Playboy Interview: Jerry Brown

There are several impressive facts about Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr., and chief among them is that after only one year as governor of California, he is considered, at the age of 37, to be the most exciting potential candidate for the Presidency since John F. Kennedy. Time called him "the most interesting politician in America" and, at a time when most American politicians are held in only slightly higher esteem than used-car salesmen, his approval rating by California voters is an astounding 85 percent.

Another impressive fact is that while Brown is very knowledgeable about what his future may hold and is definitely not untouched by ambition, he claims that he could give it all up after his term is over and go off somewhere to meditate. A product of a Catholic education and three and a half years of study to become a priest at a Jesuit seminary, Brown flirted with the Berkeley lifestyle of the early Sixties, then veered off to Yale Law School, from which he graduated in 1964. As the son of a popular two-term California governor, he found his family name was potent and his law practice in Los Angeles dull; so when his feelings of opposition to the Vietnam war intensified, he helped organize the state's peace slate, which became Eugene McCarthy's delegation to the Democratic Convention in 1968. He ran for a school-board post the next year, then for secretary of state in 1970, when he made headlines by forcing the disclosure of secret campaign funds and vigorously enforcing the political-contribution laws. His crazy-quilt background resulted in the spectacle of a state governor who did things differently: He slipped away from fund raisers and disdained ceremonial functions; he slept on a bare mattress in a spare apartment, leaving Ronald Reagan's huge new governor's mansion empty; he used a Plymouth instead of the official chauffeured limousine. And Californians loved it.

Then there is the matter of his politics--elusive, wriggly and difficult to categorize. He manages to convince young and old, conservative and liberal, rich and poor that he is, each in turn, on their side. In his short span as governor, he has been responsible for some remarkably progressive legislation, revamping farm-labor, marijuana and sexual-practices statutes, among others. At the same time, he has managed to please conservatives with a hard line on busing and crime and a far greater willingness to attack Big Government than Big Business. As our interviewer put it, "Brown pulls it off because he's found a modern handle for being basically old-fashioned."

Finally, there is the mystique--not the Kennedy brand of charisma but mystique in the true sense of the word. Brown is not a flesh presser and does not arouse fierce emotions in crowds. Indeed, what he arouses is intense curiosity. He is variously reported in the press to be a lonely, misanthropic figure, given to Oriental mysticism and Jesuitical debating techniques. There have been references to his Zen meditational retreats, gurus presiding over cabinet meetings and dark hints that he disdains food and sex. At the annual Governor's Prayer Breakfast in January, conducted in previous years by the senate chaplains of the three recognized faiths, a Sufi choir appeared, complete with chanting and bare-chested male dancers. When pressed by reporters for details of his personal philosophy or his private life, he brushes questions aside with Socratic questions of his own, leaving the press corps soundly confused.

To probe below the surface of this complicated man, Playboy assigned Robert Scheer, a journalist with strong radical credentials whose last piece in this magazine was "Nelson Rockefeller Takes Care of Everybody," to conduct the interview. Scheer and Brown had crossed each other's paths in Berkeley and, as Scheer's report attests, each seemed to find the other man a challenge:

"'Don't worry, Bob. I'll get that biographical material to you on the plane tonight. You can trust me. Hell, I'm the governor.'

"When Jerry Brown says he's the governor, I often feel a sense of disbelief. This antipolitician, whose style stresses deep suspicion of the ability of government to produce on a grand scale, is clearly the most popular high official in the country. He's also an unpretentious guy I've hung out with, drinking beer and club hopping on Sunset Strip and talking about everything under the sun.

"He first refused to do the 'Playboy Interview' on the grounds that he had too many other requests for the same thing and that everyone wanted to ask him the same old questions. When I asked him what the new questions were, his response was typical: 'How would I know? I'm not a reporter.' With this cat-and-mouse game as his main technique, he'd managed to avoid being pinned down on the issues. When he finally agreed to let me interview him, the originally allotted couple of hours became nearly 20 hours of recorded questions and answers as the governor got drawn in more deeply than he intended; after the first session, he became intrigued and sparred with the delight of a born debater. After the taping sessions, we'd often drive to a bar, where he'd continue to question the questions--and for three consecutive weekends he devoted his time to worrying about his answers, because, it seemed to me, at some future point they might undermine him politically.

"He is, first of all, a political animal, despite all the media hype about Brown exotica. He cuts a rather natty figure in his monogrammed shirts and dark, well-tailored suits, and despite all the hoopla about his driving himself around in an old battered car, the governor's Plymouth is quite new and suitably chauffeur driven. His apartment in Sacramento may be spare, but his elegantly furnished apartment in Los Angeles is not. As for bizarre rumors of his private life, I know of at least one altogether-too-normal occasion when he and an aide drove down to San Francisco to sit around in a singles bar, passing as Stanford or Cal graduates who hadn't quite settled down, keeping an eye out for attractive, eligible women.

"As to the interview itself, the governor hung in there for the long, sometimes grueling process without the protection of PR people and made his own decisions on what to say. He impressed me by not attempting to cut off the dialog and by resisting the temptation to use the trappings of his office to get his way. The last session was the most exhausting. My Playboy editor, Barry Golson, had joined me for the final couple of sessions and Brown had to field questions from two sides, with both of us pinning him down on some contradictions. He hung tough and later commented, 'You know ...I've spent more time with you than on anything this month. And it's made me ask myself whether or not I'd ever want to be President. There are just too many issues on which you have to have positions.'

"Much later, we were sitting in a Shakey's Pizza Parlor, tired and talked out, while a folk group sang in a corner. Just as it seemed we'd put the 'issues' behind us, the female lead singer, unaware of the governor's presence, called on the student audience to picket Governor Brown against the proposed dam on the Stanislaus River. We looked at the governor and he shrugged. 'You just can't escape having to take a position,' he said. He paused, swished the beer around in his mug and muttered, more to himself than the two of us, 'Who knows if there are any answers?'"

[Q] Playboy: As the chief executive of the nation's most populous state at the age of 37, do you ever ask yourself, "God, what am I doing here?"

