And then, the fall from power. Brown went from being the standard bearer of new liberalism and a serious presidential contender to being tagged “Governor Moonbeam.” After losing a race for the U.S. Senate in 1982, he went into exile, making extended spiritual journeys to Japan and India. He returned to serve as chair of the California Democratic Party in 1989, later running a quixotic campaign for President in 1992.

As the mainstream moved closer to his 1970s thinking, Brown glided
further away. Today he lives in a large, refurbished warehouse in Oakland, California with a small group of fellow travelers, trying to fan the populist flames with his
“We The People” political organization and hosting a daily radio
show. His thinking is as unconventional as it ever was.

As Jerry Brown’s director of research in Sacramento between 1978 and 1982, I
found the major perk of my job was spending time with the governor. As an administrator he could be infuriating, but he was always fascinating to talk with, sometimes dropping by my apartment after midnight (he recognized me as a fellow insomniac) to expound energetically on the driving issues of the day.

Since then, I’ve mainly followed him from afar, getting decidedly mixed views of my former boss. Folks who accompanied him on his visits to Japan and India, where he worked with Mother Teresa’s charity, told me they were impressed with Brown’s commitment to his
spiritual work. But like many others, I was turned off by
the anger he projected during his 1992 presidential race — his unrelievedly grim rants struck me as
neither spiritually evolved nor politically effective. I had the general
impression that he had gone off the deep end.

Meeting him again recently was thus a pleasant surprise. Love or hate him,
Jerry Brown has pulled off one of life’s more difficult feats: becoming a
genuinely interesting person. He attacks his day with the same relentless energy, rising at 5:30 every morning to power-walk around Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland and then, after a communal breakfast at his warehouse home/headquarters, throwing himself into his various projects.

I am still repelled by all the anger — it seems to me that this is a time to unite, not divide society. But a nagging doubt remains: what if Brown is proven right again? If the global catastrophe he predicts does occur after all, then it will be true that neither he, nor we, were angry enough.

What are you up to these days?

I’m working in Oakland, with an organization called “We The People” that
sponsors a number of projects, one of which is a radio show that goes out to
major cities in the country, every day for an hour. I conduct discussions
with people ranging from Ivan Illich to Allen Ginsberg to Barbara Ehrenreich.
We also run a school that teaches more sustainable ways
of living and working together. We have a rooftop garden, and we’re getting
good at bio-intensive food production.

There is also a study group which has been focusing on the philosophy of
Martin Buber. About 20 of us have been reading “I-Thou” together each
Thursday evening. Martin Buber’s “Paths and Utopia” describes the central
question of our time: Will the state be called upon for more and more control
of an anomic, disconnected group of people? Or will people form relationships
in cellular-like communities, that will eventually form a community of
communities, as the basis for organizing the world?

Other people articulate these ideas, but what makes this so
intriguing is that you were once governor of California, one of the most
powerful positions in American politics. Most people go from being radical
while young to more conservative as they age, but you’ve reversed the
process. How do you explain this?

I certainly was very much attracted to being governor. But I know more
now. I learn, I study, I listen, I observe. I’ve traveled, I’ve talked to
people. I’ve had the privilege of listening to Gregory Bateson, Mother
Teresa, Ivan Illich, Gary Snyder and, more recently, Noam Chomsky. These
people are not looking at society in the conventional way, but in a deeper
and more honest way. And the insights from these very different people lead
me to a critical position. We’re living in an unsustainable situation that is
taking us in the direction of catastrophe — social, moral and ecological. And
it is my interest, perhaps my vocation, to resist that, and to work with
others to provide positive alternatives.

How do you feel about the choice the
American public is facing between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole?

Essentially, what we’re faced with is the evil of two
lessers. Both Dole and Clinton are moving the country in the
wrong direction, but they are doing so at a
different pace.

But wouldn’t you argue as a Democrat that Clinton is
preferable to Dole, that otherwise the Republicans will take
over the House, Senate and White House?

That’s an argument that has weight. Dole, with his
crime bill and his call for attacking Cuba and more B2
bombers, seems to be going off the deep end. Or he’s playing
conventional politics and going to the right. So he can adopt a
more moderate view in the fall, which would then be just
another case of corrupt politics.

