember, I don't know. Maybe if you had a story that you could connect to that. That's kind of like pulled out of the sky. So you're just saying, "So you have a year left, so we're worrying about--and then you're like..." No, that doesn't go very--[laughing]

SHAFER: You don't buy that.

BROWN: Well, no, I don't think it's descriptive, I don't think it that it ties in to any factual--Are you guys saying my psychic state, or do you want to know some objective characteristics?

SHAFER: I know better than to ask your psychic state. [laughter]

BROWN: No, well, but do you want to know how the, what the governor's office, the legislature, the media--what are you talking about?

SHAFER: Oh, I guess it's just like your own sense of what you can get done. Does it change? Did it change?

BROWN: No, what you can get done depends upon the issue. I think we did a lot in 00:14:00my last couple years in Sacramento this time. Proposition 13 took a lot of energy out of the system. I mean that was a lot.

SHAFER: What do you mean took energy out of the system?

BROWN: Well, it was a big move. You know, I don't know what I mean by that, it's true. It's just they do a certain amount of big things, then they want to slow down. They're probably having trouble passing a tax, because they recalled the Orange County senator on the gas tax, so they learn these things. You know, we want to be careful of that. But I still don't get your lame-duck thing. Does that mean you don't get invited to as many parties? Your fundraising goes down?

MEEKER: There's a presumption, right, that particularly for executives, chief 00:15:00executives of countries or states, that when they have won their last election and there's no more election for them to win, as they're terming out or they will not continue on, that there's a period of time that the power they once had dissipates. Did you experience this in any way?

BROWN: I don't even experience that description. It's very analogous to this spend your political capital, which is another metaphor. You show up, you have this issue, it's different from that issue. What can I say?

MEEKER: So the whole idea of lame duck is a term and a concept that we, as analysts, should dispense with?

BROWN: Be very careful about it. I mean someone could kind of lose interest and not participate, but what would the lame duck be? So the lame duck started, what--eighteen months to go? Is that where is the lame-duck threshold?

SHAFER: Well, I think there's a sense that--why should I go out on a limb to 00:16:00help them? They're not going to be around in a year.

BROWN: Well, why should I ever go out on a limb, unless there's something--

SHAFER: Because I might need something from you. You know, that--

BROWN: Or because it's something I want. But they don't go out on a limb for that. They go out on a limb if some of their supporters want it, and the main way you get things done is to get the supporters of the legislators pushing for that, which the governor wants. And if you have only the governor wanting it, there's a special name in Sacramento for that. It's called governor's pet project, and anything that is defined as a pet project is something that will be paid for by doing a lot of things for a lot of legislators. So the worst thing a governor can do is have pet projects. It's much better to support other needs that have a strong support basis.

So I think lame duck has some meaning--probably you could point to an historical period when that might be true, a presidency/a governorship, but you'd have to 00:17:00give me a more concrete detail. I mean it is true they overrode some of my vetoes, one was the 16-percent pay raise. But that doesn't mean they're all right. They did the pension loosening under Gray Davis--Republicans voted for that. It cost the system a gigantic increase with no additional revenue, and they said just the opposite. So it was based on a big lie--kind of like the Iraq War. And this stuff happens, like the Vietnam War. All these memes and images and metaphors--that's the way government works. But that's the way it makes colossal mistakes.

So I would say that you don't do as much your last year. That's true. A lot of 00:18:00people working for you are looking for jobs. See, there's not a cookbook that says, "Here's what a governor does in year one, and then there's year five, and then there's year seven--and you'd better get something done in year three, because it won't be done in year seven." Well, yeah, the first year there's more enthusiasm. People are accepting of the fact that you're the governor. And when you get to seven and eight, you've already got a circling of those who want to be in there. So some of them have friends in the legislature, and if it serves them right--for example, Mr. Rarick wrote a book about my father. [California Rising: The Life and Times of Pat Brown]

SHAFER: Ethan Rarick.

BROWN: It seemed like he was rather shocked that the Democrats had deferred Republican governor Goodwin Knight's water plan, so that the Democratic governor 00:19:00could take on that issue. Well, that was an example of that. Now, were people waiting for Tom Bradley to do something? I'm not really aware of that in 1982. I mean generally speaking, for one thing, if you're governor for four, you should try to do that which you think is important. And if you're successful, you do it. So now what? Do you just invent something, "Oh my God, we'd better get this done." I mean, and by the way, there's different things at different times. We don't really need the governor to make big actions. That's kind of the conventional myopia--oh, urgency, urgency, we've got to do this, we've got to do that! Pass bills. You know, they're going to pass 1,200/1,300 bills this year. Do we need 1,200 solutions? No, we didn't.

And so the machinery of government is rolling along, and maybe it works a little 00:20:00differently--probably it does work a little differently after a governor has been at bat. He's been swinging at everything he can hit. So now, he should get it all done by then--or not. And then usually the governor, by the way, is running for another office. Most of them are, you know? So there's just a natural evolution, but lame duck I think had an historical--and it still occurs, but it's not something that I thought of. And I certainly didn't wake up one morning and look in the mirror and say, "Now there's a lame duck." [laughter] I didn't have that experience. And then when you asked me the question, it sounded like you expected me to have had that experience.

MARZORATI: That quote from McCarthy. He's not saying I disagree with Brown; he's saying Brown's not even in the decision-making process.

BROWN: And if you were running against Brown, wouldn't you like that to be the thought--that here's a guy who wants to run for the senate, and he was irrelevant. That's pure strategy. You [talking to former press secretary Evan 00:21:00Westrup] would have recommended he say that probably, if you were--[laughter]

WESTRUP: Don't blame me. It's a good tactic.

BROWN: [laughing] I'm just telling you. I think it's a little naïve today, of the way government works. Government is run by vicious people that are seeking their advancement, and part of the way you advance is at other people's expense. That's the way it works. A lot of people don't understand that.

SHAFER: When did you decide you decide you were going to run for the senate?

BROWN: Late in the game, yeah. I think some of my supporters wanted me to run. I wasn't as interested at that point.

SHAFER: Really?

BROWN: Because I wasn't that interested in the senate. I said, "Well, okay--now they're, people are a little tired of me. I'll wait a few years, and I'll come back and do something." Like, I wasn't quite sure. I'd run for president, maybe.

HOLMES: A third term as governor didn't--?