[A] Brown: Yeah, the realization of the responsibility, of where I am in this country and what I'm supposed to be doing, sometimes is rather heavy. Yeah, sometimes. Especially in the morning after I've stayed out late at night, it all seems rather absurd.

[Q] Playboy: Could it have happened if you hadn't been the son of a popular governor of California?

[A] Brown: Obviously, the fact that my father was governor had an impact. If my name had been Smith, I probably wouldn't have been nominated for governor or even elected secretary of state. His administration and constituency were very helpful to me and I received a lot of pluses--and some minuses. It made liberals tend to vote for me and conservatives vote against me.

[Q] Playboy: On the night of your close victory as governor, you were quoted as telling your father, "I almost lost because of you."

[A] Brown: I was kidding him because he seemed to be taking so long at the microphone and I was getting restless. It was just my sense of humor, which for some is too dry.

[Q] Playboy: Since taking office, however, you've surprised both your father's liberal constituency and the conservatives with your frugal spending policies.

[A] Brown: I've never been a big spender. Certainly not in my personal life--as my friends will attest--and not in the public offices I have held. I am not a fiscal conservative. I'm just cheap.

[Q] Playboy: Would it be unfair to say that your administration and style are partly a revolt against your father?

[A] Brown: It has some truth to it. Every son emerging from his family has attractions and repulsions. And if some sons try to emulate their father, others may try to replace him. That's the stock analysis, but I think these kinds of relationships are far more complicated. I mean, some would say that carrying on the family business is a high form of admiration.

[Q] Playboy: But before following your father into politics, you spent three and a half years in a Jesuit seminary. Wasn't that a pretty extreme response to growing up in politics?

[A] Brown: Well, I guess. Politics as a way of life didn't seem to me full enough or complete enough, so originally I didn't seek it out. But I don't see anything unusual in the fact that while my father was in public life I should be attracted to a seminary. He was more interested in action, programs and accomplishments and I was always drawn to ideas and philosophy. The seminary was obviously something I would consider, because it dealt with underlying questions and fundamental realities.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't your father find your decision to study for the priesthood unusual?

[A] Brown: There's nothing strange about a young person who is a Catholic thinking about becoming a priest or a nun--at least there wasn't when I was growing up. But my father is a practical person and the idea of going off to a seminary for 15 years to study and pray and maintain virtual silence seemed impractical. It didn't do anything. It didn't seem to have a programmatic payoff in the way that becoming a lawyer or a politician might.

[A] Yet, in my own mind, the life in a seminary still has a justification of its own. It's a life of service and I found it very good, at least until the time I decided to leave. The idea that the life of the mind or the spirit has a purpose that transcends mere financial or material considerations is still something I believe in. In other words, I think some of the most important things in an average person's life have nothing to do with government or politics. You can see that reflected not only in people's conversations but in the place that politics has in their everyday lives. Politics is a reasonably serious business and ought to be treated as such. But I don't think you should oversell what politics means, what government can do. I've always felt I could see its limitations because I was brought up in it.

[Q] Playboy: A good part of your political style today seems to involve a rejection of an older political form your father typified: promises, programs, glad-handing, ceremonial activities.

[A] Brown: What can I say? Times are changing. We are coming out of an era of easy growth and up against new limits. Politicians talk of more G.N.P., but it doesn't come so easily and people are worried about the quality of life, not just the quantity of things they accumulate. Television, changing lifestyles, the ruthless questioning, disillusion after Vietnam and Watergate--all these things make for different political forms today from those of 20 years ago.

[Q] Playboy: What's an example of a political form from your father's era that has changed?

[A] Brown: I can remember listening to various speeches by politicians from that time and the audience not being very impressed--especially younger kids. College students in the audience were turned off. And I think that's had an impact on my feeling about speeches and rhetoric. I've tried to avoid a lot of that, which is one reason I gave a seven-minute inaugural speech. Of course, another reason is that I didn't start writing it until the night before.

[Q] Playboy: What else turned you off traditional politics? Do you remember any incidents from your father's terms as governor?

[A] Brown: Well, I remember once going with him to a bomb-shelter conference in a New York City hotel called by Governor Rockefeller. A number of governors and their military attachés were there. As I recall, so were Arthur Schlesinger and Roswell Gilpatric and Adam Yarmolinsky. All the people there just seemed to assume that the country should embark on a big bomb-shelter program. The discussion revolved around technical questions such as how to notify people when to get into their bomb shelters--by telephone, by electrical hookup or by radio? It is hard for me to remember the details, but that was the drift of the conversation. And so I asked my father to raise the basic question: Did such a bomb-shelter program make any sense? He leaned over to Schlesinger and asked him. Schlesinger turned and said, "Pat, we've got to have them." That was it. No fundamental questions for that group.

[A] That meeting has always typified for me a central problem in government: Conventional wisdom and group thinking almost conspire to prevent serious challenge to widely shared assumptions. I take it as a very important thing in government that assumptions in the inner circles be challenged again and again. So I try to read a lot and meet people and encourage a diversity of ideas. Otherwise, you just become the prisoner of your perceptions or of those who provide you with the briefing papers.

[Q] Playboy: Weren't you something of a prisoner of narrow perceptions while you were at the seminary?

[A] Brown: Perhaps. There was no radio, no TV, no newspapers, you didn't read The New York Times, much less Playboy. I heard about Sputnik being launched two weeks after it occurred. There were no visitors--except for parents once a month. We were permitted to speak for brief periods after lunch and dinner and for an extended time one day each week.

[A] Life was very simple. A bell would ring at five in the morning and we would get up and then, until nine in the evening, follow a strict schedule that was basically the same each day--meditation, Mass, Latin, waiting on tables, sweeping floors, working in the fields, reading spiritual books: Thomas a Kempis, the history of the Jesuit order and a three-volume work on ascetic virtues.

[Q] Playboy: You never felt you'd go nuts, bang your head against the wall and say, "I've got to get out of this prison"?