On the other hand, Clinton has reneged on his commitment
to revitalize American cities, he has a slavish adherence to
global business, and he’s failed to deal with raising the family
income — and all this has been wrapped in such schmooze that a number of
groups that should be more active are lulled to sleep. So
all I can say at this point is it’s a real mixed bag, and
not one that calls for any great response.

Clinton is doing very well in the polls right now. If you were in a room with him and (White House image manager) Dick Morris, how would you argue with that success?

I wouldn’t argue with those guys. They have a formula.
And the formula is to run as a simulated version of George
Bush, with a beefy smiling cover. But success? That’s what the man said when he jumped off the Empire
State Building and passed the 60th floor. Someone leaned out
the window and asked, “How’s it going?” The guy said, “So far,
so good.” I am more concerned with the well-being of the country
than of the Clinton family.

Do you ever miss that kind of power you had as governor of the nation’s biggest state?

As governor, I believed I could do certain things, as a person who sees
more reality in ideas than some people do. It’s a personality type. And so I
was working at that level. One of the first things I did was create the
California Conservation Corps, which was an embodiment of the Jesuit
seminary, the kibbutz, the Marine Corps, and the utopian community, all in
support of ecological values.

There were certain recurring themes (in my administration): “protect the earth”, “explore the
universe,” “serve the people,” “Spaceship Earth.” This was the mid-1970s. It
was the time of the Whole Earth Catalogue. I was dealing with people like
Stewart Brand, Wendell Berry, Amory Lovins, Herman Kahn and Dick Baker from the Zen Center. I mean, it was a hotbed of
ideas. And there was a sense that we were on the threshhold of a new
politics. We were
building something new. It was very exciting.

You spent time in Japan and India between 1982, when you left the
governship, and 1989, when you returned to Democratic party politics. Did
these experiences influence your views of politics?

The training of zazen aims at emptiness, emptiness being a space without
illusion. Since politics is based on illusions, zazen definitely provides new
insights for a politician. I then come back into the world of California and
politics, with critical distance from some of my more comfortable
assumptions.

The work with Mother Teresa is a world of generosity, of seeing the person
in front of you — the poor of Calcutta that show up at your doorstep — as the
embodiment of Jesus, of God. There’s nothing more important. Politics is a
power struggle to get to the top of the heap. Calcutta and Mother Teresa are
about working with those who are at the bottom of the heap. And to see them
as no different than yourself, and their needs as important as your needs.
And you’re there to serve them, and doing that you are attaining as great a
state of being as you can.

People tend to associate spirituality with love. But many people were
shocked at the contrast between your relatively good-humored demeanor as
governor and how you reemerged in 1992 with so much anger, as sort of a grim
reaper or prince of darkness. What was that about?

Well, when you try to change the rules, when you are assaulting the
citadel, it’s not anxiety-free. You become the skunk at the garden party.
When they all want to talk about their little issues, which you know are just
soundbites and diversionary distractions, and you say, “Wait a minute, guys,
we’ve got to talk about the money. We ought to talk about how this
process works. And what’s really behind it.”

You know, Senator Tom Harkin (Brown’s 1992 Democratic presidential primary opponent) was playing the labor man, while his wife was making a
couple hundred grand at a major lobbying firm in Washington representing
the Seabrook nuclear power plant. And we’re all campaigning up in New Hampshire (site of the Seabrook plant). I mean,
what’s real here? And Bill Clinton is with the Democratic Leadership Council,
which has among its membership tobacco lobbyists, who are in the business of
killing people. Yeah, humor would be great, irony would be great. But how to
wake people up in a relatively complacent age?

Do you feel as angry now in 1996 as you did then?

I don’t know that I was angry enough. I think if we’re talking about
indignation at injustice and deception, I would say that I really haven’t
attained the level of anger appropriate to the evil that is engulfing the
country and the world.

The politics of America today is about supporting the continuation of
nuclear weaponry and testing, and genetic manipulation, the consequences of
which we do not understand, and the continuing isolation of living, feeling
human beings in inhuman structures, whether they be jobs or urban clusters.
This is going to create an explosion.

And it is all masked by this deceptive, allegorical, political play called
“minimum wage vs. gas tax reduction vs. Whitewater vs. balancing the budget” —
which is all so much sound and fury signifying nothing.

All the while, this great drift, the juggernaut, is moving us toward the
abyss.

