I'll be voting for Jerry Brown

I'll be voting for Jerry Brown to be governor of California in the November election.  I think he was an excellent governor during the late 1970's and early 1980's, and was prescient about the energy and environmental issues that would be central to our state's politics and economics for the thirty years since.  Most importantly, he was always a fiscal conservative, which in my mind is not an ideological label but simply a certificate of public sanity.

Did Jerry Brown "fix" the state of California?  No.  We don't live in a world where "philosopher kings" can do the job that's really up to the rest of us, acting as economic and political agents.  The divisions in California between cultural liberals and cultural conservatives have evidently existed at least since the election of Ronald Reagan, the governor before Brown, and they're not going away anytime soon.  Brown did ride the tiger well, crafted deals that crossed the cultural dividing line, and left a productive legacy that continues to serve us well.

I lived in Oakland for the whole period of his being mayor during the second half of the 1990's and the first half of the 2000's, and think he was the best mayor we've had here in the almost thirty years I've lived in Oakland now.  He supported a variety of approaches to revitalizing the downtown area, some of which came to pass, and was always a political realist in trying to achieve his vision.  The art and military charter high schools in Oakland are positive legacies, I think, and demonstrate his ability to be truly inclusive, as contrasted with the sanitized rhetoric of inclusiveness that prevails among "progressives".

Did Jerry Brown "fix" the city of Oakland?  No.  But he set the tone for a rejuvenation of the city that continues today in spite of "bumps in the road" like conflict between youth and the police, or the severe recession we're in today.  (In contrast, I think Ron Dellums has done absolutely nothing for the city during his term – and that contrasts with Dellums' having done plenty of good for the area, despite his ideological reputation, during his long tenure in Congress.)

Brown has kept his feet in the water by serving ably as the state's Attorney General over the past four years.  Now he's offering his services as governor once again, and I think he'll do a good job with the slim pickings offered by the still-conflicted polity.  Unlike Meg Whitman, he's not in hock to his political party – in fact, he's made no promises as to how he'll work with the Legislature on solving California's intractable budget problems.  I expect creative deal-making and principled defence of education spending and anything that would bring capital, venture or otherwise, to the state.  Maybe that's what a Republican like Schwarzenegger would also bring to the process, were he running, and maybe Whitman would be led to the same trough were she (if she should be) elected.  But right now Meg is promising tax cuts to the Republican faithful that are completely politically infeasible unless there's a Tea Party firestorm in California (and I'd be praying for that not to happen every bedtime if I prayed at all), and that and her undoubted executive abilities aren't enough to sway me to consider voting for her.

Brown is the man of the hour, again.  I'm voting for him.