BROWN: No, because, first of all, no one, except [Earl] Warren, ever had a third 00:22:00term. It seemed like it would be very difficult. And given my popularity, it would be extremely difficult. So, first of all, you do run out of a certain amount of gas, because you've done all your best things--certainly within eight years. And secondly, remember you've had to say no. You have at least forty Democratic legislators--forty-one, and twenty-one senators--and you're not saying yes every day. So in the first year you say no, but in the second year you say no--and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth, seventh, and the eighth--that's a lot of noes. Now, some people take that very personally. If you only have five people upset--or ten--that is going to make it more difficult. You're not fresh. There is something about being fresh, and oh 00:23:00boy, we're going to achieve things together, and it seems to work. So there is a little bit of running out of gas.

SHAFER: Did you--I remember earlier on when we met with you we talked about your--the letter you wrote your dad trying to get him to run for the senate. Rather than run for governor. I mean did you see that you might be able to accomplish something in the senate?

BROWN: Yeah, oh of course--well, I ran. Yeah, I saw that.

SHAFER: And what would you--what were your ambitions for that?

BROWN: Well, high-speed rail? Control of nuclear weapons. You know, other things--building, helping the whole welfare system, and trying to provide income support for people who were at the lower end. No, whatever I campaigned on, it's still the same issues. That's something that a lot of people don't realize. 00:24:00These issues, they're not problems that are solved; they're conditions that are lived with. That's probably a revolutionary idea. I mean Ronald Reagan said that he dealt with the welfare problem, and he provided a solution to the welfare problem, and we're still there, called the homeless. So what happened? We've had six governors since then. How do we explain that? Maybe the press was asleep, and they were saying there were solutions, but they weren't providing them. But because of these inherent structural conditions of life--you know, water. Water is a bigger problem now than when my father built the water plan. What happened? Well, we've got more people, we're using more water, and we've got climatic changes, you know, and we're exporting a lot of water to all of these foreign 00:25:00countries. Every ounce of rice is an ounce of water that we're sending out.

SHAFER: It's interesting, because I mean you're saying that these problems exist, and government doesn't solve them.

BROWN: No, but it alleviates them. It responds to them. It addresses them. That's why they don't even use the word solution anymore. Government addresses a problem, it doesn't solve a problem, right? People use the word address. They've substituted that verb for solve, so when they address, they can wave at the problem and say, "Hi, we've got a problem here." [laughter] Well, and you are making it better: the fire is burning, and you've got to pour water on it. You put it out. But that doesn't mean it's not going to start again, or another fire. So it's like history. It's one damn thing after another, and government does that. But because of the nature of change, you're not going to change the 00:26:00conditions, but you will change the personalities. It's more likely that they'll listen to your radio show if you're presenting something fresh, even though the basic essence is very much similar to what it's always been. [laughing] At least that's my perspective.

SHAFER: Different format.

BROWN: You say, well, education is still a problem. You'd say, in Oakland, you live in the East Bay--they still have a challenge in the Oakland School District. They've had it for many decades, right? And we'll have a budget problem later, and we have crime problems. So getting to the nature of what government can do/should do/and what's actually happening, I think it takes insight and reflection, so that you can actually describe what it is that's going on, and what we can do about it.

SHAFER: Yeah. One of the issues that you had to deal with in 1981 was the medfly 00:27:00infestation. And it was threatening crops, potentially billions of dollars in crop loss. How did you approach that problem?

BROWN: Inadequately. I first heard about it. I didn't know what the hell--I'd never heard of a Mediterranean fruit fly till Richard Rominger, the director of agriculture, told me about it. And I didn't listen clearly enough to pick up on the seriousness of it. And then it diminished, because it was the winter. And then something happened called spring emergence, and they were back. And so spring was something--spraying chemicals seemed politically and environmentally questionable. And even people like Paul Ehrlich from Stanford said this is a bad thing to do, and I accepted that.

In retrospect, I don't know that I would have agreed to that today. I don't 00:28:00think I would have. But it took more immediate action. Whether we could have avoided spraying, which was politically unpopular, we don't know that scientifically. We used sterile fruit flies, and we don't know whether some of the sterile fruit flies weren't sterile, and so it exaggerated the problem. That's one possibility. But whatever it is, that took more decisive action of some kind, and waiting built it up--and we had Ed Meese in the White House, and they were kind of manipulating it, and so it became an opportunity for Republicans to gain. Yeah, so I didn't respond in the way I could have, which would have been spray quickly.

SHAFER: And what were the, like the--obviously you had the ag interests on the one side, you had the environmental interests.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: And then your own thinking about it. How did those different interest 00:29:00groups come at you?

BROWN: Well, they didn't come at me. They're just there. I mean it's not like we're sitting there waiting to receive information pro and con.

SHAFER: But you were getting pressure probably?

BROWN: No, well pressure from what--people? We're going to call you up and say what? The farmers were a little pressure. The environmentalists--it was just there as a problem. I mean if you can see a problem, and you say wow, if you solve this wrong, that's not going to be good. [laughing] It's going to make a lot of people mad, or it's going to cause cancer, and that's going to make people mad--and that's not going to be good. So just the observation of the problem gives rise--if you want to use those words, which you seem to like to use--pressure. You know, in other words, if there's a fire out there, you could say I'm under pressure to put it out, and that's true of issues. If you don't handle them, they can get worse and cause damage.

So on that, I gave too much--because the malathion, when it got on a car, it 00:30:00chipped the paint and it killed the fish. So I said, "Well, if that's going to go on little kids' bicycles, this doesn't sound good." But so far, I don't think there's been any malathion cancer deaths, I haven't read about it, so maybe there was some--

[side conversation deleted]

BROWN: I tried, first of all, to get scientific information. There wasn't that much information. So there was inadequate information probably. But I think, in retrospect, I would say I did not get the experts early enough when I had the time, before--somewhere in the latter part--what year was that?

SHAFER: 1981

BROWN: So in '80, which might have been a casualty of running for president, although I'd long since dropped out. I didn't convene the requisite experts in a 00:31:00timely enough, in-depth fashion to enable me to make the best decision possible. So that was definitely an example where delay is not your friend. But on the other hand, if you delay and the problem goes away, that's good too. But that's not the case.

SHAFER: Do you think you underestimated it?

BROWN: I don't think I looked at it with the level of scrutiny that I generally like to employ. In fact, I would say probably one of the reasons I am inclined, if a problem seems at all worth thinking about it, to probe more deeply than most people might, if I understand that correctly. Just because I've seen how things--you know, whether it was the medfly, or the fact that I've got a nice water system but the off valve was on. I've learned, over the period of decades, 00:32:00that stuff can go wrong, and it's not obvious. So you have to constantly be probing to see what might not work here. And so that, I would say I take a more proactive, prudential approach to things. I would say the medfly, I learned a lot from that.