[A] Brown: No. It was engrossing and it was where I wanted to be. It was very disciplined, all right, but for a purpose. Every hour of every day was part of the over-all training program to become a Jesuit priest and from the inside it was a very full life. I certainly have no regrets about it.

[Q] Playboy: But at some point, obviously, you began to feel differently.

[A] Brown: Not at first. But after a few years, it seemed too limited and authoritarian for me. I began to feel I was missing something. I thought about it for a long time and then decided to leave and go to Berkeley.

[Q] Playboy: Which must have been a remarkable contrast. Why did you decide on Berkeley?

[A] Brown: I thought it would be good to balance years of traditional education with a more open and skeptical process.

[Q] Playboy: What were your first days in Berkeley like?

[A] Brown: I remember a certain exhilaration at being in a world where you could do anything you wanted--go anywhere, talk to anybody, read anything. It had a certain liberating effect.

[A] But it was also depressing at times. There was a wasteland quality about experiencing the Berkeley campus in 1960--the thousands of people, the impersonal rules and bureaucracy, the lack of direction, the drift, the fragmentation, the void.

[Q] Playboy: Were you shocked at any of the permissiveness--sex, drugs, music?

[A] Brown: In those days, such things didn't jump out at you unless you went looking for them. Whatever people did, they weren't as open about it as they are today.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel your moral outlook and your approach to politics were more influenced by the seminary than by Berkeley?

[A] Brown: I hope so. Everyone needs enough space and time to be himself. But we also need a life of service and common purpose. The contemporary search to satisfy every impulse that floats through your consciousness is doomed to failure. I don't think that's what people want, anyway.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean by the search to satisfy impulses?

[A] Brown: Even a superficial reading of history indicates there has rarely been a period of self-indulgence on such a mass scale as there is in America in 1976--the idea that the sum total of life is the accumulation of more and more creature comforts and status symbols that are expensive to maintain. Some of it is normal and good, but it certainly has limits, and I don't support the materialism you find in so many magazines and other media today.

[Q] Playboy: Such as in Playboy, for instance?

[A] Brown: Yes. I had some reservations about this interview because of the values the magazine projects to people, values I don't really agree with. It tends to create an image of self-indulgence that is becoming increasingly inappropriate and ultimately inconsistent with the survival of this country. I see a need for a more austere and leaner style of life. Certainly, Playboy has had an impact on breaking down some taboos, but it's not clear what the ultimate upshot of that will be. Some might look on it as a liberating philosophy, but on the other hand, it might be very limiting, too.

[Q] Playboy: Given your reservations, why did you agree to do this interview?

[A] Brown: Because you were so persistent. And it's a way to communicate with a lot of people.

[Q] Playboy: Is there a puritanical streak in you? Your speeches since you took office often emphasize the need to return to hard work and discipline.

[A] Brown: I wouldn't use the word puritanical, but, sure, I was taught in grammar school by the good nuns that idleness is the Devil's workshop. If you have a totally idle society, you're going to have a decadent society. I think there needs to be a greater sense of service to country and a commitment to resolving some of the issues that are tearing us apart.

[Q] Playboy: Is that why you've shunned the perquisites of power--such as the governor's mansion and an official limousine?

[A] Brown: Yes. I don't see where politicians in this society should act like big shots. I can remember a time when I was going to a Giants game in my father's limousine, driven by a highway patrolman. At one point as we drove through the crowd, people started pounding on the windows. It made me disinclined to have a limousine, let alone drive around in one.

[A] People have a sense of equality. There is a demand for egalitarianism and institutions today lack credibility--and I mean labor and business just as much as government. Unless leaders become more austere and more closely attuned to what people want, I think many institutions are going to be in for tough times. People are not going to stand for it.

[Q] Playboy: But when you give a television speech advocating that people stop consuming so much, your appearance is followed by a stream of commercials selling cars and other products, right?

[A] Brown: That's the way the system works.

[Q] Playboy: But can you really regulate excessive materialism without also regulating advertising and the corporate system behind it?

[A] Brown: I recognize that we are going through certain economic and environmental changes. Our system worked well when the country was less developed and the air was cleaner and fuel cheaper. But until people begin to recognize the extent of our present dilemma, there is not much we can do about it. So much of what I am doing is attempting to enhance awareness of the fact that the country is changing. Until we are sufficiently awake, there is no point in talking about what we can do about it.

[A] I don't see leadership as just passing laws. The fascination with legislation as the big solution to everything is overplayed. A person in a significant position of power can lead by the questions he raises and the example he sets. A lot of political energy comes from a certain vision, a faith that communicates itself to other people--as with Martin Luther King and other leaders, whose ideas and the way they presented them had a great influence on government. People who stand for an idea that has energy connected with it, that's power.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean by that, precisely?

[A] Brown: Just that sometimes even powerlessness has a power of its own. Who is it who took India? Some guy in his underwear. Gandhi seemed a pretty strange, powerless character. And yet because of the idea and the moment, he was able to galvanize millions of people. Power may be an idea, a style, things we haven't thought of before. Look at Vietnam. We thought we had the power, but events proved we didn't. The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese had an idea and a collective purpose.

[Q] Playboy: Who do you think has power today?

[A] Brown: Cesar Chavez has power. George Meany. Perhaps Ivan Illich. The women's movement. The Whole Earth Catalog. Bob Dylan is a person with power.

[Q] Playboy: Dylan and the Whole Earth Catalog--would that imply you have at least some roots in the antimaterialist beatnik movement in the Fifties or that of the hippies in the Sixties?

[A] Brown: The only time I heard about the beatniks was when one of the priests at the seminary read us an article about them. No, I learned about their antimaterialistic philosophy after I came out and went to Berkeley. I'd go over to Robbie's for chop suey and rice and think, "This is where Allen Ginsberg used to hang out when he wrote Howl." A lot of ideas would go around and I used to listen and I learned a lot. I learned as much there as I learned sitting in class. I remember going to Greenwich Village to hear Dylan before anyone knew him.

[Q] Playboy: So the governor's an early Dylan fan. What other music do you like? What record would you put on if you were depressed?

