Lowered Expectations in the Pastures of Plenty

I met a Californian who would Talk California-a state so blessed. He said, in climate, none had ever died there A natural death. Robert Frost

A GOOD REMINDER FOR the 38-year old Perfect Master of California, Edmund G. Brown Jr., that in his state, hardly anyone ever dies a natural political death. The state "so blessed in climate" makes candidates flourish with the crazy progress of hothouse roses, then collapse and disintegrate with the frightening speed of a time-lapse photographic sequence.

California casualties swoop down dead with more speed and color and frequency than any other state's: Upton Sinclair, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Goodwin Knight, William Knowland, Pierre Salinger, and of course, Richard Nixon in 1962. It was Jerry Brown's father, cheerful stumbly Pat Brown who beat Nixon for the governorship that year, only to lose to Ronald Reagan the next time around. There is no security in California politics-Pat Brown says that he "rubbed his hands in glee" at the thought of running against the "fading, aging actor." Perhaps that is why the young Brown, with an 86 per cent approval rating in California wants to cash in some of his chips and get to Washington before the inevitable slip into the San Andreas Fault.

"I am very serious about it," Brown said of his candidacy for president, soon after he announced. "And while it may strike some as a bit unorthodox that a person in my position and age should be running, I think it is the virtue of my candidacy."

Apparently, Brown's candidacy did not strike that many people as unpleasantly unorthodox-without campaigning, he finished higher in the Gallup Poll than either Henry Jackson or Morris Udall.

"Doesn't it strike you as strange," says Robert Scheer, the former Ramparts editor who spent three months watching Brown for Playboy magazine, "that here's an S.O.B. who pretends not to be interested in traditional politics, and after a little more than a year of being in office, he's running for president?"

Scheer, his voice made hollow by several thousand miles of telephone wire from San Francisco warns, "He's a sharp, cunning, ruthless politician. And if you buy that mystic stuff, you're crazy."

Lots of Californians have bought the mystic stuff by now, bought the wide-eyed gazes at the political system and the self-righteousness that went with it. He has propped himself up as the apostle of "lower expectations" in America finding for himself a following cutting across all social and class barriers.

"I heard a chilling story a little while ago," says an old California politician. "You know how the California primary's gonna go? Here's what I hear: Frank Church and Brown split the liberal vote; Scoop Jackson and Brown split the moderate vote; Jimmy Carter and Brown split the moderate vote; George Wallace and Brown split the redneck vote. That's 50 per cent for Brown and 12 per cent for everyone else and that's the future right there on the table."

Brown's constitutency was not always so diffuse. When he needed the Democratic nomination for Governor, he was a liberal. He promised smaller classes in schools, bilingual education, more money for teachers and massive school improvement programs. Somewhere along the road he discovered the true nature of his state's temperment: on election night he would tell his father, "I almost lost because of you. People remembered you as such a big spender."

Several months into his term of office, Brown was asking questions, as he had throughout the campaign. Only now the questions had a different tenor. "Hot lunches for school children?" he asked. "No one ever gave me a hot lunch." And: "Why is it better to have a smaller number of students in each class?"

A mystique built up around the new Governor, legends sprouted. He lived a spartan existence and slept on a bare mattress. He drove to work in an old Plymouth. He hated politicians, he never slept. He meditated. He read Hermann Hesse, Doris Lessing, Yeats, Kafka, Henry Miller.

"Crap!" cries Scheer. "That guy never reads a book. He's a politician. He's...he's..." Silence on the other end of the phone for a moment. "He's Sam Huntington! He's Pat Moynihan!" Now Scheer, who as an Institute of Politics guest at Harvard led the famous demonstration which kept Robert MacNamara captive for hours, is livid. The phone falls. "You don't believe me? Read the interview again. He's a return to the politics of the fifties, the paranoia of the Cold War, enemies everywhere, too much dissent. I know he believes that there's too much dissent. Read it."

Scheer's Playboy interview happens to be the most specific outline of Brown's beliefs to be found east of Encino. It is a surprising collection of views from a man once viewed as a great liberal hope. For instance, on military budget cuts, Brown says:

I'd be surprised if there are dramatic savings to be made.

On foreign policy:

We ought to realize that without substantial military strength, we're obviously jeopardizing our security...I get the impression that we're being pushed around a lot and that America has become a big sap for the rest of the countries. And I don't like it. We should have a lot of strength, so I don't see why we should have guilt feelings and act like we're always the fall guy.

On press disclosures:

I have very mixed feelings. There've been abuses; these agencies have gotten out of control...But in the process we may end up throwing out the baby with the bath water...the constant harping on things that have gone on in this government-I really wonder if they're that different from what'd gone on in other governments...

On gun control:

I wonder if the cure would be better than the disease. We kill over 50,000 people a year in cars, yet I don't hear anybody talking about confiscating them.

Still the Governor retains his liberal image, and there's no sign the jig is up. Those years in the seminary may have provided extra protection for him-Scheer says that the guys up the street at his liquor store think the Playboy interview was highly beneficial to Brown.

"He's just got a great ear," says Scheer. "I don't believe he believed all that stuff he said in the interview about foreign policy. But he liked the ring of it. And after he repeated it a couple of times, it was part of him. He gets people sold on him that way. Passing off conservative politics and with that quiet voice and the mystic stuff. You know what it is?" He waits for an answer. "It's the ultimate betrayal of the Zen Revolution, the God that failed. He's exploiting his spiritual training.

"Like with Jimmy Carter, he says Jesus gives him new spirit. In California, all the most hustling businessmen do 15 minutes a day. Why? Because it makes them more efficient. It's the same with Jerry. His Zen makes him more efficient, only in a different way."

But not efficient enough to feel effective. The most popular governor in the history of California takes the fatalistic line. "This is where we are in 1976. The press is playing its role, the politicians are playing their role and the Greek chorus is out there watching it all. That's just the way it is. I don't think I can do anything about it, but it doesn't stop me from wishing it were better." It's news to nobody that California is the place for lowered expectations-the end of the continent. Even Zen Jesuits can't walk out onto the Pacific.