I'd say other people haven't, because other people have let things get out of hand too, without jumping in. Also, we know that from the Watts riots. My father was in Greece, but the lieutenant governor, evidently I think they delayed. But then, what isn't delaying--have started shooting? These things become very difficult. It's either too much, or not enough. You're too little/too late, or you're too much/too soon, and you overdid it. So that's just inherent in 00:33:00judgment. And you've got to know, the best way to do the best is to get the best information, think about it, and get the time. And a lot of times you don't have the time, because everybody wants you to do something.

SHAFER: Were--at that point were you distracted at all by the senate campaign? Or were you not in at that point?

BROWN: No, I think that was also when computergate was going on. I might have been distracted by that.

SHAFER: I'm not sure what computergate was.

BROWN: Well, that shows you how little computergate is left. [laughter] That was the allegation by the LA Times, picked up by the Fair Political Practices Commission, that I was using what were very new computers for compiling political names for improper political purposes. That was the charge, and over time they dropped it. But it was a problem, and it was concerning, so that was a 00:34:00distraction. Whether running for the presidency might have been distracting by thinking about those national issues? Maybe I didn't give enough depth of attention. I'd have to really go back and look more carefully at it, but the principle is the same. I have a director of agriculture, and he knows a lot. Of course you have people on the environmental side, and they say something entirely different. And then they clash, and you say, "Well, the farmers, you know, those guys in the Central Valley, [but] the enviros--they speak for kind of a universal, the good of nature." But in this case, the economic consequences of quarantining California produce were large, and the environmental harms were 00:35:00speculative and not adequately based on the evidence. That's what I would say.

Now, someone could call Paul Ehrlich and say, "Well, what is your evidence for malathion?" Maybe it kills the butterflies that he's worked on at Stanford. So there were different people. I bring up those factors--say this is inherent in making judgments. You try to get a lot of information here from sound people, but at the end of the day, there's insufficient information, and the leader has to make a decision.

HOLMES: Governor, when you were first addressed with this issue you decided not to spray initially, siding with the environmentalists not to spray.

BROWN: Yeah, and then the White House said, "We're going to quarantine all California produce," and all the farmers went crazy.

HOLMES: Because I had it for my research, that within forty-eight hours, within 00:36:00two days you switched--

BROWN: Right, and I should have anticipated--well, they did it out of the White House. It was a political move. But it was a good move--it was a clever move, and I didn't see that, so that was not good. I should have been able to anticipate that, and then, so then the question is, you've got to spray. So that shows some deficiency in my decision-making process, if you want to call it that.

SHAFER: Do you think that your--that your bias was toward more the environmental concerns perhaps?

BROWN: My bias was to maybe give more weight to the environmental concerns than actually scientifically or politically was merited.

SHAFER: Interesting.

BROWN: And I would say when I got to be mayor of Oakland and would deal with some issues, particularly in downtown development, and I could have a real-world 00:37:00feel--using that word, not feeling but feel--and then I could hear people saying, "Oh, you can't build a five-story building. That's out of character with the neighborhood, in using the [California] Environmental Quality Act." I said, "No, that's stupid." And the Sierra Club, who did not endorse me--and it wasn't just that issue. They were into rent control and a bunch of other things.

But I think at the governor's level, I was giving weight to some abstract claims, that as I got more experience I was able to discern more clearly their validity or their lack of validity, or insufficient validity. I mean I don't want to think of myself as a skeptic, but I do like to understand what are the 00:38:00factors, what are the ingredients of a particular problem. And I've learned that most people have a limited perspective, and therefore, if you hear from one, you've got to hear from others to get the most balanced perspective. And there generally is not any one person you can turn to--or I feel that. So I've got to ultimately figure it out myself. In order to figure it out myself, I have to take a lot of time. When you're in politics, you don't have a lot of time, because you're running around giving speeches, you're going to meetings. So that's why I reduced my number of meetings. When I have a real problem, I want to have the time to dig into it, and not get pushed. And we saw that with the electrical problem under Gray Davis. I don't know what the solution ought to be. But I know from the medfly experience, take time, start early, get a range of experts and figure out what are possible pathways forward. And that is, I think, 00:39:00relatively rare.

I don't think that's what the president did on the Bay of Pigs. I don't know that on the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, I don't think they applied that--they being the Senate and the House. On the Iraq War, I don't think our sterling leaders, Democrat and Republican, applied the lessons of the medfly decisions. That's what I would say, because that is a very burdensome, sometimes irritating, tiresome endeavor, when you've got to listen, so you've got to shut up. You've got to stop all the little things in your head, and listen. Then you've got to go to the next person and listen to something different. And sometimes they're totally clashing. So if you have two clashing opinions, and you don't, yourself, 00:40:00have the knowledge or the expertise to pick between them--that's extremely frustrating, when you know that the wrong decision, or maybe either decision, is going to be politically negatively impactful. And that's why politicians, I think, like to defer, delegate, or get on with the next thing, because it's hard to get to the bottom of things.

And there's another methodology, which is don't sweat the details: always create a new adventure, a new problem. Trump does that a lot. So you're always going to have mistakes, people are going to get mad at you. Just keep fighting new battles and keep fighting them, and keep going. That also can work. [laughing] For how long? I think there's limits.

HOLMES: Did the medfly issue have you rethink the use of pesticides in agriculture?

BROWN: No.

HOLMES: Because I know--say the UFW [United Farm Workers] on one hand brought that to public attention. At least, throughout their campaigns.

BROWN: They did, but I wasn't governor then. They weren't bringing up pesticides, when I was there, as much. That happened later. But we adopted the strictest pesticide rules in the country, when I was governor. Before medfly--I think what got me was DB--

MEEKER: DDT.

BROWN: Yeah, and of course that got my attention, because it's manufactured by Dow Chemical, and Dow Chemical had a plant in the north bay or San Francisco Bay, and they pulled out, and it became the big example of the bad business climate of California, and how many permits you needed. And that was the same outfit that had the DBCP [dibromochloropropane] --this was made in the Valley, and they found out these men who made it weren't having children. Their wives 00:42:00were not having children, and they run it back to this chemical. And we banned that chemical, and I pushed on that. So that's that story.

