 I'm Mark Updegrove and on behalf of our partners on tonight's program, the OBJ School of Public Affairs and the Annette Strauss Center for Civic Life, it's a pleasure to welcome you to this evening's program and evening with California Governor Jerry Brown. Before we get to our program, I just have a couple of bits of housekeeping. First I want to thank our sponsors, St. David's Healthcare, the Ford Foundation, the Moody Foundation, and Tito's Handmade Vodka. I always say, I always say Homemade Vodka and the word hand is this big on the page tonight. Tito's Homemade Vodka. And second, for our friends at the LBJ Library, please join us on Wednesday, December 5th. As renowned author and NBC presidential historian, Michael Beschloss joins us to talk about his new bestselling book, Presidents of War. It's worth a read and it's certainly going to be worth coming to the program. If you're not a friend of the LBJ Library, please consider becoming one. You'll enjoy stellar programming like that that you will see tonight. Tonight we are delighted to have with us the outgoing governor of California, Jerry Brown, who I will have the privilege of interviewing. Joining our honored guest is Cappy McGar, a founding co-chair of the Annette Strauss Center, a trustee of the LBJ Foundation, and a good friend of this library and this university. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Cappy McGar. We are here today after an historic election and I think we all have our fingers on the pulse this evening because we all know what you want, more politics. I know that the hopes of many Democrats are riding, we're riding on an upset here in the Lone Star State, but political gravity has a habit of pulling us back to reality. Losses are sobering, but they present lessons to be learned and especially for the idealist hoping for change. Tonight we'll have the opportunity to learn from a leader who has landed that fair share. I'm a proud alumnus of UT and having graduated just over 40 years ago, all the way back when Texas was blue and California had a governor named Jerry Brown. Along with the LBJ Library this evening, we're so fortunate to have two great Longhorn institutions named after two great visionary leaders who have joined forces to host a conversation with another great American visionary. Many thanks to Susan Knoll, the director of the Net Strauss Institute and just full disclosure of Net Strauss was my mother-in-law and so I'm trying to impress her every day. Dean Angela Evans of the LBJ School and the LBJ Foundation led by the able leadership of our chair, Larry Temple, and a very special thanks to Walter Robb, a co-founder and former CEO of Whole Foods. He goes all around the world spreading the word of healthy evening and quite frankly I'm sick of hearing him talk about it. But he talks about leadership, integrity in the boardroom, and the reason that Governor Brown is here with us today is Walter Robb, it's a Walter thank you very much. Tonight's conversation is sure to be illuminating. Throughout his career Governor Brown has demonstrated the knack for governing in rather unusual times. In 1965 Ronald Reagan was governor of California and 2011 he succeeded Arnold Schwarzenegger. So for all the Democrats out there, this is someone who knows how to take over from and dare I say clean up after a celebrity Republican executive. Like the Brown family, Governor Brown has devoted his life to public service. From Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees, to California Secretary of State, to Governor, to Mayor of Oakland, to State Attorney General, and Governor once more all in that order. He's a leader who in every office he's held has used the position he has to make the world a better place. California has changed a lot since Governor Brown took office for starters. There's much less avocado toast then. His fiscal leadership has been without equal and today California is the fifth largest economy in the world. As a Texan, pains me to point out that ours is tenth. So I guess everything is not bigger than Texas. When he demonstrated that economic growth and environmental stewardship can go hand in hand. In September the governor pledged to launch his quote, own damn end quote satellite in response to Trump's administration in action on climate change. In his career, earliest career, Governor Brown was nicknamed Governor Moonbeam for his idealism. You know, I got to say Governor Moonbeam and versus President Space Force. Sounds like a Marvel movie I'd go see, but to be serious for a moment, it speaks miles about a man's character to have identified a passion so early in his career and stick with it and build on his ambition 10 times over. It brings to mind something that LBJ said about a meaningful progress during a speech he gave at Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs in 1966. And if you'll pardon me, I will say what President Johnson said. It is not something to be discovered suddenly. It must be built. Step by painful, patient step. And the building will take the best work of the world's best men and women. Governor Brown embodies that commitment. And his lifetime of service speaks so much more than a single issue. It speaks to the devotion of his values and alliance to this state. That's what public service is all about. Please welcome the governor of the great state of California, Jerry Brown and the president of the LBJ Foundation again. Mark up to grove. Governor, that standing ovation is not just Texas hospitality. That's well earned. We're honored to have you here. We are now a day into the midterm election results. Can we start by talking about your thoughts about what transpired yesterday? Well, what transpired is what is. And it reflects