[A] Brown:Adagio for Strings by Albinoni or Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis.

[Q] Playboy: What do you do to relax besides listen to music?

[A] Brown: I read a lot.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of reading--fiction, poetry?

[A] Brown: Doris Lessing, Hermann Hesse, Robinson Jeffers, Yeats, Frost, Conrad, Joyce, Kafka, Henry Miller.

[Q] Playboy: Can you ever really get away from it all?

[A] Brown: I go out for dinner or to a movie; I spend evenings with friends. A couple of times I've spent a few days at the Trappist monastery in Northern California. I've also gone to Tassajara, a Zen monastery in the mountains near Big Sur. They're two places where I can get away from photographers and tape recorders and let the accumulated images and problems of being governor recede from my mind.

[Q] Playboy: Has the job ever gotten to you?

[A] Brown: There's an inescapable quality about being governor. I have to show up every day and answer to what I've been thinking and where I've been. This is a reality that has at times become oppressive. But as for the responsibility, it hasn't gotten to me yet.

[Q] Playboy: When you say oppressive, do you mean it's impinged on your private life?

[A] Brown: Well, not exactly. I've met a lot of interesting people and certainly one of the best parts of the job is the new people with interesting ideas you run across. Maybe I wouldn't be having this conversation if I weren't governor, and this is interesting.

[Q] Playboy: But people in the public eye have their private lives under constant scrutiny. How do you feel about discussing your off-duty hours?

[A] Brown: Well, about six hours a night I'm unconscious.

[Q] Playboy: That still leaves some waking hours when you're not working. Do you really hate talking about your personal life?

[A] Brown: I don't hate it. But I mean, the personal aspects, why should one discuss them?

[Q] Playboy: For one thing, it would be interesting to know if it's possible to lead a normal social life as a young bachelor governor.

[A] Brown: I think it is. But not if you talk about it all the time.

[Q] Playboy: Good point. Say, why do some press reports describe you as humorless?

[A] Brown: Well, I think I have a good sense of humor. But a lot of the jokes people tell may not be the ones I happen to be telling or listening to. I don't watch a lot of television, I don't watch the football games on weekends, so perhaps I lose some of the folklore.

[Q] Playboy: You don't follow football? That may be the most controversial statement you've made as a politician. But getting back to the issue of privacy, wasn't there a lot of publicity because you started dating some Hollywood people?

[A] Brown: There wasn't that much publicity. I took out Liv Ullman for several months and no one knew about it. It took the press several months to get onto it.

[Q] Playboy: How did you manage that?

[A] Brown: I wasn't that well known. I took her to a fund-raising dinner and no one recognized her. We sat in the back and listened. Then we went over to the Figaro for dinner.

[Q] Playboy: Are you recognized now when you try to slip away from ceremonial occasions?

[A] Brown: Now, yes. I wasn't a couple of years ago.

[Q] Playboy: Does it bother you?

[A] Brown: No. That's just the way it is.

[Q] Playboy: Most people don't experience the transformation from obscurity to fame in a matter of a couple of years. How do you respond to the experience?

[A] Brown: My response is that it just is.

[Q] Playboy: But some of it must be exciting.

[A] Brown: Obviously, it's exciting. There's a certain vanity in all this. That's presumably why people seek office--for some reason, they're attracted to it. I'd say I have mixed feelings.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have trouble campaigning for the governorship as a single person? The New York Times Magazine said that you had compiled information on your opponents because you feared they were going to accuse you of being a homosexual--is that true?

[A] Brown: You never know what to expect in a political campaign. Primary contests among candidates of the same political party often degenerate into namecalling and groundless charges because of the lack of ideological differences. My staff did research the public records and statements of my opponents, but by any standard, the whole campaign was clean and very fair. As to what my opponents might accuse me of, I suppose in a campaign you can expect to be called anything from Communist to crook.

[Q] Playboy: But why that particular name?

[A] Brown: Homosexual innuendo is a cheap shot that could be used against any single politician. It's like Red-baiting in the Fifties. Now I'm accused of running around the state with too many women. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

[Q] Playboy: If you were to run for national office, do you think being single would be a political liability?

[A] Brown: No. It wasn't for Pierre Trudeau or Edward Heath. Sometimes it may even be an asset.

[Q] Playboy: Do you intend to have a family?

[A] Brown: I have always assumed I would.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think marriage can work when you have a career as consuming as yours?

[A] Brown: That's obviously a problem. I don't have an answer for that. Perhaps there are periods in one's life that require a commitment that isn't compatible with a family.

[Q] Playboy: But some politicians manage to do it.

[A] Brown: Do they? I don't know, maybe some do. But if you look at the number of political divorces, maybe a lot of them don't manage in reality. The role of a leader takes tremendous emotional, spiritual and intellectual effort. And how many masters can you serve? I like the idea of the dream, but I don't quite see how you put it all together.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel the values of the traditional nuclear family are outdated?

[A] Brown: For most people, these are still very strong values.

[Q] Playboy: But do you agree with them?

[A] Brown: I respect them. I'm not ready to offer any theory on how people should get along with one another. But I have no doubt the family has lasted a long time and will survive its latest critics.

[Q] Playboy: One tradition that may not last is that of the man as dominant figure in the family. How do you feel about women's liberation?

[A] Brown: I have mixed feelings. It's liberating, but it's also creating new instabilities. Things had to change, but it's an emancipation from a traditional family structure that's served us very well. The family's being brought under pressure like it's never been before and relationships are hard enough.

[Q] Playboy: If you have a family, won't you eventually have to use them as political props, as most public officials do?

[A] Brown: I have reservations about using my personal life for politics. After a while, it's possible to see your personal relationships as part of an over-all political equation. After that, it's not too difficult to become just another political commodity to be distributed through the media. But when it's over, after you've left office, you might not have much to show for it. Politics, like most of life, is transitory, and the scrapbooks and headlines that you accumulate won't be much comfort in your old age.

[Q] Playboy: Is that why some people have described you as a loner?