So but we were pretty good on pesticides. But of course the farmers later--the pesticide is huge. And then it's very chemistry, science based--it's difficult. Science base to approve, science base to attack. But really the medfly was not--that was not applying the pesticide that would hurt workers. That was spraying, because we applied it--dioxin and some other ones--worse, methyl bromide, which was also used for fumigation. But this was aerial spray, so that 00:43:00had a visual drama that was something I wanted to avoid.

HOLMES: Well, I know [Brien Thomas] "B.T." Collins, I think, was working at your staff.

BROWN: He said he drank a bottle of that. [laughter] Yeah, but do we know what that was? Did we have a chemical test of that? It could have been vodka.

MARZORATI: We talked to Dan Dooley, and he said B.T. threw up thirty minutes after he drank it, so--

BROWN: Okay, well that could be. Dan has never told me that.

SHAFER: I moved to California in '81, so that was one of the first things that I remember from being here. I seem to remember you sleeping in like the spray area. Does that ring a bell?

BROWN: I stayed over at Vic Calvo's house. He was in the spray area.

SHAFER: And you did that--why?

BROWN: Well, why do governors go to fires? That's where the action is.

SHAFER: So it wasn't like if everyone else is going to be exposed to this, I 00:44:00will too?

BROWN: You have so many layers that you want to add on to every decision.

SHAFER: Well, you made a decision to do that.

BROWN: If you go to the forest fire, does the governor go to put the fire out? No. [laughing] Well, that's part of what you do, and it's expected. So there's some kind of solidarity or something to go see it. But that's just what you do. Why do they do all these little field trips on everything? The whole schedule is going to things, and certainly politicians go where the media is. To try to explain it.

HOLMES: The actual solution to the medfly issue, which is fascinating, at least among some of us who've studied agriculture, because it actually had nothing to do with pesticides, but the introduction of millions and millions of sterile flies that counts.

BROWN: Well, that's what they say--well, they said no, the sterile fruit fly was 00:45:00to kill the medfly--I think they're doing that with a certain kind of mosquitoes in Africa. But the idea was good, to have them mating, and therefore make the female fruit flies nonproductive, infertile. But the question is, were there enough? There was only one laboratory, like in Costa Rica, that made the sterile fruit flies, so it was quite a process. And you've got to put them in canisters, and they're saying that one of the canisters wasn't sterile. I don't know if that's the same story you got. Now, the fruit flies were introduced by bringing produce from Hawaii, or some other place, where it's endemic. But it's interesting there hasn't been that much talk about fruit flies, has there? They've come back occasionally, but you don't hear much about them.

SHAFER: It's interesting what you said earlier, that you maybe had a bias or putting too much weight on the environmental arguments. Like how do you know, as 00:46:00time has gone by--

BROWN: No, that argument. I didn't say that about anything. I'm more careful on how I respond to various claims. So a government is a site of multiple claims. Very few of the claims are 100-percent accurate. Right. I mean you wouldn't expect that the various groups, from oil to union to education to colleges to public television to the university--they're making all sorts of claims, usually for more money. And then they base that on a whole series of stories, narratives. So I've become more skilled in my discernment of such claims.

SHAFER: Huh, yeah. Any other take-aways from the medfly?

BROWN: I think, discernment is a word that the Jesuits use a lot, because 00:47:00Ignatius Loyola, in his spiritual exercises, has some passages about discernment of spirits in your mind. And there are certain spirits--you know, you can have the good spirit, the devil, or you know--is this a good inclination? A good impulse--or a bad impulse? And how do you discern? So that concept of discernment, taken from the spiritual life, you can take it to the political life--or even the business life. How do you discern the consequences? That's what makes it interesting. That's what we call judgment. And experienced judgment and knowledgeable judgment is what we'd like to have, but which, because of the complexity of the world and its ever-changing nature, is hard to 00:48:00come by. So most people are neither skilled in their discernment, nor experienced, unless they've had years on task, and then they have at least a chance.

MEEKER: Well, the question, the follow-up to that is at this point in time, did you understand that you were engaged in a process of discernment?

BROWN: No, I was just trying to figure out how do I get rid of these damn medflies. [laughter] Can we put stuff on the ground without having to--the main thing was avoid spraying from helicopters, stuff that puts holes in your car, in your paint on your car, and kills fish in the creek. That seemed to be something I wanted to avoid, but I couldn't figure out how to do it.

Oh, by the way, at the beginning it wasn't clear that spraying was needed. 00:49:00Ground application was the other alternative, so if we keep more troops, more ground forces to go after the medfly--it was kind of like the Vietnam War in miniature, but the ground forces could not carry the day.

MEEKER: Well, I lived in the South Bay at the time, and I was eleven years old. And it was pretty damn impressive, and I thought it was cool. [laughing]

BROWN: You like it. Right, so that should have been something I should have taken into account.

MEEKER: Right, but I wasn't a voter at the time.

BROWN: You know half the people might have been--how many people actually were concerned about it? So here's the question. What's the scientific basis? What do we know? What is the harm, and do we even know? It's probably a range of possible harms to a range of possible recipients. And then when you figure all that out, what really did people think about it? And whatever they think about 00:50:00it, how long will they think about it going forward, versus the agriculture, and all that. So that's a fairly sophisticated set of questions, and I don't know there was a way around it, to act more decisively and earlier. That was the only way.

MEEKER: Was there polling done to determine what the probability might have been?

BROWN: No. No, people resort to polls a lot more now than we did then.

HOLMES: Governor, from some of the reports I read, there was an ecoterrorist group or organization that claimed responsibility for the medfly--

BROWN: That I don't know--I mean now you've got a good conspiracy theory going. [laughter] It could have been the Republicans. [loud laughter] Meese, I mean you could get some communications with Ed Meese at the White House, or he was over there when they said quarantine California's produce. That was kind of a gun to 00:51:00my head. But were there ecoterrorists that wanted to--what?

HOLMES: That just claimed responsibility for releasing the flies.

BROWN: Well, you know, I'd have to have a little more information before that query deserves an answer.

SHAFER: You mentioned water as an issue that--you know, it keeps coming around, and I wonder if you could talk about Prop. 9, which was on the ballot, I think, in June, maybe at that same time of the senate--

BROWN: The water quality measure for the San Francisco Bay?

SHAFER: No, the Peripheral Canal.

BROWN: Well, it was about the water quality in the Bay. Do you know what Proposition 9 says? No.

SHAFER: Well, it was to take water around the Delta.