the fragmentation, the real differences that exist all across the country. So the fact that now one house is controlled by the Republicans, one by the Democrats, it's emblematic of what's happening to democracies throughout the world. Whether you look at Germany or even France or England with the Brexit. If you look at places where democracy is under a severe attack by authoritarians like in Brazil or in the Philippines and in a different way, in Hungary and in Poland, where the forces of diversity and democratic check and balance is being eroded. We're in a very turbulent time driven by disruptions in the economy because of the rapidity of new technologies, cultural norms being expressed in so many different ways by different people. So you put all this together and there's no overarching theme. And I'd say that's what, yes, there's some discontent with the president, but there's a lot of content with the president, depending upon which district or which state you're in. So I think it's a very yeasty time. And I hope things don't go downhill. Is it reminiscent of any other time that you've seen in your life as a public servant? I remember Harry Truman was out in California, I think it was around 1960, he was visiting my father, who was the governor of California. And he said to my father, he was called Pat, said Pat, this is the most divisive time in American history since the Civil War. I didn't think it was all that divisive, but I think President Truman saw the civil rights emergence and saw what that was going to do by way of division. So I'd say we're right at that spot again, although now it's not just a question of black and white. It's a lot of differences, many different lifestyle, religion, politics, worldview, the population is segmenting. And I know from a political point of view, the technical response is big data, micro-targeting, telling each little subgroup what they'd like to hear in order for them to feel more favorably about you. So that doesn't add to e pluribus unum. We're kind of going the other way. We're going from unum, if we had much, we had a certain amount of unum oneness. Now we're going to plurality or whether you call it diversity or multiculturalism or anything else. That's just where we are. So I think we do need unifying themes, but you can't unify by just trying to prop up what is no longer sustainable. So it's end with all the channels. People tune into Fox, they tune into MSNBC, and I don't know how closely you watch this, but from a camping consultant's point of view, people really are pinpointed. And you can send text messages, emails, direct mail, not so much direct mail, or even on the television the way they can map out who are the Democrats, who are the Republicans, who registered gun owners, but you own a pickup truck or you own a Prius. And based on that, you'll get a different message. And instead of a great public debate, the exercise is to reconfirm the subjectivity of each subgroup, each subset, each demographic. And so that then reinforces and exacerbates the fragmentation. So what I would say, I mean, California, we had some, from a Democratic point of view, we had some good victories. We passed, well, we didn't pass. We defeated a measure that was supported by the speaker and our majority leader, Mr. McCarthy, from California. And they put on a measure to eliminate a gas tax that the legislature, by two-thirds, voted for. And that measure was defeated by 10 points. So I'd say that's saying something that people are willing to invest in roads and bridges and buses and trains and transit. And I think that's a big thing. So there's a lot of things that happen. I don't like to make a generalization because so many places are so different. And certainly California is going to be different than Texas. But even Texas is different than Texas 10 years ago. And California is different. California, when Pete Wilson ran for governor, ran against my sister, as a matter of fact. And there was a ballot measure to exclude undocumented families and their children from health care and from public schools. And that passed very strongly in Pete Wilson won. But in the succeeding decades, the Republicans have shrunk to 24% of the vote, going down from about 40. And so that was a, but I only list that just to give you a little history of California. But also the instability, the change. There's lots of change going on. And some of it, you can't stop it. You can channel it, maybe we'll respond to it. So I would say the election, you have to look at different places, derive different conclusions from different states. For example, California, by 10 points, decided to keep a recently enacted 12 cent gas tax and 20 cent tax on diesel. Okay, a lot of people voted against that by the way, but not enough. In Washington, there was a carbon tax on the ballot. It was defeated by about the same margin. Now in this case, the oil companies spent two to one, or more than that, overwhelm the pro carbon tax people. Now luckily, on my little vote, on no, we outspent our opponents about 40 million to four million. That's the way I like it. I like a silent opposition. You've heard of the silent minority. That's what I like, a silent minority. Well, we were the louder, better financed. But of course, we had public sector unions. We had the Republican Chamber of Commerce. We had businesses, engineering firms. The caterpillar gave several hundred thousand dollars because they're all engaged in this. What it was all about was a 5.2 billion forever cash flow building roads and bridges and overpasses. And that's public safety, that's efficiency, that's investment. So that's something you can learn from. Now you want to go to Washington, a state of Washington, they say no