[A] Brown: Perhaps I haven't kissed as many babies as my predecessors did.

[Q] Playboy: But there's more to it than that. There's an impression that the private Jerry Brown is some kind of mystic who may be off meditating on a mountaintop at any given moment.

[A] Brown: Well, in some people's minds, politics is like a club. There are certain restaurants and gatherings where journalists, inside dopesters and hangers-on get together and form a type of inbred political establishment. Maybe I don't spend as much time as I should with these people. And I don't attempt to broadcast how I spend all my waking moments, especially when I have time off. So it's possible for some to conclude that I am off on a mountaintop, whereas I may be just sitting in a restaurant or going to a movie with a friend. I just don't see the point in always surrounding myself with political types.

[Q] Playboy: But you go to fund raisers and other functions for politicians. You seem to get along fine with them.

[A] Brown: I hope so. Although I have removed some of the trappings and ceremonial aspects of this job, I am trying to work with those who make the political world function. The process needs to be opened up, but those who are an essential part of it can't be underestimated or ignored.

[Q] Playboy: So this image of you as an ascetic is also exaggerated--you and those who work for you live fairly comfortable lives, don't you?

[A] Brown: That's true; I make $49,000 a year and have a nice home in Los Angeles and to a lot of people in this country, that's hardly ascetic. But I have cut back compared with my predecessor. Salaries of my staff were reduced seven percent. I've sold the limousines, cut out the inaugural ball, moved into my own apartment.

[Q] Playboy: What do you have against the new governor's mansion?

[A] Brown: It's a huge place with nine bedrooms and six bathrooms--I'd feel like Casper the Ghost wandering through it. Besides, I don't think it's appropriate for a governor to live like that when so many people are being asked to sacrifice. That empty Taj Mahal that Reagan built could be one of the key symbols of 1976.

[Q] Playboy: Is it possible that the office could change you? Is there a problem of becoming overwhelmed by ambition?

[A] Brown: No doubt about it. There is always a problem--or, I should say, a temptation. The role of governor can become consuming. Politics can get to be addictive. But that's a possibility in everything human--in a marriage, a career, anything else. Once you seek something, it's possible to end up in a way you never expected. After you're there, sometimes there's nothing you can do about it.

[Q] Playboy: What about your present ambitions? You've been mentioned as a possible Vice-Presidential candidate on a ticket with Hubert Humphrey. Would you accept an offer?

[A] Brown: I think it would be a bit presumptuous to try to answer that.

[Q] Playboy: Aren't there substantial differences between you and Humphrey?

[A] Brown: There is obviously a difference in generations, perhaps one in temperament also. But I like Humphrey. I admire him.

[Q] Playboy: But in a lot of ways, your ideas about holding down Government spending and moving away from New Deal programs seem closer to those of Ford than to those of leading Democratic spokesmen such as Humphrey who are committed to large Federal programs.

[A] Brown: Ford isn't calling for greater conservation, he isn't very imaginative about solving the unemployment problem, he isn't sensitive enough to the demands for equality. But where I do differ from some liberal thinking is that I see a world with limits to its resources and a country with limits to its power and economy.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think people like Humphrey and Henry Jackson are living in the past?

[A] Brown: They and others in the party are actually re-examining some of their assumptions--even in the last 12 months, I've noticed a difference in tone coming out of some of the people in Washington.

[Q] Playboy: But it would still seem that you favor a lowering of the expectations from Government--as the Republicans are calling for--rather than what Humphrey and Jackson are calling for.

[A] Brown: Well, I don't feel comfortable with either extreme. But, as I've said, I've detected a change in traditional Democratic positions.

[Q] Playboy: Are your politics a definite break with traditional Democratic politics as we've known them up to now?

[A] Brown: I'm a critic of centralization of power in Washington and of basing a political philosophy on the assumption of unlimited resources and the ability to draw on the resources of Third and Fourth World countries at a ridiculously low price.

[Q] Playboy: All this sounds rather vague. How would people who think they agree with what you're saying be guided as to which Presidential candidate to vote for--say in the case of Humphrey versus Ford?

[A] Brown: Even if Ford and Humphrey campaign on their traditional positions, there's no doubt in my mind people should vote for Humphrey. He's concerned about taking care of people who can't take care of themselves and Democratic Party programs have worked. I do say this: The social programs we're embarked on now cost much more than we thought ten years ago and we have to recognize this.

[Q] Playboy: Yet you want to decentralize power.

[A] Brown: That's been a traditional conservative idea, yes. I'm a governor of a state and I run up against rules from Washington that require staples, not paper clips, on food stamps--any number of things that make me feel that power ought to be returned to the state and local levels.

[Q] Playboy: It's hard to see where you would stand on the issues. Is there a deliberate vagueness to your political approach?

[A] Brown: It is true that I don't often put forth a laundry list of six-point programs or appoint blue-ribbon commissions to come up with well-publicized solutions that don't do anything. I find that approach to have just about run its course.

[A] Politicians are supposed to have all the answers, the grand solution. When I get questioned and say I don't know or turn the question back with another question, journalists get very upset. Politicians and the press often just go through a ritual. People think a question and an answer have been exchanged in a traditional interview, but in reality they haven't.

[Q] Playboy: Obviously, voters have liked the fact that you say, "I don't know." But isn't that just a clever political technique? If you can't be pinned down on critical issues, how can your success or failure be measured?

[A] Brown: I am not holding out a poster with a ten-point agenda on it saying, "Here it is, folks, do you like it?" But I do think you can judge me by whatever criteria you wish. You might start with how other governors are doing today or how my predecessors did. I don't really think that things can be as well programed in this particular period as they have been in the past. This is a time of transition and often we have to just let things emerge. Sometimes asking a question or exposing a contradiction is more valuable than a superficial program that purports to do more than it really can.

[Q] Playboy: We come back to it again: Since you don't state your programs, it will be very difficult to judge their progress or failure.