BROWN: No. No. Go look at your notes. [laughing] Proposition 9 was a measure that passed with about 52 or 53 percent--and I don't know if you have that in your notes.

SHAFER: It was to reject the Peripheral Canal--right?

BROWN: Oh--what year was this? 1982?

MARZORATI: June of '82.

BROWN: No, there was a prior one. Maybe there was a prior one to create water quality, and if the Peripheral Canal went forward, there would be certain environmental quality restrictions on the use of that canal as a condition of the canal going forward. That was in place, but now the Sunne [W.] McPeak Salyer-Boswell initiative--is that the one you're talking about?

SHAFER: Prop. 9.

BROWN: I don't know, there's been thousands of propositions since that time. At least a thousand, and I can remember more of them than all the people in this room put together but I do not remember each one of them in detail. What was the name on the ballot?

MARZORATI: The Peripheral Canal Act. [ed.: The Peripheral Canal Act was on the June 1982 ballot as Proposition 9; it was defeated with 67.2% of the vote.]

BROWN: Is that what it said? No, it was a referendum. That was a referendum, and so it wasn't an initiative. What did you call it, a ballot measure?

SHAFER: Yeah, well--yeah.

BROWN: It was a referendum. But what was the title?

MARZORATI: Peripheral Canal Act, and it would have authorized the building of a canal--

BROWN: All right, and what did it say?

MARZORATI: It would have authorized building a canal around the periphery of the Delta, moving water from--

BROWN: Oh right. I was wondering where they got a title like that, that was the title of the bill. It was fat. What was the number?

MARZORATI: Two hundred, SB 200.

BROWN: So SB 200, right. And so that was a referendum, right. And so what was the--

SHAFER: And so voters rejected it. They overturned it, they overturned it.

BROWN: Oh yeah, yeah, they rejected it. Yeah. Vote no, that was the deal, yeah.

SHAFER: Yeah, what's your sense of what the water politics were at that time? I mean this is an issue that's, you know, transcended--

BROWN: It had more money, and they had the environmentalists as a front. This is an environmental issue. But all the money came from Salyer and Boswell, who 00:54:00objected to the Peripheral Canal because it didn't take enough water from the north and deliver it to the Central Valley. They wanted a bigger pipe, and I think the pipe was 2,700 cubic feet or something. Now, when I proposed the two tunnels--nine cubic feet. One is maybe six cubic feet. We're going down from twenty-three--or some number like that. But that was not enough to satisfy Boswell, so he put up the money. They wanted more, the environmentalists wanted less, and it was that kind of unholy alliance that was able to put it over. And it wasn't that popular, you know, as a--

HOLMES: And for Boswell, are you referring to J.G. Boswell?

BROWN: Yeah, and he eventually got into trouble--or Salyer got into trouble. So they wanted more water, and of course they didn't get more water. I knew at the time, this Peripheral Canal was an unusual issue. I first heard about it running 00:55:00for governor. What the hell is the Peripheral Canal? I remember a guy named Tom Graff, who I think was at EDF [Environmental Defense Fund] asked me about that, and it was very important. You know, I think he was against it. And then my own water people, [Ronald B.] "Ron" Robie, who's now a judge, said, "No, this is the project to make the California Water Plan work, because the Delta is unsustainable." I said, "Okay." So they wrapped it up. We worked on it and I didn't fully grasp all of the intricacies--at all.

Big projects that cost money concern people. And I don't know exactly, was the campaign--was it a water grab? Even though it was paid for by a water grabber 00:56:00who wanted to grab more water, or was it just the expense, it's going to cost you money. I don't know how they played the campaign, but it was a very small number of people. I mean you're talking about a handful of people who put that campaign together. But on the other side, the Peripheral Canal, like the tunnels, is remote to the vast political community. It's a very insider kind of thing--even today. So even though you go to the Delta, and people say they don't like tunnels. But the average guy--on my whole campaign, the amount of time that tunnels and Peripheral Canal in my--starting in '75 to 1983--rare, rare. It hardly comes up.

So it's a project that is believed by people who really know, that for the Delta--the pumping of the water that is used throughout California, that it's 00:57:00totally unsustainable today, and you need something to go around the Delta. And water flushed through the Delta, with the pumps, is very detrimental, and it's got to be changed. You can stop it, and then the Delta will collapse, and you'll probably have to take a significant amount--I don't know how much, but agriculture out of production. Okay, that can be done. And there will be water crises in other parts of the state. But I imagine we can deal with it. But it's a sound program, I think, and the opposition is very, very limited.

In fact, the people who opposed, who sought that referendum, some of them are the same people today--the exact same, from Stockton, they're still there. So 00:58:00you might ask why is that? And one of the reasons is they get a lot of water, free water. My father always told me that instead of having to exercise a water right, the water just flows in and they can tap into it. And they're afraid that if that water is not flowing, that they will have to say, "Well, here's my water right. Give it to me from the Peripheral Canal," or the tunnel, they might not get it. That's what I've heard. But in truth, this is a complicated issue. I grasp it at various levels, but there's a lot of issues that only the experts really are dealing with.

SHAFER: I'm wondering if your--either your father gave you any advice about water, or if you asked him for any advice about this?

BROWN: No.

SHAFER: No, not at all?

BROWN: No, I mean he talked about water, because he was the attorney general in the Arizona v. California case, so that's something I heard about at the dinner table. But to understand the water, the farms, the cities, the habitat, the 00:59:00growth inducement--there's a lot of facets to this.

SHAFER: You know, you talked earlier about Prop. 13, and how complicated that was. You're talking about water and how complicated that is. In so many issues that are on the ballot, that are just really--the average person has to vote on, but what do you think?

BROWN: Well, the average legislator doesn't understand it either. The average person--it's hard to understand. Do you understand how we're being cooled now by, with the help of photovoltaic cells and lithium ion batteries. I do not know how to make a lithium-ion battery, and I don't know how to make a photovoltaic cell, but nevertheless, we're enjoying it. So we're in a civilization of immense 01:00:00technological sophistication of which we are totally ignorant. And that's true of politics as well.

SHAFER: Yeah, but as you're going into 1982 a little further, you got the nomination. You ran against Gore Vidal, which--I know you had him on your radio show years later.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: Did you guys debate at all?

BROWN: We had one debate.

SHAFER: Do you remember when it was? Because I sort of have this feeling--

BROWN: It was at the--was it the Marines Memorial?

SHAFER: It was in San Francisco?