on a carbon tax. Carbon taxes, a price of carbon, most people think you got to have that. Paulson, Hank Paulson, Republican, George Schultz, former ambassador, they all agree with that. So there's a lot to be learned. Some of it's who put on the better campaign, who had the most money. But it's also different moods and feelings. A lot of politics isn't just action, it's reaction. And that's why you get Clinton and then you get Bush. And then you get Bush and then you get Obama. And then you get Obama and you get Trump. So now what do we get after Trump? That's a good question. But generally you don't get the same thing. And I've had the experience that I followed Ronald Reagan in 1975, Republican, movie actor. And then in 2010 I followed Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican and movie actor. So I've honed the skill of following movie actors. And I must say I do pay attention. The Warren Bates once told me, said he was at the White House watching reds, screening reds for Ronald Reagan. And during the admission Ronald Reagan got up and said to him, Warren, I can't imagine how someone could run for president if they haven't first been a movie star. Just a little inside advice, you won't hear it again. But there it is. So the big issue, fragmentation, turbulence, danger, but also opportunity. Did you see yesterday's verdict as a knock against Trumpism? Where it was knocked, he was definitely knocked in many places, but not in Indiana, not in whatever the other places, not here in Texas. So yeah, that's why I say it's not one thing. There is intense antagonism to Donald Trump and there's intense loyalty. So that's what makes for a very difficult, a very difficult political environment. We have to pull together and that only comes with a vision and something people can buy into. But if you have, you're totally red, the other one's totally blue, it takes a very skilful politician. And basically what the tendency is to look for victims or look for enemies, adversaries, fears. And how do you unify? Well, if you can get a common danger, a common enemy. So it's a dangerous time, we've known in history how these things can turn out. So Trump is part of the problem, in my view, because I have a different view of how things should work and I can go into that. But I think what's interesting is that Trump enjoys the level of support that he does. What does that say about how people feel about those things that he is fighting against? And some of the things he's fighting against, I'm fighting for it, so there you go. You ran for president in 1976, 1980 and 1992. Do you see any? By the way, I only got one delegate in 1980, so that was rather pathetic. What I did, every time you run for president, it's like a seminar in national domestic and foreign policy. So I always had a chance to think like a president as long as I was running, so you'd learn a lot. I did learn a lot. Do you see any Democrat emerging from the pack of new victors who might be made of presidential time? I can't, I don't know. There's quite a group and you have some of the older folk who are younger than I am, by the way, Joe Biden and John Kerry, they're floating around and there's Bernie and then you have a bunch of them. We even have a couple from California. So at this stage, it reminds me of the Republican primary when you had all those people. They all raised their hand and whatever the heck they did. Trump was able to emerge, so who knows. Maybe there'll be some Democrat you don't know about. It's probably in the group that we're now talking about. Yeah, in this state, one of the candidates on the losing end was Beto O'Rourke, the young charismatic dynamic senatorial candidate who looks a whole lot like Jerry Brown did in the mid 1970s. Newsweek in their version, their post this morning had the headline Beto O'Rourke could be America's next president. Do you think that's possible? Well, I didn't watch this campaign. I've read a couple of stories and they sounded very exciting, but can you take an unsuccessful campaign and turn it into a successful? Well, I can say one big advantage when you lose, you have a lot of time. You don't have anything to occupy you. These incumbents, particularly from the West, have to get on an airplane and travel away to New Hampshire. It's five hours. So if you don't have a job, you can get right out there and start stirring it up. Who knows? Look, Trump won the nomination with less money, with no previous political experience, with most, I'd say, 95% of all political analysts and pundits thinking he had no chance. So today it's what you look like on television, what significant people might say about you. Even Trump proved you don't even need significant people to say anything nice about you. You can, so it's open. And if you can stay in there with the other pack, four people, five people, seven people, and somehow in that give and take, you impress some people, then you raise some money, then you take out some ads, pretty soon you're on your way. So no, I wouldn't write them off. If you were president, what would you put at the top of your agenda? If I were president, unquestionably, I'd put nuclear arms negotiations with Russia. At any moment, this civilization can be annihilated, not necessarily by intention, but by blunder. There have been several times where both the Russians thought we had launched hundreds of missiles to attack Russia, and when there have been times. For example, when William Perry, his secretary of defense, was woke up in the middle of the night, and he was told by the strategic air command that incoming missiles, nuclear missiles, were coming from Russia, both were mistakes. Those were periods where we were having good conversations and