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"\n\n He&amp;#39;s back! Thirty-five years ago, Jerry Brown surged into the national spotlight as the doe-eyed young governor of California, with a floppy mop of rumpled hair, a quirky passion for outer space, and some of the earliest initiatives of the coming green revolution. In the span of two terms, between 1975 and 1983, he passed the nation&amp;#39;s first efficiency standards for appliances and homes, made California the global leader in alternative energy (with 90% of the world&amp;#39;s wind power), and set countless new benchmarks for clean air and water, even while presiding over a staggering budget surplus of more than $4 billion. . . that is, until California taxpayers made him give it all back.\n\n In an infamous 1978 referendum known as Proposition 13, voters slashed their property tas, obliterating state revenue and emptying Brown&amp;#39;s coffers overnight. By the time he left office in 1983, the $4 billion surplus had slumped into a billion-dollar deficit, and today, many political analysts trace the state&amp;#39;s financial decline to that first blow on Brown&amp;#39;s watch. Yet the man himself has proven remarkably resilient. In the years since he left Sacramento, he has served as Mayor of Oakland, competed with Bill Clinton for the presidency, and in 2007, returned to statewide office as California&amp;#39;s Attorney General \u2014 even while traversing the world in his spare time to seek spiritual enlightenment from figures like Mother Teresa and Japanese monks. At one point, he actually disappeared inside a Zen center for six months to meditate about &amp;quot;the essential emptiness.&amp;quot;\n\n Next month, California voters will choose between Brown and Republican candidate Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay. If Brown wins, the 72-year-old will become, by the end of his term, the oldest governor and the longest serving in state history. He will also become the first governor to win a third term since the state made it illegal to serve more than two. (More on that below.) We sat down with the notoriously feisty lifelong pol for two extended sessions, to probe the man nicknamed Governor Moonbeam about his contentious candidacy, his polarizing past, and his grand plan for the ultimate comeback.\n\n How has this campaign been different than your last run for governor?\n\n It started earlier. Never stops. Endless barrage of commercials. More expensive.\n\n So the bullshit quotient is higher?\n\n Well, the consultants and the manipulation are greater, particularly on the part of the Whitman campaign. She&amp;#39;s a completely invented product, that is financed by the greatest sum of money ever spent in California.\n\n So why put yourself through it?\n\n Because California has got to be fid. Who else is gonna do it?\n\n Nobody else can do it?\n\n Well, who are they?\n\n Don&amp;#39;t you have faith that somebody else could be governor?\n\n Who would it be?\n\n You tell me.\n\n I waited for someone else. They all dropped out.\n\n What about Gavin Newsom? \n\n He didn&amp;#39;t run. Talk to him. He decided to run for lieutenant governor instead.\n\n Only because you pushed him out of the race and locked up the unions.\n\n No. It had nothing to do with that. I didn&amp;#39;t do anything. I declared after he dropped out. I waited.\n\n That&amp;#39;s not what I hear. \n\n Are you suggesting I don&amp;#39;t run?\n\n I&amp;#39;m asking why you want to. \n\n Why I want to?\n\n Yeah, from what you described, it sounds like it sucks.\n\n But this is what I do. I&amp;#39;ve done it before. I understand the process. And I think I can fix it.\n\n When you were running for Attorney General in 2006, you said you wouldn&amp;#39;t run for governor this year.\n\n That&amp;#39;s what I was thinking.\n\n What changed?\n\n The state is in a huge mess, and I don&amp;#39;t see anybody changing it. You wouldn&amp;#39;t say there&amp;#39;s anything wrong with running, would you?\n\n I don&amp;#39;t know. It might be wrong to run for a third term in a state that only allows two terms.\n\n Is that wrong?\n\n Well, the only reason it&amp;#39;s legal is because your last term was before the term-limit law.\n\n Well, that&amp;#39;s not the law. You have the law, or you don&amp;#39;t have the law.\n\nThere&amp;#39;s also the spirit of the law.\n\nWhat does that mean? The law is the law.\n\n Well, the law was written for a reason: to prevent a third term.\n\n That&amp;#39;s not the issue in this campaign.\n\n Maybe not, but it&amp;#39;s the issue I&amp;#39;m asking about.\n\nWhat? Whether the term limit really applies to me, even though it doesn&amp;#39;t say so?\n\nWhether it violates the spirit of the law to run for a third term in a two-term state.