BROWN: Yeah, I don't remember where it is. Yeah, you guys have to do--you're a library. You do the research.

SHAFER: Well, no, I seem to remember it being at Everett High School in San Francisco. Would it have been there? No? It's on Church and Sanchez, but it doesn't matter.

BROWN: It was not there.

SHAFER: Okay.

[side conversation deleted]

SHAFER: Because I seem to remember seeing the two of you there. But again, I was just a kid, and I just kind of came to California. So you ran against Pete 01:01:00Wilson. You said you weren't really that enthused about running for the senate.

BROWN: Oh, I was in it. I was enthused.

SHAFER: But the idea of running. You had to be pushed into it?

BROWN: Yeah, well I mean you have this image of pushes and pulleys and pressures--it's a kind of a construction-industry imagery. I don't know where it comes from. I relate more to ideas. So maybe the option of running seemed like it was a lot, because the fundraising is quite extensive and challenging. There 01:02:00was a time in which I thought it would be good just to leave office. I thought that was good. But I still wanted to come back to office. So I think when I became convinced of--all right, once you're out of office, it's much harder to come back, so it's better to stay in. But I thought it was very difficult to win, because my poll standings. I thought it was difficult, and I was right.

MEEKER: Who's influencing you? You've mentioned them, vaguely, a few times.

BROWN: Vaguely. Just the campaign--just whoever helped me in the campaign. You talk to different people.

MEEKER: Well, you're the one who talked about it. Who were the different people?

BROWN: I don't have a kitchen cabinet, you know. Reagan had his--

SHAFER: Like--was Tom Quinn part of that?

BROWN: Maybe. I can't remember. I've run in many campaigns with many personalities. These campaigns were eminently forgettable.

DAN NEWMAN: They were pre-ordained, apparently. [laughter]

BROWN: Oh yes, ordained. Like the corn--if you've got the seed, the soil, and the sun. [laughter]

NEWMAN: Chauncey Gardiner now. Chauncey Gardiner, Being There.

BROWN: No, I never heard of Chauncey Gardiner.

SHAFER: So you lost to Pete Wilson, 51.5 to--

BROWN: Forty-six. Or 44 or something. [51.4% to 44.8%]

SHAFER: What was your case? What case did you make for being the next senator?

BROWN: Now you're asking me to remember a campaign. I have a couple of my old literature pieces.

SHAFER: Do you have them here?

BROWN: I can send them over to you. We should add that to the mix.

BROWN: Well, limiting the nuclear arms race, definitely was one of them.

SHAFER: That was right after Three Mile Island too, I think, wasn't it?

BROWN: Yeah, well--no, the nuclear arms race, the weapons.

SHAFER: Missiles.

BROWN: Oh, the nuclear freeze was on the ballot. The nuclear freeze was on the ballot, which again, proved not to be that--that determinative an issue. It's even less of an issue now, even though it's more dangerous.

MEEKER: Running for senate, you would certainly be asked to comment more on international relations and--

BROWN: Yeah, right.

MEEKER: Were those issues that animated you? Were they of interest to you?

BROWN: Yeah, yeah.

MEEKER: Because as governor, you were deep in domestic issues.

BROWN: No, well, I'm interested in international issues.

MEEKER: Where did you go to learn about these issues? Were there particular advisors or thinkers who you thought had interesting things to say about the international scene?

BROWN: I talked to different foreign policy people. I remember, in '82, I think I went to Harvard--I think in '80, that was the presidential campaign. I mean 01:05:00you talk to people. It's not that hard. There's a lot of publications, and you get meetings with people. You have your campaign staff that supposedly develops the programming, by whatever magic dark art they deploy. [laughter]

MEEKER: You certainly had a domestic policy through line in your first two terms of governor, and I think about paying attention to resources, you know, not overspending.

BROWN: Yeah. Wait, let me just back up to your through line--that's another one of your metaphors. First of all, in eight years I probably signed or vetoed up to 12,000 bills. There's a lot of little pieces--now, that's not very useful for 01:06:00campaigning or for intelligent policy discussion. So the big task becomes what general ideas--that's why I came up with the idea of the era of limits. The era of possibilities. How do you make it general? Ronald Reagan made it general. Government's the problem, or the evil empire. But government in its functioning, particularly in the legislative process, is very detailed, and those details cannot be communicated to a mass audience. I mean the tweet of Trump is more powerful than a thousand policy papers, because it's quick, you get it out, and everyone is convinced that that's the most important thing to read about. So 01:07:00being governor for eight years gave me sort of an understanding about educational questions and water, and certainly environment and the energy were important. So I did know about things like that.

MEEKER: Was there an organizing principle that you brought into your thoughts around foreign policy?

BROWN: Well, when I ran for president in '76 I coined the phrase planetary realism. I took two different ideas, and put the planetary and connected it to realism. The planetary was a more visionary feel, and the pragmatism was the more realistic. And they talk about that in foreign policy. You see a realist--like Kissinger would be a realist. Other people are more kind of 01:08:00idealists--people who started the Iraq War. They were idealists, and their ideal was to make Iraq into a democratic model based on America. Of course that was totally not grounded in reality. So you need to have realism. But besides realism, you need some vision, what's--that is a good question. Besides realism, there are certain preferences, values--and then what do those mean? It's like human rights or democratic elections or environmental stewardship, inclusivity. So there are a variety of words other than just winning and losing. But winning and losing is pretty damn important. You know, like if we lost the Second World 01:09:00War, a lot of those ideals wouldn't mean too much. So you've got to be grounded in realism while you have your ideas about what it is you want to achieve with your realism.

MEEKER: It's another effort to challenge the restrictive binary that you keep on referring to maybe?

BROWN: Well, how did you start this question? You were asking about my--how did I know about foreign policy?

SHAFER: An organizing principle around your foreign policy.

BROWN: Well, organizing principles are made by academics, not by the people who are organizing, because they're too practical.

MEEKER: Well, I don't know. I think that when you describe the idea around the era of limits, I think that speaks to the--

BROWN: That was an organizing idea. And that idea was not--that's an important idea, but as a persuasive idea, it's not adequate. You can't just tell people 01:10:00what they can't have. You have to have a positive. Although you know, if you look at the human presence on Earth with 7.4 million people, there are some people who say there's too many people. We can't sustain it. Well, that's limits. But are you going to say, "Let's stop it at 7.4"? That's pretty difficult. But then if you say, "Okay, then we're going to have to share more to make it work." And I'd say, "Well, who are we going to take it from to share--and who are we going to share it with?" So the trouble is the organizing principles, other than more--that's the big organizing principle. Give me more. I want more money, I want more education, I want more--I want a bigger truck. I want to go faster, I want to be safer. I want more. Okay. But now more means war, because my more is your less--often.