relations. Now the tensions, the hostilities, the name calling is such that maybe we wouldn't have that kind of pause or that kind of confidence to say, wait a minute, let's wait, because if you're wrong, then you're supposed to respond very quickly if there's an attack. So I'd say that if the INF, George Bush, tore up the anti-ballistic missile treaty, which had been crafted by Richard Nixon, and then the INF treaty, crafted by Ronald Reagan, and Gorbachev is being threatened, and then after that, there's the New START Treaty, and it might be that in another year, there'll be no nuclear treaties between Russia and the United States, no formalized channel of communication, which would be the first time since President Kennedy made the agreement with the Russians to stop atmospheric testing in the external environment. So it's very dangerous, I would say, very few people are talking about it, because the end of the, I'm sorry to report, but the end of the world is not news. Tweets are news. One tweet is equal to at least 200 incoming missiles before they happen, because before they happen, there's nothing to report. So what we do have to report is the breakdown in communications, and now it's never been this bad. And we had the Cold War, and Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger went over to the Kremlin, they had Debrezhnev, not a nice fellow, as far as we know from his history, and actually, Pat Nixon and Richard spent a couple of nights in the Kremlin, and Kissinger and Nixon stayed up late in the night, and they came up with detente, and that led to SALT-1, Streets, your arms limitation treaty, okay? And then Reagan came along, and all of a sudden, Nixon's impeached, and Henry Kissinger loses his popularity. He went from super-K to the Lone Ranger, and Reagan came along and warned about the evil empire and the window of vulnerability, and then all of a sudden, things changed, and we got the INF treaty, well, first we got the meeting with Gorbachev and Reagan, and they made a very important statement. He said, nuclear war must never be fought. Nuclear war can never be won, it must never be fought. They're not saying that today. They're talking about actual nuclear war fighting, and that's dangerous, and I would say the most number one requirement of our president is to keep us safe, and you can't keep us safe in an unlimited, treaty-free nuclear arms race, and it is not news, it's not being talked about. People are more, Republicans want to talk about Trump and Republicans, I mean the demos and Republicans, they don't want to talk about something else, so that'd be number one, and if I had a number two, it'd be climate change, because that's just a slow-moving disaster. The science is clear about it, I mean there's 95, there's not a question here, there's always some uncertainty, but we're playing Russian roulette, both with the nuclear and with climate change, and make that turn extremely difficult as witnessed by the loss of the carbon tax in Washington, so those are big, and then if you have some more time, you can talk about artificial intelligence and cyber and the growing inequality and a few odds and things like that, and I know there's other issues like free education and universal healthcare and immigration, but first we gotta stay alive, and then we can fight about some of these other things, but I like to deal with the big stuff, and there's nothing bigger than annihilating the human race, and by the way, those bombs, it doesn't take that many, it does not take, we've got 7,000, Russians got 7,000, thousands are on alert, a few minute alerts, they're ready to push the button, so yeah, I think it's real important, Putin, Trump, Chi, they ought to be talking, and it's not a bad thing to talk to the Russians, it's a good thing, and we used to talk to them a lot more, Nixon talked to them, Reagan talked to them, so LBJ talked to me, he invited the Russian Premier there, the Soviet Premier, so anyway, that's what I would say, I don't want you to go home feeling bad, but I don't want you to go home feeling confident, because I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, I remember how dangerous people were, by the way, I attended meetings at Stanford in the last, in fact, the last two years, we've had meetings with retired Russian generals and retired American generals, and one of the retired Russian generals was a colonel in Cuba, and he had the nuclear-armed cannons, missiles, and he was empowered to fire it without going back to Moscow, he had that power, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others told Kennedy, bomb Cuba, if he had bombed that emplacement and those missiles went off, we might have had the nuclear annihilation. At the same time, there was a submarine that was coming toward Cuba, and the American Navy was dropping depth charges to make a surface, and they thought they were under attack, and the commander of the submarine said fire, and they had nuclear weapons, and the president did not, or the CIA didn't know about those weapons, they didn't know about the ones on the island, they didn't know about the ones in the submarine, and the submarine commander said yes, and the political commissar on the ship said yes, but there was the third man, the highest-ranking political officer, and he said no, and that's why we're here. They said yes, we probably would be no here, so this is real stuff, it's not amenable to mailings and micro-targeting, but it's the stuff that statesmen are supposed to talk about, particularly when we're getting so close to the 100th anniversary of World War I, and World War I proved how well-educated, good Christians can do really stupid things, and we're still paying for that, because the Middle