[A] Brown: They emerge. I think they emerge through the dialectical process. They come out; things happen. I really don't think there's a problem in judging the progress or failure of my programs. There's no end to analyses of my administration. I meet often with people. I presented a 1000-page budget to the legislature. Last year I signed 1183 bills and vetoed 148. I have made dozens of appointments. All this gives a clear indication of my political philosophy and what I'm trying to accomplish. If you're interested in agendas, you might read the inaugural speeches of the last five governors. They say much the same thing: Down with crime, unemployment and taxes.

[Q] Playboy: But there must be many conservatives who misread you because they believe you offer their brand of fiscal conservatism.

[A] Brown: Maybe they like what I am doing because I express some of the basic values they share.

[Q] Playboy: Then why, in fact, do you call yourself a Democrat?

[A] Brown: I've run a Democratic administration, but to try to pigeonhole me within a framework that may have been more appropriate ten or twenty years ago is pointless. It's sloganeering to say that's Democratic, that's Republican. There are elements of both.

[Q] Playboy: But if you fail to criticize Democratic candidates for supporting bigspending programs you obviously don't believe in, don't you sound like a basic party man, keeping your differences inside the club? What makes you in any sense a "new" politician?

[A] Brown: I'm trying to carve out a political program that responds to the needs of California. I've focused on the fact that a lot of the social programs aren't working the way we thought they would. The Democratic Party has stood for helping people, minimizing inequalities, being in the forefront, being experimental, and Humphrey, Jackson and Ted Kennedy all stand for those things. On specific issues, OK. Did I support the Vietnam war? No. Humphrey had a position on that which I opposed. Very simple, not much to talk about. So I think it's a complex reality that you have to take issue by issue. I'm trying to challenge assumptions, I'm trying to be open about what government can and should do. More than that I don't know. I hope it's new. I come from a new generation. And yes, politics isn't a question of trotting out your six or seven issues. It's a matter of experience, of development, and everyone's ready to develop at a particular moment.

[Q] Playboy: Well, let's try a number of specific issues, anyway. Where do you stand on welfare?

[A] Brown: Reagan wrote a welfare-reform plan. Reagan solved the welfare problem, so how can that be an issue?

[Q] Playboy: You're being facetious, of course.

[A] Brown: Well, he said he reformed it. He wrote a law and said it was a reform, so why is that a problem? It's there, it's still the law, nobody's changed it. Welfare hasn't gone up very much since I've been governor.

[Q] Playboy: But what's your philosophy, your program?

[A] Brown: We have a welfare program in California. We have food stamps. We have Medi-Cal. We put hundreds of thousands of people to work through direct and indirect investment. But I would prefer to see stable neighborhoods and communities where people have jobs and a future and are part of the mainstream of society.

[Q] Playboy: But certainly most people on welfare are unemployable, aren't they?

[A] Brown: Many are. But many could make important contributions to society. I believe most of them would much prefer (continued on page 184)Playboy Interview(continued from page 80) to be a part of the mainstream and contribute their energy and be compensated accordingly. How we arrange that, given the economic and political rules of the road, I can't answer. But I know that societies don't long endure with so much energy unfocused and so many people with no self-respecting role. Matching people to the work--that's the political challenge of the next ten years.

[Q] Playboy: On the national level, Ford's employment policies seem to be pretty much like yours: leaving it to the private sector.

[A] Brown: No. I wouldn't agree with that. I don't see much leadership or public investment or imaginative reordering of our priorities.

[Q] Playboy: How can any of these things be accomplished without raising taxes?

[A] Brown: Taxes fund government programs, but most economists say that if we stimulate the private economy, we will generate adequate employment.

[Q] Playboy: If you stimulate the economy in that fashion, you generate inflation, don't you?

[A] Brown: It is a complex equation. If I had a specific program, I would put it forth right now. I have suggested work sharing and flat pay raises as alternatives.

[Q] Playboy: Are you for less government or more government?

[A] Brown: It depends upon the situation. I am very concerned about the increasing centralization of social services. Too often the intended beneficiaries get only what is trickled down through the increasingly powerful bureaucracies. I see a new class growing in political power. Instead of trickling the wealth down through the corporations, you trickle it down through the public bureaucracies, but the people at the bottom are still getting drops.

[Q] Playboy: You have attacked Big Government; what about Big Business? Are you for cutting back on Government regulations of the large corporations?

[A] Brown: No. I would like to make the regulators more independent of corporate influence and I would question how big corporations really have to be in order to serve the economy.

[A] Certainly, large corporations have their problems, but my experience with government suggests that the problems are just as great in this area. I preside over the biggest state government in the country and to get things done is not easy--not because people lack good will; it is just difficult to make large-scale institutions respond in the way that you might like. So even though you may not like multinational corporations, I am not sure turning them over to the state would make things much better. Maybe we need a combination, some new political or economic forms that we haven't formulated as yet.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about another issue: crime. Are you in favor of gun control?

[A] Brown: I believe in some controls, such as elimination of Saturday-night specials, but to go beyond that and attempt to confiscate all the guns in this country might require house-to-house searches and a tremendous new government intrusion in our lives. 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.

[Q] Playboy: You don't believe we should make it a crime to own a gun?

[A] Brown: Making something a crime doesn't necessarily stop it. It is a crime to smoke marijuana, but people do it. Just criminalizing some activity is often a nonsolution.

[Q] Playboy: You recently signed a law that reduced the penalty for possession of an ounce or less of marijuana to a $100 fine. Why do you feel there should be any penalty at all?

[A] Brown: There are limits to the amount of personal license that most civilizations can tolerate and the law I signed strikes a balance. There is something wrong about those in affluent countries overeating and drinking and getting stoned while so many people throughout the world suffer hunger and despair. The juxtaposition of the two won't last forever.

[Q] Playboy: That certainly rings true rhetorically, but let's bring it down to earth. Do you drink?

[A] Brown: Sometimes.

[Q] Playboy: Have you smoked marijuana or used other drugs?

[A] Brown: I like to say I observe the laws. People should not have to ingest chemicals to enhance their enjoyment of life.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you recently sign a bill calling for a mandatory jail sentence for selling heroin and for committing a serious crime with a gun?