On the one hand, you say the environmental threats are
accelerating. And on the other, you say our political system is so corrupt…

So sterile and so frozen, so static …

So where do you find the sense of hope to keep slogging on?

I can’t specify a rational basis for it, but I feel very hopeful. I can’t explain
why. I feel healthy. It’s a beautiful day today. And I walked around Lake
Merritt with some very nice people, so that disposes me to a more optimistic
interpretation of reality. Maybe it’s just hormonal balance. A religious
person would call it “stirrings of the Holy Spirit”. A materialist would call
it “animal spirits.”

So hope springs eternal in the human breast despite all reason?

I guess that’s what it is. Poetry. You need to be a poet.

I’m doing what I know how to do, and what I have the opportunity to do. It’s
part politician, part student, part activist, part seeker. I try to put all
these parts together.

Branfman is currently directing For Generations to Come, a San Francisco-based project that supports people grappling with the meaning of life in the face of their own death.

how is it that most of our politicians, left or right,
start out well-motivated — a teenaged Bill Clinton earnestly
pumping John F. Kennedy’s hand, an idealistic Newt Gingrich
visiting European battlefields and vowing to end war — and
turn years later into the paunchy, cynical and compromised pols that we have come to so distrust?

We tend to blame the politicians themselves, focusing on Clinton’s indecisiveness or Gingrich’s
pettiness. But in fact, our present system would
corrupt even Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama, were either to run for office in America.

To a young person asking me for advice about getting into politics today, I’d say you must be prepared to confront the Four Iron Laws of political
life:

Law #1:
Money talks, bullshit walks.

Congressman Ozzie Meyers of Abscam fame was right.
Your main activity in politics, for the rest of your
life, will be raising money. And raising it from total
strangers, many of whom you will neither like nor respect,
and who are mainly interested in having their egos stroked
and/or getting something out of you.

The chief personal trait you will need to succeed is
insincerity. We’re talking a dozen or more phone calls a
day, as you exude warmth to disembodied voices, no matter
how tired, distracted or miserable you actually are.

We’re talking an endless round of cocktail parties,
breakfasts, lunches and dinners, making small talk with
strangers, laughing at their jokes, learning to tell little
stories with a wink of the eye and pat on the shoulder,
communicating how much you really like and value people for
whom you feel nothing.

Why bad things happen
to good people in politics, page 2

i remember sitting in on a little
tete-a-tete&nbspbetween Gary Hart, who just hated this kind of
thing, and two major donors. It was excruciating to watch
Hart, who is basically uncomfortable around other human
beings, do his best to perform: taking two extra drinks in
an attempt to become more sociable, his face reddening,
searching desperately for some anecdote to lighten things
up, trying to fill the increasingly long silences.

In real life, a Hillary Clinton wouldn’t spend five
minutes with people like the MacDougals. In political
life, they become part of her extended family.

I remember once talking to a millionaire who doled out
$1,000 checks to various politicians. He smiled happily as
he listed, one by one, the various politicians who had
trooped to his home for personal visits — Congressional,
mayoral, gubernatorial candidates. “They come to me, someone who has barely a high school
education!” he said. “I don’t understand how they have all
this time to visit a crummy $1,000 contributor. Don’t they
work for a living?” What did he get out of it? I asked, since I knew he had no interest whatsoever in issues or legislation . “Ego,” he laughed, “what else? I
mean they’re coming to my house, I’m not going
to theirs.”

Once in a while the politician gets tired of playing the game. Long
negotiations once ensued, for example, between the Jerry
Brown campaign and a major contributor, who had just one
little demand: that Jerry attend his daughter’s wedding.
Governor Brown finally agreed to put in a phone call that
would be broadcast to the 1,000 assembled wedding guests. The moment
came. The crowd hushed. The host stood before his guests
speaking into a telephone. “Hello, Jerry!” he boomed. Oops, no Jerry. The governor, who was staying at Linda Ronstadt’s house
at the time, simply did not come to the phone.

But that was the exception. Michael Berman, who
managed California Congressman Mel Levine’s primary race for the
1992 Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, finally reached the logical
conclusion. Since only money for TV commercials mattered in
a statewide race, his candidate would not waste time on
irrelevant matters like making campaign appearances or
meeting with the press. The congressman would spend the election season in a room, dialing for dollars. He would only be
allowed out for the unavoidable: casting a vote, visiting a
particularly wealthy contributor personally or going
home to sleep. Levine agreed and succeeded in raising a record
amount of money for the Senate primary.