East was drawn in such a way by the Versailles Treaty after World War I that created Lebanon and Iraq and Jordan and all this stuff and we're still fighting over it, so it is not true that a good Christian who's well-educated will do always the best thing, they may completely do completely stupid things, and since we're playing with such powerful toys, technologies, tools, we need even more wisdom than they even had 100 years ago, so the stakes are getting higher, and I like to put it this way, if you graph it, and you said, what is the graph of new technology and the power that human beings are creating, and that graph is going up. More and more power is being created by humankind all over the world, but then you might say, now let's graph wisdom and restraint, and that's very flat, so you get these two curves and they get bigger and bigger, that's not a good thing, so we need some wisdom, we need some insight, and we need some dialogue because you gotta talk. I wanna talk about some of the big things you did in California, but before we move on, just one bit of current events, you served as Attorney General of California from 2007 to 2011, our President today fired his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, what's your view on that? Well, I was never a big Jeff Sessions supporter. I think he came out to California and did something, I forget whether he's complaining about immigration, medical marijuana, or something we were doing that he didn't like, but first of all, the President's got a right to do what he want, the Irish-owned people, but it could be an ominous sign, and we need, I think we'll find out, but I don't know, is this connected to the Mueller probe? I don't know that, but we'll find out, and I mean, there's a lot of people coming and going, the Secretary of State, some of the other folks there. What's difficult, we are at a time of maximum and growing fragmentation, we need a President along with congressional leaders that look for some common ground, and depending on who's gonna be next, well, he's got his acting guy, but it's just a little more of the turbulence, and we're in a turbulent age, so. Governor Rolling Stone. But if he does point a new person, I'd rather have him come from California than Alabama. Do you have anyone in mind? No. No one that he would take. Rolling Stone magazine wrote of you, Governor Brown remains a bundle of contradictions, a radical with a deeply conservative streak, a man who can decry the destructive power of global capitalism while standing at the helm of the sixth largest economy in the world. He is grounded in politics as the art of the possible. How would you describe your political philosophy? Well, first of all, I wanna say, California is the fifth largest economy. We've come up. It's Rolling Stone. Yeah, but that was a year ago, two years ago. No, we're, no, I'm not taking credit for that. California is what it is. It's Silicon Valley, it's agriculture, it's the movie industry, it's biotech, it's all sorts of things. But I have to say, I just want to say, because we're in Texas and you get a pretty good growth rate here. But California, when I started, it was two trillion in our wealth, GDP, gross domestic product. It's now approaching 2.8. So that means since I've been governor, there's 800 billion sloshing around that wasn't there before. And that tends to make people feel good. So, what's- You can squash that around some Texas. That makes them feel really good. Well, the only trouble is that what goes up goes down. We're in the longest recovery and so we're probably headed for a recession pretty soon. Although the stock market went up today, so that was nice. My political philosophy, you know, I don't know the name for it. I coined the phrase, when I ran for president in 1976, I took the name planetary realism. So planetary was supposed to be the visionary, thinking about the whole planet, whole earth, but realism was let's get real and down to earth. So I do think you got to keep your eyes and the stars, but you have to keep your feet in the ground and my training has been both innovative because I've lived in California and I went to Berkeley for a while, but it's also traditional. I got my degree in Latin and Greek. I studied to be a Jesuit priest for almost four years and I've been around long enough to see a lot of changes. So I would say that I'm a realist, but I also have a certain ideal or kind of missionary sense that try to change, try to make things better and I enjoy making it. I won't just say I'm here to do good because I enjoy what I'm doing. So it's really for my own pleasure as well as others, but my philosophy is it's sometimes hard for people to get and maybe that's because I grew up in a mixed household. My mother was Protestant, my father was Catholic. So immediately there was division in who was right and my grandmother on my father's side was very anti-Catholic. She did not like the Catholic Church. She told me about that often and when I was a little boy I said, Grandma, you're gonna go to hell. But then as I learned diversity and difference, I got a more grounded sense, but I've had a very traditional education and upbringing very stable. When I grew up, San Francisco, the famous San Francisco, had a Republican mayor. California had a Republican governor and Eisenhower was president. So there was a world in the 50s that looks very different than the world today, but I can appreciate that. And so that makes me in some ways more conservative, but also the older you get, you know, the fact is I have more past than future. So that already makes you a little on the conservative side, but I'm also restless and liking change and challenges. And I have done some somewhat, you know, I've