\n\n I don&amp;#39;t think there&amp;#39;s a spirit to the law. They passed the law to achieve a certain goal.\n\n What was the goal? That&amp;#39;s what I&amp;#39;m asking.\n\n The goal was kind of\u2014there were a lot of interesting questions. But if you&amp;#39;re asking, &amp;quot;Can other people do this?&amp;quot; No. But I can. And we need some experience in Sacramento. The state has never been as screwed up as it is today, because of the inability to summon the courage to make the tough choices.\n\n What does &amp;quot;the courage to make the tough choices&amp;quot; mean?\n\n To deal with the budget in an honest way, and lay it out to the people.\n\n Do you feel like fixing the state&amp;#39;s finances would remedy your history with Proposition 13?\n\n What&amp;#39;s my history with Prop 13?\n\n The last time you were governor, voters passed 13, which stunted property tas, gutted state revenue, and has been catastrophic for California&amp;#39;s finances.\n\n No, that&amp;#39;s not the case.\n\n You think Prop 13 was good for California&amp;#39;s finances?\n\n In many ways\u2014it&amp;#39;s kept people in their homes.\n\n But what has it done to state revenue?\n\n Real estate revenue is much higher than anyone ever imagined before Prop 13, because of the turnover in property.\n\n But the rates were much higher before Prop 13, and that money funded schools, which are in a state of crisis now.\n\n But the value of property is much higher.\n\n Of course property values have gone up since the 1970s. Expenditures have gone up, too.\n\n My answer is no. I am not advocating the repeal of Prop 13.\n\n Do you think you should have stopped it in 1978?\n\n I should have offered more property-tax relief. But that would have cost the state money. I was too tight-fisted. I&amp;#39;m not a big spender.\n\n You were also the last governor to have a veto overridden by the legislature, weren&amp;#39;t you?\n\n I had a lot of tension with the legislature.\n\n So you&amp;#39;ve had 30 years to look back. Have you used this time to reflect on what you would do differently as governor?\n\n I hope so.\n\n How would you operate differently?\n\n I&amp;#39;ve learned that you&amp;#39;ve got to respect legislators, number one. Because most governors don&amp;#39;t. And that&amp;#39;s very important to move the ball along. Number two, you have to craft a very focused agenda. You really have to build one brick on top of another. The legislature has 4,000 bills. Those bills represent hundreds of lobbyists, hundreds of millions of dollars of investments and concerns and loyalties and desires. Now the governor comes along and says, &amp;quot;Guess what? I&amp;#39;ve got a plan. I want a water plan. I want to change education. I want to do this.&amp;quot; Well, the governor has to connect that to what the legislature wants.\n\n Does Meg Whitman understand that?\n\n No. She&amp;#39;s from a corporate culture.\n\n What&amp;#39;s the difference?\n\n Well, she has more of a CEO mindset. Businesses run on a more autocratic process, where the CEO has much greater control than an elected official does. The civil service, collective bargaining, the free press\u2014all these things are very different than a private office where you can shut the door and say, &amp;quot;We&amp;#39;ve got to slash 10% of the work force,&amp;quot; or, &amp;quot;We&amp;#39;re going into this business and selling that business.&amp;quot; That flexibility is alien to the government process, which is more cumbersome, more conflict-ridden, and requires compromise at every turn. There are all these conflicting vectors of power pushing against government, and the leader has to persuade. A CEO can coerce.\n\n Do you think her self-funding is a problem?\n\n It&amp;#39;s the same problem. When you&amp;#39;re raising money, you&amp;#39;ve got to listen to a lot of people. So you see a diversity that you wouldn&amp;#39;t otherwise see. If you have a billion dollars and just write a check, then all you have to do is make speeches. When you have to raise money, you&amp;#39;re on the telephone, you&amp;#39;ve got to meet people, go to dinners. . .\n\n Is there any way you can compete with her funding?\n\n No. Because there&amp;#39;s no limit to what she can spend. If she fills up television, she can do radio. If she fills up radio, she can do mail. If she fills up mail, she can do newspapers. If she fills up newspapers, she can do skywriting. . .\n\n Let&amp;#39;s talk about illegal immigration, which has the potential to be a flash point in this campaign.\n\n No.\n\n You don&amp;#39;t think so?\n\n No.\n\n Well, let&amp;#39;s talk about it, anyway. What&amp;#39;s your policy on sanctuary cities [those cities that don&amp;#39;t enforce federal immigration laws]?\n\n I don&amp;#39;t support sanctuary cities. What are we talking about, two or three cities?