But now in the market economy, we have what is called win-win, so maybe you can do that. But it doesn't appear that win--in fact, I would say the big organizing idea now is to get to more of a win-win, but we're not there. We're not there in the Ukraine. We're not there in Syria. We're not there in Taiwan. We're not there in the South China Sea. We're not there in a lot of places. And the fact that we're not there--when I say we, the US and Cuba, the US and Nicaragua--so Trump and others in Washington want them to do something, and they want to do something else.

So how do get a foreign policy that accommodates to diversity? See diversity is defined more narrowly as racial diversity or gender diversity--or something like 01:12:00that. But in the world we have lifestyle diversity or value diversity. Woman wear the burqa, and some people say, "Well, no, we don't like that. We like bikinis." And how do you accommodate? Is that something to kill people about, or can we find a way to do something different? And that's the great problem of human history. You know, when the missionaries came, they saw it was a great opportunity to convert the heathen, the Indians. But it didn't work out too well for the Indians because of the diseases. And then later on they just killed them outright.

So these conflicts are the historical patrimony of what we have. But planetary realism is based on the: well, we've only got one planet, and how do we learn to 01:13:00live on the planet? Now, climate change is an example of--everybody's got to work together. It's got to be win-win. That's not the way things are working right now. You know when they had the Normandy celebration--Putin wasn't invited, so he said oh, it didn't matter. He didn't have to be invited to everything. He probably wondered how they excluded a country that lost 20 million people. Was that because they were on the Eastern Front, and Normandy was on the Western Front? Or was this a message that we don't like Mr. Putin? And is that a good message? Is that going to help us get to win-win or planetary realism? Or is that going to just further the acceleration to doomsday, or whatever the next clash is going to lead to?

So I am influenced by even however valid is the population bomb--I don't know 01:14:00how accurate it is. But I do know that resources are not evenly distributed. I do know that resources are extracted in unsustainable, damaging ways. And therefore, if we were really going to be on a path of stability and wisdom, we would be having a different arrangement of stuff and people's relations, and we don't seem to be getting any closer. In fact, we're seemingly moving away from that. So that would be my big general idea--this would be my thoughts, and I think in some way I thought that in 1982. And I'd have to go read. I'd have to go read what I said to be sure, because I may be importing ideas subsequently developed.

MEEKER: Well, so if you had been elected in 1980 and inaugurated in 1981, how 01:15:00would you have addressed the Soviet Union? What would have been the application--

BROWN: That's a good question. Well, one application, I would say when Indira [Gandhi]--now, there's different points of view. I received Mrs. Gandhi at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles a few months after the Russians went into Afghanistan. I said to her, "Mrs. Gandhi, what should the US do?" She said, "Do nothing." I said, "But Mrs. Gandhi, we can't just do nothing. The Russians invaded Afghanistan." She said, "Do nothing." That was the correct answer. But now, would I have seen that at the time? I don't know.

I don't know whether that was an option. First of all, Jimmy Carter had to cancel the Olympics, cancel the wheat sales--he was on the defensive. In fact, he lost. So it was not a time for boldness, I'd bet, in his mind. And if it had 01:16:00been, probably he might have not been able to sustain it. Then Reagan kept it from there, and Charlie Wilson put I don't know how many billions through the Saudis, and bin Laden developed himself, and then we got 9/11 and then we got Afghanistan, and then we got ISIS--and here we are. So now, did they really think that one through? I don't know--would I have thought it through? Probably would have been very political, because people do act politically. Lyndon Johnson didn't like being in Vietnam, but he didn't want to cut and run. So 2 million people died, most of them from bombs coming from our factories.

So when you look back at history, there's a lot of mistakes. Do most politicians think there are a lot of mistakes? I don't get that impression. So is that because they don't read history, or they read it with rose-colored glasses on? I don't know. So I try to understand it the way it is. And so I do have a general 01:17:00idea, and planetary realism was just a word that was only mentioned, I think, in one or two articles. I think the San Francisco Examiner has a copy. And it could have been fleshed out, but I did talk to a wide variety of people.

I'm talking to both, and visited General [James N.] Mattis, at the Pentagon, and I've also visited and talked with Daniel Ellsberg, and they have different points of view.

HOLMES: I wanted to ask, throughout our sessions, when talking about campaigns, you have said that the main organizing principles is to combat, challenge your opposition--?

BROWN: No, you just need to get more votes than your opponent. That's the only thing you need to do. Everything else is subsidiary.

HOLMES: In regards to foreign policy, were there aspects of Reagan's dealing with the Russians--and particularly, if we think about nuclear proliferation and the developing arms race--which I know you were against--

BROWN: Yeah, yeah.

HOLMES: Reagan developed what became known as Star Wars [Strategic Defense Initiative]. He pretty much scrapped the SALT [Strategic Arms Limitation Talks] agreements that Nixon--

BROWN: Yes, SALT II. SALT I was Nixon, SALT II was Carter.

HOLMES: Were these aspects that were, at least in your thinking, of what you wanted to address within foreign policy?

BROWN: Yes, and I met with Sidney Drell, who was the number-two man at the Stanford Linear Accelerator [Center], and I think he briefed me, or somehow I spoke with him about SALT II. And some people think the Star Wars helped push 01:19:00the Soviet Union into collapse. Other people would say the logic of Star Wars was what got Reagan not to agree with [Mikhail] Gorbachev that Russia and America should abolish nuclear weapons, and which got the second George Bush to pull out of the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty, which has and is about to ignite an arms race. Because once you say you have a defense, you not only have to build a better defense if you're the other side, but you have to build a better offense so you can overcome the defense. So what was known at the time of Nixon, has now been forgotten or discarded. So yeah, that's a problem. And these issues are very much with us.