It turned out, however, that Berman had made a major
miscalculation. The public and media are unwilling to admit
this dirty little secret of American politics. Decorum must
be maintained. The candidate’s refusal to appear in public became
the issue in the primary — he was tagged the “Stealth Candidate” by the press — and he was defeated by Barbara
Boxer, who went on to win the Senate seat.

Berman was just being honest. Politics is primarily about raising money for TV
commercials. Campaign appearances and media interviews are
mere window-dressing. If you enter politics, raising money
will consume the single largest portion of your time — far
more than the combined time you will spend learning about the issues, formulating policy, enjoying your family and simply thinking.

Law #2:
The media rules.

The second iron law of politics is that you will
inevitably become obsessed with seeing your name in print or
appearing on radio or TV. You will much rather be mentioned
in a story that opposes your beliefs than ignored in a story
favorable to them. Other than raising money, nothing will
matter more to your political future than this “free media” exposure.

The moments before the Normandy Invasion were pleasant
compared to the nerve-twisting mornings when then-Congresswoman
Bella Abzug’s staff arrived at the office to find the
morning papers waiting. Trembling, they opened the pages to
stories on the Vietnam war, abortion or other issues that Abzug
was identified with. If she was not mentioned, a gloom
settled over the office so thick that one would have thought
a close relative had died.

Sure enough, the congresswoman would enter her office
and, a few moments later, a bellow would issue forth from
the inner sanctum: “Smith (or whatever the names of the unlucky
aides of the moment were), get the fuck in here!” The next 15 minutes would feature some of the most
creative use of profanity this side of Texas. The storm
over, the red-faced aides slunk back to their desks,
trying to regain some composure and remember what it once
felt like to be a human being.

Bella, another good person to whom bad things happened
by being in politics and who mellowed considerably
afterwards, was only a slightly extreme example of what
dependence on media does to politicians.

The media is never good for a politician’s character development. The press will
only consistently cover you if you are shrilly negative, constantly carping about your opponents’ failings.
And it will never give you the benefit of the doubt. The
assumption whenever a politician goes into a press conference or other media
event is that he or she is a self-aggrandizing, ambitious,
hypocritical human being who is motivated only by the desire
for power.

Your success in this profession, in short, will
largely lie in conforming to the values of journalists who
lack the slightest respect for yours. Your ability to think,
reason or reach wise decisions will become much less
important than your ability to create soundbites and spoon-feed reporters. But no matter how hard you try to ingratiate yourself with the media, they are always poised to lunge for your neck. The press pack is never happier than when blood is in the air. And don’t ever forget — you are the prey.

Which brings up the next law.

Law #3:
There really is someone out to get you.

That’s right — you’re not paranoid. And not just someone. Lots of people are out to get you. Every candidate
you will ever run against, backed by an army of
researchers, media specialists, even private detectives. And
if they don’t get you, you know the media will.

Know now that every action you take for the next 50
years, in public or in private, at three in the afternoon or three
in the morning, may someday be publicized to everyone you care about, and twisted
luridly out of shape to boot.
As a politician
you have no right to privacy, no right to fairness, no right
even to the safeguards we grant a criminal.

I remember, for example, a terribly nice
Republican mayor who made the
mistake of challenging California Democratic Assemblyman
Richard Robinson. Robinson sent his research “hit
man” to the mayor’s city to gather dirt. It turned out
that the mayor, a conservative family man, had attended a
national mayor’s meeting in Denver, where his host had
invited his fellow mayors to a harmless luncheon
at the local Playboy club. Without thinking, Robinson’s future opponent filed a receipt from the luncheon with his
trip expenses. Wrong move.

During the election every household in his district
received a mailing in big, bold letters, entitled “YOUR
PLAYBOY MAYOR!,” implying that the mayor was a sexual
libertine who was unfaithful to his wife and worse. He lost
the election. Years later, he still got tears in his eyes
describing the pain his daughter had suffered from the
taunts of her classmates as well as the shame and embarrassment it had
caused his wife.