\n\n Two or three huge cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego.\n\n San Francisco has changed. And I&amp;#39;m not familiar with San Diego. The answer is a national reform, which I support. Meg doesn&amp;#39;t. She doesn&amp;#39;t want a path to citizenship and comprehensive reform. I think that&amp;#39;s the only thing to do.\n\n Do you think we have a problem with illegal immigration?\n\n I think it&amp;#39;s a problem. Because you have people who are here against the law. They&amp;#39;re living in a shadow world. It&amp;#39;s not a good thing.\n\n So if you could snap your fingers and have the 11 or 12 million undocumented workers in this country leave, would you do that?\n\n Well, that&amp;#39;s not possible. That&amp;#39;s a counterfactual.\n\n It&amp;#39;s a hypothetical. But all questions in political races are hypothetical, such as: What will you do as governor?\n\n But how would you bring it about?\n\n I don&amp;#39;t know, but the first question is whether you want to: Would you like to see the undocumented workers go home?\n\n We also have to spend more time worrying about Mexico\u2014they need to raise their standard of living, and that will calm the immigration flow.\n\n But I&amp;#39;m asking about the people who are already here. Would you want them to stay or go?\n\n The only way forward is a comprehensive reform bill.\n\n With amnesty?\n\n I would call it, &amp;quot;A path to citizenship.&amp;quot; That&amp;#39;s the only human thing to do.\n\n Do you think this country is hypocritical about illegal labor?\n\n There are a lot of contradictions in our individual lives, and in our collective life. That&amp;#39;s been true since Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, and had slaves. Contradiction is inherent in human nature.\n\n That&amp;#39;s a pretty big answer to a specific question.\n\n All right, well, ask it again.\n\n Do you think it&amp;#39;s hypocritical for us to. . .\n\n I&amp;#39;m not going to say America is hypocritical, if that&amp;#39;s what you want me to say.\n\n I don&amp;#39;t want you to say anything. I just want to know what you think.\n\n I don&amp;#39;t want to say that. I don&amp;#39;t think they&amp;#39;re any more hypocritical than you or I. We don&amp;#39;t always notice all the nuances and contradictions inherent in our lives.\n\n After leaving the governor&amp;#39;s office, you spent a lot of time just talking with people like Noam Chomsky and Mother Teresa about the big questions.\n\n I did. A lot of interesting people.\n\n What did you learn from Mother Teresa?\n\n Well, she was a very powerful woman. To be in her presence was a very special kind of privilege. It&amp;#39;s totally different than politics. It&amp;#39;s a different aspect of life. And during my life, I&amp;#39;ve always pursued that path, that you might call religion and spirituality. That&amp;#39;s why I studied to be a priest, why I went to Japan.\n\n Talk to me about your time in Japan.\n\n Well, I went to the Jesuit university and I met with Father Lassalle, who was an older Jesuit priest, who I learned later was in Hiroshima when the bomb actually dropped. He was a missionary there. And I asked him about Zen practice and we talked, and I decided to come back and practice Zen meditation. I spent six months with him. It was a time for reflection, for lessening the attachment to ways of thinking, habituated perceptions. You&amp;#39;re able to just sit. I would read and write during the day, and then meditate for two hours at night, and then, once a month, there would be a two-day intensive, and then four times I spent six days at a retreat doing meditation.\n\n Does that make you better as a political leader?\n\n I think you can see the arbitrary and subjective quality of one&amp;#39;s own views, one&amp;#39;s own thinking, one&amp;#39;s own desires, as well as everyone else&amp;#39;s. And so I think that fosters a certain amount of compassion. A certain amount of empathy.\n\n That brings up Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in 2008.\n\n What about it?\n\n It seems like you had a hard time finding your political footing on that.\n\n I don&amp;#39;t think so.\n\n You don&amp;#39;t think you changed your position on Prop 8?\n\n I defended the law as Attorney General.\n\n You defended it until you challenged it.\n\n No, I defended the law. And the Supreme Court did not take our position, they struck down the existing statute.\n\n I&amp;#39;m not asking about the previous statute, I&amp;#39;m asking about Proposition 8. When it passed, you said it was okay.\n\n No, I didn&amp;#39;t say that.\n\n You didn&amp;#39;t say that?\n\n What I said was that the existing law was valid.\n\n Not the existing law, Proposition 8.\n\n Which Proposition 8?\n\n The Proposition 8 that banned gay marriage.