That’s Latin for, “I shall either find a way or make one,” and the attribution is courtesy of Carla Marinucci of Politico. Jerry Brown, an extraordinary guy with a remarkable record of public service, is exiting politics. I’ll miss him.
George Skelton, of the L.A. Times, interviews the Governor as he leaves office (for the second time) and political life. Brown is 80.
Here’s a revealing exchange in Skelton’s column:
I asked him ... whether he accomplished what he’d set out to do when he ran for governor.
“What I wanted to get done,” he answered, “was I wanted to get elected governor. That’s usually the objective of people running for election.” That was fairly candid.
He thought for a moment and added: “I wanted to bring a whole new spirit to Sacramento, which I did. I was a little different than those who went before and those who came after.”
What kind of spirit? “A spirit of inquiry and openness to ideas and constituencies that didn’t have much influence or power.”
Jerry Brown was elected governor the first time in 1974 (a couple of years after I’d moved to California). During his tenure in the 70s, I didn’t always agree with him (though I invariably voted for him). I rode a bus to Santa Cruz with other labor protestors to a University of California Regents meeting, because we were unhappy with his budget. Much more recently, during his second tenure as governor (he was elected again in 2010), having watched his proposed bullet train zig and zag and zig again in a route that no bullet could possibly track, I’m ready to pull the plug on his dream of connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco with high speed rail.
But here’s why I’ll miss him: He was smart, well-grounded (in spite of Garry Trudeau’s ‘Governor Moonbeam’ gibe), intellectually curious, and determined to push things in the right direction. He was a public servant in the best sense. In every office he held — Governor, Secretary of State, Mayor of Oakland, Attorney General — his head and heart were in the right place and, in considerable measure, he was successful at every gig. Finally, throughout a career spanning a half century, there was never a whiff of scandal about him. He was working for us. There was never any doubt.
Fifty years! Here’s to the Governor’s happy retirement in the foothills of western Colusa County.