What will it do to your own capacity to grow, to
lead an authentic life, if you must live in fear that any
risks taken, harmless or not, will one day be used against
you? And what will it do for your soul to authorize,
election after election, the same kinds of petty, vicious
attacks on your opponents that they are unleashing on you?

Law #4:
Your brain will drain.

Perhaps the most important impact on you personally
will be the loss of your ability to focus or concentrate.
Kept running from event to event like a rat in a cage, your
mind will fragment, to the point where you’ll find it difficult
to read a book, reflect or just sit quietly. Your most
important survival trait will be mastering the art of
simultaneously thinking four or five things, while giving
others the impression that you are following what they say.

If you are a member of Congress, for example, you will
run from committee hearing to press interview to fundraising
lunch to floor vote. Wherever you are, you will
often need to be somewhere else.

Thoughts will flit continuously through your mind at
any given moment: what position you should take on an issue,
how to find time to call an important contributor or
journalist, how to deal with your family’s demands for more
time.

The most dramatic examples of this phenomenon are President Clinton and his predecessor George Bush. Bush was literally unable to sit still.
“Gotta move, gotta move” was one of his well-known expressions,
uttered on vacation, as he careened from speedboat to
jogging track to tennis court. And one of our most vivid images of Bill Clinton is of the President sitting in the Oval Office,
simultaneously eating a big meal, conducting a phone
conversation, reading a policy memo, tracking CNN and
interacting with family, aides and friends. Political mind
fragmentation is bipartisan.

While the media presents this as a positive trait —
how wonderful that our man can get so much done — you
may not find it so enjoyable from the inside. There are few
politicians who know the joys of contemplation
and inner peace — let alone have the ability to write a decent speech of their own.

After Clinton moved into the White House, his staff quickly realized they needed to focus him on a few key issues, to maintain a “theme for a day.”
But our fragmented President could not comply. He had long
ago lost the ability to concentrate or focus.

I remember meeting with then-Governor Bill
Clinton, to recruit him for the board of directors of an economic competitiveness organization. I described our
activities for 15 minutes or so. When I paused, he responded
by describing in intimate detail his work on welfare reform,
an interesting topic but one that had no relevance to the
point of our meeting. He then agreed to join
our organization.

I wondered afterwards why he had gone on about
welfare. Then I realized that his goal was to impress me with
his grasp of policy, and he probably hadn’t heard a word
I’d said about competitiveness. Since he agreed to join
our board, I didn’t take it personally. He was just
another politician with attention-deficit disorder.

Perhaps this is why you will probably find yourself
talking far more than listening if you enter politics. It’s
so much easier to talk than to pull the mind together and
hear what others are saying.

So are we doomed to live out our days in a political system that keeps churning out morally and intellectually stunted leadership? Not if we begin to seriously confront the roots of the problem. I’d begin with these three sweeping reforms:

1. Public financing of all elections, a ban on all lobbyist and large donations
to the political parties, and a ban on self-financed campaigns.

Politicians can neither deeply understand issues
nor maintain their integrity if their major waking activity
is sucking up to the rich. Nor do Steve Forbes-style vanity campaigns elevate the political process. Level the playing field by financing elections with taxpayer dollars. There is nothing wrong
with a millionaire or celebrity running for office, as long as they win on their own
merits and not on their bank accounts.

2. Strict term limits.

It is critical that our politicians have real lives before and after entering politics. Tough term limits will force them to pursue other careers and interests, during which they may even develop the habits of reading, thinking and spending time
with their families. No politician should be allowed to serve more than 12 years in public life.

3. Reject media cynicism and negative campaigning.

A free press is critical, and democracy will not
survive with government-imposed or legal constraints on the media. At the
same time, however, democracy cannot thrive in a
media environment that degrades politicians and patronizes voters.

We’ve already seen signs of a growing public
revulsion against media excess and negative campaigning.
Steve Forbes’ key loss in the Iowa primary, for example, was widely
attributed to public distaste for his vicious attack ads.
Groups like the Common Ground coalition are working to
encourage politicians to campaign on their ideas, and recent
decisions by major networks to let the candidates directly
address the voters is a big step in the right direction.

As millions of voters, particularly swing voters who
determine elections, change their values, so too will the
media and political campaigns.
The public clearly wants
substantial political reform and, sooner or later, the
system will respond.

Until then, however, voter beware.