[A] Brown: Because I don't see any justification for either.

[Q] Playboy: Do you oppose capital punishment?

[A] Brown: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: What if you had to make a decision today on a capital case?

[A] Brown: It's a choice I would rather not have to make. But if I did, I would make the decision and not agonize over it.

[Q] Playboy: Is it conceivable that you would allow the death penalty?

[A] Brown: I would follow the law.

[Q] Playboy: What about prison reform? Do you believe in the concept of rehabilitation?

[A] Brown: I suppose it is the secular version of redemption. Certainly, we should try to help those who have been incarcerated re-enter society in a productive way, but to think that psychology and group therapy can change a career criminal into a law-abiding citizen is rather naïve. Crime for some is a career and is not easily changed. It becomes part of their emotional and conceptual structure.

[A] Punishment is a word that many people shrink from today, but it probably provides more fairness than the much-abused rehabilitation. Using that term, we often permit wide-scale discretion and official arbitrariness. In addition, white-collar crime is often not punished at all, because judges are able to identify with the lifestyle of such criminals and believe them to be rehabilitated by mere conviction without serving any time in jail. In this sense, punishment may be a very progressive idea.

[Q] Playboy: Don't you think the social basis of crime has been fairly well established?

[A] Brown: That sounds like the old dispute about free will and determinism. I believe the individuals should assume that their actions are the product of their own free will and be treated accordingly.

[Q] Playboy: That may be easier for you than for someone in the ghetto to say.

[A] Brown: Maybe. Maybe not.

[Q] Playboy: What if you were faced with a situation like Attica? Would you use maximum force to put down a prisoners' revolt?

[A] Brown: I would use no more and no less force than the situation required.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about busing?

[A] Brown: I would leave it to the local communities. I don't think it achieves what its proponents claim. The real problems are jobs and equal opportunity. What do you accomplish when you just take a kid out of his neighborhood for a couple of hours and put him in another environment, only to send him back after school to a neighborhood where there is little future? All that does is intensify his conflict, not overcome it.

[Q] Playboy: You appear to share a large number of views with your conservative predecessor. As Reagan's successor, do you have any special insight into what kind of President he would be?

[A] Brown: I think he would continue the stalemate that exists between the Congress and the President. He is not one to question assumptions. He prefers inertia with a conservative cast. He would be slow to intervene in economic problems and not too aggressive with respect to protecting the environment.

[A] I assume he would put more money into defense and attempt to cut the Federal bureaucracy. He would emphasize Big Business and the private sector. But given the reality of a Democratic Congress, I would expect drift and stalemate.

[A] But I wouldn't overemphasize the impact of a Reagan Presidency. After all, we have had the best and the brightest in Washington and with them we got into one of the worst wars in our history. So I would be modest about predicting who will get us where this year.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of who will do what this year, what if the Democratic Party were to be deadlocked? Would you be willing to accept the Presidential nomination?

[A] Brown: I think it's a little presumptuous.

[Q] Playboy: The question or the idea?

[A] Brown: The whole subject. It's an eventuality that seems rather remote to me, but I'm not making any Shermanlike statements. I'm living each day as it comes.

[Q] Playboy: Does it surprise you that you should be considered for national office after such a brief time as governor?

[A] Brown: In one sense it surprises me, but what I'm saying has obviously caught on with people. It's true there hasn't been time for much programmatic action, but there's a certain identification voters get about political leaders. I'm not sure people care about all the issues raised. They get a certain feel for a person and that intuition probably decides most elections.

[Q] Playboy: Does the eventuality--however remote--awe you?

[A] Brown: The responsibility, yes; it's an awesome one. And the requirement to have solutions to so many problems, the demands to respond--"What should we do? Lead us! Tell us!"--it's quite a burden, an awesome one and a surprising one.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the governorship might be a better form of training for the Presidency than a seat in the Senate?

[A] Brown: Certainly, running a state enterprise has within it the same kinds of challenges as those of a Federal office.

[Q] Playboy: Even though you say you're not a candidate, there's been speculation in the press that you might be a contender, so we'd like to ask you about some national issues. Is that legitimate?

[A] Brown: It's legitimate.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about military spending?

[A] Brown: I'd be surprised if there were dramatic savings to be made.

[Q] Playboy: So you don't go along with liberal thinking on cutting the defense budget?

[A] Brown: Military costs have gone up and I don't realistically think the budget will be cut.

[Q] Playboy: What about Kissinger's détente policy?

[A] Brown: I'd have to give that one a lot of thought. I don't think you can be naïve about the world. It's a competitive place and the strong survive and the weak don't. We're still a few generations away from the time when swords will be turned into plowshares, and until then, we ought to be ready.

[Q] Playboy: Ready against whom?

[A] Brown: Well, Russia's obviously the strongest military power. We're all becoming more interdependent, but we ought to realize that without substantial military strength, we're obviously jeopardizing our security. I wonder what exactly will be the consequences of some of the agreements that Kissinger is apparently bringing about. I've got some doubts.

[Q] Playboy: Then on détente you're less optimistic than some Republican spokesmen about the prospect of peaceful coexistence.

[A] Brown: Well, 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 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.

[Q] Playboy: The rest of the countries? Which countries are pushing us around?

[A] Brown: Well, look at the vote in the UN on the Zionist resolution. And when the OPEC nations want to raise the price of oil, they get to do it.

[Q] Playboy: You mean we should have prevented them from raising their prices?

[A] Brown: They've got that oil and they don't have much else, so they better get the price they can while the getting's good. But I think it indicates a certain weakness in our country.

[Q] Playboy: So if our strength were credible, we should be able to set world prices in a way that would benefit us?

[A] Brown: I would rather we be in that position than not, and then be given the discretion to make that decision.

[Q] Playboy: But should any country have the right to dominate other countries that way?

[A] Brown: Look, America's not perfect, but it's been a country of freedom, of a certain brand of liberty, and it's my country. I'm going to do my best to see it prosper, and I'm not making any apologies to anybody. It's easy to criticize, but other countries have done far worse. A lot of people have a death instinct about America that I don't share.