\n\n Oh, okay. Well, we&amp;#39;ve got three things here. We have the existing law. We have the Supreme Court opinion striking down that law. Then we have Proposition 8. Then we have the Supreme Court upholding Proposition 8. And then we have the federal case challenging it. Those are five distinct topics.\n\n Right. And I&amp;#39;m talking about Proposition 8. When it passed, you said you would defend it because it represented &amp;quot;the will of the people.&amp;quot;\n\nNo, I didn&amp;#39;t say that.\n\n You did say that.\n\nNo. No, I didn&amp;#39;t. I didn&amp;#39;t say that.\n\n All right.\n\n Show it to me.\n\n I will.\n\n I said that I supported Proposition 8?\n\n You said that you would defend Prop 8 as Attorney General.\n\n No, what I said was \u2014 I did say something right after it passed. I said that I didn&amp;#39;t think it was a Constitutional revision.\n\n And then later, you said it was.\n\n No I didn&amp;#39;t.\n\n You did. You challenged it in court on Constitutional grounds.\n\n No I didn&amp;#39;t.\n\n You didn&amp;#39;t?\n\n No.\n\n In December?\n\n I don&amp;#39;t think you&amp;#39;re listening.\n\n Sure I&amp;#39;m listening.\n\n I don&amp;#39;t think so. You don&amp;#39;t act like it.\n\n Just because I&amp;#39;m asking questions doesn&amp;#39;t mean I don&amp;#39;t hear your answers.\n\n Well, what did I say?\n\n You said, &amp;quot;No, I didn&amp;#39;t.&amp;quot; That was the last thing you said \u2014 that you didn&amp;#39;t challenge Proposition 8 on Constitutional grounds. But you did.\n\n This is. . . relatively. . . I don&amp;#39;t think so. What I said was this. I&amp;#39;m going to say it, and you can disagree if you want. I said I didn&amp;#39;t believe it violated the, uh \u2014 I didn&amp;#39;t believe that it was a revision. Then, as our office did more and more research, some of the lawyers said it violates a fundamental right created by the Supreme Court. Based on that, we articulated a pretty novel theory that a fundamental right cannot be swept aside by a mere majority. I hadn&amp;#39;t thought of that when I said it didn&amp;#39;t constitute a revision.\n\n And that&amp;#39;s what I&amp;#39;m asking about.\n\n The development of an idea by our lawyers.\n\n Right, which was very different from what you said originally.\n\n It was totally different. Totally different. I hadn&amp;#39;t thought of it before.\n\n What about &amp;quot;determinate sentencing,&amp;quot; which the rest of us call &amp;quot;mandatory minimums&amp;quot;? As governor, you pushed for the law, but as mayor of Oakland, you tried to repeal it. Why?\n\n Originally, the hope was that it would minimize the arbitrariness of treating some prisoners differently than others. But the way it turns out, when people know exactly when they&amp;#39;re going to leave prison, the motivation to get into education or therapy is reduced. We also didn&amp;#39;t envision that every year the legislature would say, &amp;quot;We&amp;#39;ve got to make the sentence higher!&amp;quot; Every year, they keep escalating the determinate sentence, and they have created a much harsher regime than we ever had.\n\n It seems like your thinking on nuclear power has also evolved over the years. Do you consider yourself open to it now?\n\n Yeah, I&amp;#39;m open to that. Because of climate change.\n\n So would you be open to a new nuclear plant in California?\n\n I would like to see a national policy getting serious about climate change, so that&amp;#39;s one of the alternatives. My advisor on this issue is John Holdren, who is the science advisor to the president, and another fellow named James Lovelock, who says the world needs a thousand nuclear power plants almost immediately to prevent catastrophe. Now, that&amp;#39;s an extreme view, but it&amp;#39;s something that people have to think about. The alternatives to burning carbon have to be taken very, very seriously.\n\n But I&amp;#39;m asking specifically what you would support as governor?\n\n Whatever I can.\n\n Including a new nuclear plant?\n\n Including anything that&amp;#39;s honest and reasonably effective and doesn&amp;#39;t cause undue damage.\n\n Do you consider it honest and reasonably effective to build a new nuclear plant in California?\n\n I would not rule out any reasonable scientific steps to block the impending catastrophe of climate change.\n\n But you won&amp;#39;t say whether you&amp;#39;re in favor of a new nuclear plant?\n\n No, I won&amp;#39;t. Because I think I&amp;#39;ve said it very clearly. Very clearly.\n\n You&amp;#39;ve said that you&amp;#39;re open to anything reasonable, but you haven&amp;#39;t said whether or not a new nuclear plant is reasonable.\n\n Yeah, that&amp;#39;s right. I&amp;#39;m not a nuclear scientist.\n\n But you want to be governor - you&amp;#39;ll have to make these decisions.