No matter what you may have thought about the ideas of Jerry Brown 1.0, at least he had some. In his first two terms, Brown didn’t just think outside the box, he thought outside the solar system. He earned the moniker Governor Moonbeam. Today, he is a wisp of smoke, blown from side to side by the hot winds emanating from the Capitol.
Governor Deukmejian, elected in some small part because he wasn’t Jerry Brown, still had ideas, each year he had an initiative, get rid of liberal judges, cut taxes, fix the transportation system, build prisons, and the like. Pete Wilson had a budget to fix, he tackled it, then took on education, racial preferences and illegal immigration. Gray Davis began with education initiatives, then sort of sputtered out, leading to his recall. Governor Schwarzenegger began with energy and ideas galore, finally running out of gas in 2005, and collapsed, basically hiring the Gray Davis staff, and sinking into oblivion, spending money and alienating everyone.
Jerry Brown 2.0 seems to have decided to copy the last five years of Schwarzenegger. He is lifeless, a shadow of his former self, quite literally the anti-Jerry Brown. Where Jerry Brown 1.0 was the energizer bunny, Jerry Brown 2.0 is Rip Van Winkle, but rather than waking up, he is sleeping through his time as Governor. He is whipsawed by the leftist elements in the Legislature and the socialist government unions, the animals he created in the 1970’s. That ’70’s Governor is finally seeing how the socialist vision he had in that decade is manifesting itself today. Part time jobs for California citizens, and welfare for illegal aliens; the perfect Marxist utopia.
Who cares if Tesla takes 6500 high paying jobs to Nevada; we didn’t need them anyway. Who cares if all the new jobs are part time; they’re jobs aren’t they? Who cares if the economic recovery is so slow as to be negligible; let’s crow about every small gain, and turn a blind eye to the suffering and pain of the middle class families across the state. So what if Texas is taking all our jobs, nobody wants to live in Texas anyway, and that Governor there, he’s just a tool of big business. They’re just hicks anyhow, or so Jerry Brown, and the leftists in the Legislature think.
Jerry Brown is passive and reactive. He is uninspired, delivering a lackluster debate performance. Who’dve thunk it? The guy who was a rapid fire idea machine in the 1970’s is bereft of vision today. The leftist propaganda machine that operates in Sacramento is not going to say anything, because they finally have what they want, a Governor who will do nothing until their agenda reaches him, and then sign it into law.
I am not a part of the Kashkari campaign operation, but there is a theme here. Every good campaign finds a believable theme, then develops it. Jerry Brown’s lack of energy and ideas, with his corpse sitting in the corner office, is that kind of theme. In the 1970’s, he was a joke, today, he might as well be a ghost. He doesn’t care, and it shows. He is just going through the motions, hoping to serve out his time as Governor without too many things going wrong.
It is sad that the Governor’s office has sunk to this depth. We deserve it as a state, but it is still sad.