[Q] Playboy: But you've said that you're against a policy that draws on the resources of the Third and Fourth World countries at a "ridiculously low price." Aren't these the same nations that are making a "big sap" of us?

[A] Brown: I would like to see those countries grow and prosper; I would like to share the fruits of this planet with everybody. But at the same time, the U. S. has a certain historical momentum that will be maintained. We have a certain pride of national character and you flout it at your peril. Right now, no country has done so well at attacking itself as the United States of America. The problems are how do we put it back together and how do we inspire people with confidence and pride in country and family and the things that normally hold people together? Today, it's very easy to find out what's wrong, the pessimistic side. Mere criticism won't build this unity.

[Q] Playboy: But isn't that what you're doing? You've said throughout this interview that you're questioning assumptions about the way our institutions work. Aren't you one of the doubting Thomases, too?

[A] Brown: I'm raising questions, yes, but I'm providing answers. I'm engaged in the process of running a government.

[Q] Playboy: From which you say people shouldn't expect much.

[A] Brown: I'm trying not to kid them about what government can and can't do.

[Q] Playboy: And that doesn't raise people's hopes or restore their confidence.

[A] Brown: I guess the sum total of all this is that America faces some serious problems, and I'm not asking critics to refrain from their activities, nor am I refraining from asking questions myself. I think we have the ability and resources and spirit, but we need a greater awareness of how difficult things are.

[Q] Playboy: When you say critics, you obviously include the press. Do you think the press has brought about these difficulties?

[A] Brown: Every institution in society has come under increasing scrutiny. Obviously, things have to be brought out, exposed. But if you stand back and look at it, there's been a tremendous volume of negative energy moving in this country. And there should be ideals, a common purpose. That common purpose is not being enhanced by all the attacks on our institutions.

[Q] Playboy: Is it the press that's responsible for the loss of American ideals?

[A] Brown: I wouldn't leave it at just the press. But the press is looking at what's going on and it sees things, then it wants to see more and report more. And what seems to sell most on television and in newspapers are the things that are wrong with the country and things that are wrong with people. That has a momentum and a logic of its own, and it's gathering speed. Where it all goes, I just wonder.

[Q] Playboy: Do you mean the press shouldn't have reported the abuses of such agencies as the CIA and the FBI?

[A] Brown: I have very mixed feelings. There've been abuses; these agencies have gotten out of control and have to be brought back into control. But in the process, we may end up throwing out the baby with the bath water. A vigorous free press is essential, but the constant harping on things that have gone on in this Government--I really wonder if they're that different from what's gone on in other governments.

[Q] Playboy: That seems far from a liberal view of the press. You learned the truth about the Vietnam war--which you opposed--through the "constant harping" of the press, didn't you?

[A] Brown: As things come out, we have to know about them, but all I'm saying is that the country may be weaker, that's all. I'm glad the Pentagon papers were released and--

[Q] Playboy: So you think Ellsberg did the correct thing in Xeroxing the Pentagon papers and turning them over to the public?

[A] Brown: In that instance, I'm glad he did. As a matter of fact, I was in the courthouse when he was acquitted. In any case, these things had to come out and the same can be said about the CIA and the FBI. But as a person in government, I have to wonder how we restore confidence in our institutions.

[Q] Playboy: But you seem to be deploring both the abuses of government and their exposure by the press.

[A] Brown: The press is just a vehicle. And I suppose if we ever get to the final chapter of wrongdoing, the book can be closed. But I really wonder, given human nature and human history, whether we'll ever reach that point. And if that's the case, then the amount of criticism will keep increasing, and that's a rather foreboding possibility.

[Q] Playboy: Again, you don't seem to be addressing the question. Was it Woodward and Bernstein who were responsible for Watergate or was it Richard Nixon? Was it Johnson and Kennedy who gave us Vietnam or was it David Halberstam? Very simply, toward which view do you lean?

[A] Brown: Well, I lean toward the view that the level of official corruption is intolerable. What I don't know is, are there any human beings so pure, any government so beyond reproach by the existing standards that we'll ever be satisfied? I wonder, since these things went on in former times, why they didn't seem to bother anyone then. Where do we finally hit bottom? Where do we finally purify the Government?

[Q] Playboy: Shouldn't the press expose the fact that the CIA, for instance, tried to kill the heads of foreign governments? Shouldn't such exposure continue?

[A] Brown: I'm not sure that governments down through history were much different. And I would say that we haven't begun to go through major scandals. After we finish with government, we'll go to business and other institutions, and there'll be no less human frailty and malevolence uncovered.

[Q] Playboy: Weren't you shocked by some of the revelations?

[A] Brown: No doubt about it. I never dreamed the FBI would be fomenting discord between one radical group and another or that corporations would be handing out millions of dollars in bribes and campaign contributions. I've been around government all my life and I was shocked.

[Q] Playboy: When you say our standards of purity may be too high, are you proposing that we lower them?

[A] Brown: I don't think we can go back. Once these things happen, it's like a Greek tragedy. If something's done wrong at some point in time, it tends to persist like a curse, as in the house of Atreus, from one generation to another. And that may be where we are. We can't unring the bell.

[Q] Playboy: You pose the problem, but if you agree that abuses must be exposed and at the same time regret the effects of the exposure, what do you propose we do? Is the press supposed to be more tolerant?

[A] Brown: A little bit of tolerance might go a long way.

[Q] Playboy: Which may not be a practical remedy. Do you have something concrete to suggest?

[A] Brown: I'm certainly taking drastic measures to assure the integrity of this administration. I've pushed California's political-reform initiative for this reason. Viewed by traditional standards, it's absurd: No one may take more than ten dollars from a lobbyist. Every gift over ten dollars, relatives excepted, must be reported. This, in effect, makes parolees out of politicians. It needed to be done, but I just can't help wondering how difficult it will be to hold to these standards.

[Q] Playboy: So you're inclined to be pessimistic?

[A] Brown: 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.