\n\n I&amp;#39;ll have plenty of time to think about it.\n\n Will you discuss your position on offshore drilling?\n\n Yes, because I have a long record on that.\n\n But you have a record on nuclear power, too. In 1975 you stopped a nuclear plant in San Diego, much to the chagrin of the mayor, Pete Wilson.\n\n I did, and it saved San Diego because they couldn&amp;#39;t afford it.\n\n So what&amp;#39;s your position on a new plant now?\n\n I will weigh all the options and look at it. Being deliberative is not bad.\n\n Being willing to state your position is not bad either.\n\n Mindful of slogans is not helpful for governance, and my mind is not such.\n\n I&amp;#39;m not critiquing your mind, but let&amp;#39;s talk about something else: Proposition 19.\n\n What is Proposition 19?\n\n It&amp;#39;s on the ballot this fall to legalize marijuana.\n\n Oh yeah.\n\n You&amp;#39;ve said that you oppose legalization.\n\n Those are your words.\n\n No, you said that.\n\n Well, I don&amp;#39;t support the legalization of drugs.\n\n That&amp;#39;s what I just said.\n\n Right, okay. I&amp;#39;m just being careful.\n\n Legalizing pot is a serious issue in California these days. In 2008, the state arrested 60,000 people for possession.\n\n You know, the number one drug on the street is marijuana. The cartels are increasingly taking over. This is a serious problem.\n\n Do you think legalization would make that better or worse?\n\n I&amp;#39;ve given you my position.\n\nYes, you have. I&amp;#39;m asking you why it&amp;#39;s your position.\n\nI think it&amp;#39;s more prudent for California not to embrace a legalization strategy.\n\n Why?\n\n I don&amp;#39;t think fostering chemicals is a smart move.\n\n Should we illegalize alcohol?\n\n I think the advertising and the excess of alcohol is a serious problem, and even legal drugs in the form of prescriptions is a serious problem.\n\n I&amp;#39;ve never heard of a cartel killing somebody over ambien.\n\n I understand you like pot. I don&amp;#39;t.\n\n I&amp;#39;m not saying I like pot. I&amp;#39;m saying nobody wants to illegalize alcohol, and I&amp;#39;m asking why pot is different.\n\n What do we call that? A noble experiment.\n\n If Prop 19 passes, will you challenge it?\n\n Generally speaking when a law is passed, the Attorney General defends it.\n\n But you managed to find a &amp;quot;novel theory&amp;quot; to challenge Proposition 8.\n\n I did, but that&amp;#39;s unusual.\n\n So, would you find a novel theory to challenge Proposition 19?\n\n You know, I&amp;#39;d want to look at that.\n\n Let me ask you another question about Prop 8, since we just stumbled back onto it. In 1977, you signed a law that illegalized gay marriage.\n\n No, I didn&amp;#39;t.\n\n You changed the law from allowing &amp;quot;two persons&amp;quot; to get married, to saying &amp;quot;a man and a woman.&amp;quot; Does it bug you that you signed that?\n\n No.\n\n Come on.\n\n Don&amp;#39;t impute your subjectivity to mine.\n\n I&amp;#39;m trying to understand yours.\n\n Well, I&amp;#39;ll tell you. Before I was governor, the law was de-gendered. So where we had &amp;quot;workman&amp;#39;s comp,&amp;quot; it became &amp;quot;worker&amp;#39;s comp.&amp;quot; Where it was &amp;quot;firemen,&amp;quot; it became &amp;quot;firefighters.&amp;quot; And when it came to marriage, it was between &amp;quot;a man and a woman,&amp;quot; and it became &amp;quot;two persons.&amp;quot; But when the legislature did that, they did not intend to legalize same-sex marriage. That was not the intention of the governor, nor was it the intent of the legislature. So I felt that I was upholding the law, and effectuating what the legislature intended.\n\n But that language has become very important again. Do you think the language should say &amp;quot;two persons&amp;quot; now?\n\n I think the debate has evolved, and marriage is of far more significance in the gay community than it was 30 years ago, 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. So it definitely is embedded in the sense of a fundamental right.\n\n What will you do as governor to help gay couples marry?\n\n We&amp;#39;ll see what happens. Maybe an initiative comes up, and I would certainly support some measure to change the law.\n\n Are you willing to fight for gay marriage?\n\n Certainly if the initiative comes up, I would be counted as a supporter.\n\n Will you propose an initiative?\n\n I don&amp;#39;t know. My first goal is the budget. Budget and jobs are my first objectives. But we&amp;#39;re out of time.\n\n You know you want to spend another hour with me.\n\n No, I don&amp;#39;t.\n\n Admit it.\n\n Nope.\n\n You love this.\n\n I want to go somewhere. Get out of town. I work too much."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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