From a SALT II discussion, I met Drell--and I think I met Perry then. And when I went down to my wife's reunion four or five years ago, I decided well, since I'm 01:20:00going to this reunion, I think I'll do something interesting. So I called Sidney Drell and arranged a meeting with him and William [J.] Perry, the former secretary of defense. And when I went in to meet Perry, he paused in the meeting and went upstairs and brought down his book, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink. And I read that book, and I reviewed it for the New York Review of Books. So that kind of got me thinking about it again. Well, not that I hadn't been. I wanted to bring that up, because the vilification or the name-calling about Putin--he's a bully, that he's a thug, he's like Hitler. He's the little boy in the class that caused trouble in the back. That is verbally attacking a guy who 01:21:00has control of 7,000 nuclear warheads, that if unleashed would end humanity. Of course, we have the same number. So it was clear to me there has to be an ongoing dialogue that is intense and continuous, that does not exist at anywhere near the depth that it should. And this has gone on under people--both Democrat and Republican. So how did we start on that question? Oh, SALT.

HOLMES: To thinking about Reagan's foreign policy and the Cold War in regards to when you were running for the senate.

BROWN: Well, I should probably give you my speech at the Democratic Convention. It'll outline what I thought, but it's pretty much what I'm saying now. So yeah, I think we've been moving down the wrong lane. We'll pull back? No. So yeah, the 01:22:00détente of Nixon, that was arrived at by Richard Nixon and his wife Pat, staying all night in the Kremlin with Kissinger, and speaking to Brezhnev and their number-two guy. Now, where are we today? I don't have the feeling that Mr. and Mrs. Trump, let alone Mr. and Mrs. Obama are going to go over to the Kremlin and spend a couple of nights staying up late drinking vodka with Putin. That seems far-fetched, and yet it was the fact in 1972. So these are a lot of issues that you don't even read about. Maybe they'll bring them up in Iowa.

SHAFER: When we talked with Tom Quinn, he mentioned that in the '82 campaign, that there was an ad that they had tested about social security, that the focus was social security.

BROWN: Yeah, it worked well. And we ran it.

SHAFER: But that it got pulled because Jacques Barzaghi convinced you to focus 01:23:00on the nuclear issue.

BROWN: I don't know if it was Jacques who did that. I think the end of the world is the big issue, okay? The other stuff is--don't sweat the small stuff. We've got to avoid the big stuff. And so I thought because of the Nuclear Freeze campaign, I thought it was more salient, and we didn't take that many polls, and maybe Tom had an instinct or maybe the survey said--it's--clearly was not the issue. And the context wasn't right, because Wilson was not Goldwater, and the Vietnam War was not raging. So it was another one of these things where it's a different context. I mean the [nuclear] freeze would have been a good idea. Of 01:24:00course people would say that the Reagan buildup brought down the Soviet Union, made America the indispensable power, and therefore the nuclear freeze was bad. But it never happened anyway. I still think the nuclear freeze was good, and it would have been good if we could have gotten that understanding with the Russians, who knows what could have happened.

But yeah, if you're asking me, I had a hard time thinking that social security ad could have carried the day. I don't have enough facts at my command to really make an informed judgment. Maybe but in retrospect, when you can hammer home a point, and if the point's a good one, it just might work. So that might have worked, but I would say my judgment is not as acute as it is today. I've had more time to think about things, and I've been in more campaigns. I've read more 01:25:00survey data, and I've seen more issues and ads and campaigns--and successes and failures. So my eye is more seasoned, and I probably would have come to a different conclusion. Yeah, definitely on that nuclear ad. That was a woman who was probably active in Ploughshares, for all I know. She was an activist in LA, and she'd made this ad and wanted to use it, and I thought it was--I think it's kind of the ultimate issue. So I was influenced--but campaignwise, I wasn't realistic enough.

And that, by the way, is a very interesting thing. How clearly do you see? How 01:26:00good is your eye? I would imagine somebody who buys race horses, when they look at a horse, some have a better eye than others. And they have scouts that go out to the high schools and look for talent, right? And some people have a good eye, and other people don't. Well, that's something to be developed, if you're a politician. To see what the lay of the land--and certainly in campaigning, what works and doesn't work. And so if you look at the last presidential campaign, you'd have to say that the winning side had a clearer eye, at least on enough states that made the difference. So that's a very important ingredient that is not that common. I mean you see it in politicians, but it's not the run-of-the-mill politician that can grasp the true impacts of various images and 01:27:00issues and presentations, because that takes a level of detachment and objectivity and training, that a lot of politicians develop. But that's why they hire these high-paid consultants who sit around and they can tell you--this is the way it'll work. [laughing] And there's definitely a field of knowledge there, it's an art, and it takes time to develop.

By the way, that's another discernment, and when I think about that with Kennedy. Should he have listened? I think Dean Rusk was on the side of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Every single one of the people who know best said bomb. And Kennedy said I know--where did he get that? So that was really unique, for a guy 01:28:00that young. So the knowledge, and being able to see around the corner, as it were, is really, really important. And that ad did not indicate I was seeing around the corner, for sure. Although it might have indicated that I see around the corner meaning what the world is facing.

SHAFER: Around the corner--what?

BROWN: Seeing that the nuclear arms buildup is a serious threat that's worth combating, just not in that particular election.

SHAFER: Yeah, to what extent did you see--I know you were focused on your own campaign at that point, but did you see--you know, Deukmejian versus Bradley as either an ability to cement what you had done versus to undo it?

BROWN: No. I'm not into legacies.

SHAFER: I didn't use the word legacy. [laughing]

BROWN: I know, but that's what it is. To tell you the truth, I had enough problems running for the senate. Raising money, in the debates, the ads, I was 01:29:00noticing Bradley, but just from afar. You've got to focus when you're in these campaigns. And as far as what it was--no, I was more focused on going to the senate than what the next governor was going to do.

SHAFER: I mean you knew Deukmejian, because he was in the legislature and was AG, and you--

BROWN: But I didn't know he was going to abolish the Office of Appropriate Technology. I didn't know that. Did you know that? See, even he didn't know that.

SHAFER: He blue-penciled public radio! I remember that. But did you have a sense of Bradley? He seemed to be the favorite. I mean did you know him at all?

BROWN: I knew him. Yeah, I knew Bradley. He's a good guy. But no, I was up in Sacramento; he's down in LA, dealing with LA--mayor issues are not governor issues. They look at things differently. He was for a nuclear power plant in 01:30:00Wasco, Kern County, which I wrote a letter in the midst of a campaign to stop it, and it helped stop it, I think. It was for LA power.

SHAFER: Did you--so you didn't see Deukmejian as sort of like an anti-Jerry Brown candidate?

BROWN: Oh well, he ran against Rose Bird, Brown's liberal judges. You've always got to run against somebody. Why are all the Democrats talking about Trump? That's what they do. So I was the incumbent.