been pretty unusual in terms of politics. So I didn't get that Governor Moonbeam for nothing. I proposed to California launch their own satellite back in 78. I won't get into all that, what happened to it, what have you. But so I don't know what the, they do have a, maybe they had to be more precise. In the world of political thinking, they divide people sometimes between the realists, you know, the hard boiled, you know, let's not get carried away with romance here. Let's take the world that is and make it work. Henry Kissinger and what's the name of the guy from New York who's dead now? Well, there's a, Murshamer is a guy at Chicago. So there's a whole group of these tough, hard boiled characters. Then we have the idealists, but they're also called liberal interventionists. And a lot of these people, they like the Iraq war, they're gonna go around and save everybody. So somehow between being someone who can work with the worst of the worst and being so caught up with your own romance that you're willing to kill people if they don't listen to you, I put myself in a realist, but with a lot of orientation from tradition and the kind of a classic perspective on life. So whatever you can make of that. I don't like, I'm a liberal, but I don't like liberal interventionism where because you take and make such a big deal about human rights, you're ready to kill people about it. That was the argument. I heard a debate on the Iraq war and this guy was very a Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, who was a socialist at one time. He was arguing for the intervention, for the war. And he said, this was George Bush's Hegellian moment. He could free the women of Iraq and create human rights and make democracy flourish. And quite a debater, but he was dead wrong and we're still paying for that. Just the other day, they uncovered 200 graves, mass graves from ISIS that took over in the aftermath of the turbulence and confusion in Iraq. So you need to be realistic, but you also have to have something that is value fundamental, the fundamental wisdom and right from wrong. I mean, you gotta know that. So it's not, that's the way I put it. 28 years elapsed between your first terms as governor from 1975 to 1983 to your current tenure in office, which started in 2011. What lessons did you learn from that first stint as governor that you applied to your second? Well, I first applied that it's better to have a job than not. And I'd rather be in office than out of office, at least for now. So what lessons do you mean about lessons about? In terms of governing. Governing? Yeah, well, I think as I see more, I get a more concrete sense of things. And a lot of politics is advocacy at a relatively high level of abstraction. And particularly when I became mayor of Oakland and you meet people who are afraid to come out at night because of the criminals in the neighborhood, you see people, I propose the projects to bring development downtown and people protest. I created a military school and a former anti Vietnam war activist come and say that I want to militarize the youth of Oakland, because I created a military school called the Oakland Military Institute, which still is running 15 years later, which is getting 98% of the kids into college doing a very good job. So what I see from that is there's a lot of these interests that make these cases. And you've got a, I don't care whether it's on the left on the right, a banker, a union environmentalist farmer, you have to look very clearly, what is at stake? What's behind what's being said? So I would say I have a much clearer eye about the issues. And I'm more, I did, I mean, if you read what I do, I do veto a lot of democratic bills. And so, but I vetoed a few democratic bills the first time, but I feel more confident than I'm right. But so what did I learn? Well, I also learned that these demands are endless. I've reviewed, as governor, 16,000 pieces of legislation. I only viewed five, eight percent of them, depending upon what the year was. So everybody's got a bill. And what's so amazing is the same problems that people were gonna solve in 1975, they're still solving today. So you wonder, are we solving problems or are we just enjoying solving problems without ever solving them? So, you know, it's our job not to solve problems, but to be in business as problem solvers. Think about that for a minute. So I'd say I have a quicker eye, a clearer eye, and I'm kind of down to earth, let's get real here. And I have to say, when I took over, the deficit in California was 27 billion. And our debt, our short-term debt, was about 30 billion. That's what I call the mountain of debt. And I moved that all down. Now we have a $16 billion surplus. I didn't, I mean, the economy, the farmers, the Silicon Valley, the wealth machine is incredible. But we can go over, you know, it's a cyclical thing. You've got a whole, there's no natural limit to what the legislature wants. So we have the Republicans who say no to a lot of things I think are good. And we have Democrats who only know how to say yes. So between the noes and the yeses, we have to find some balance here. And that's all. That's what I've worked, and it's just amazing to me. Even I veto bills and they keep sending them to me. I have to veto them again. So, yeah. Because bills are wrapped, they have a nice name. You know, they always give it a name to do something that makes it sound good. Obama had a program called Race to the Top. Well, who wants the race to the bottom? You know? But I think it was a dumb program. And as governor of California, we didn't participate. We were the only state that didn't. And the reason I didn't, I thought it was trying to manipulate teachers in schools from too far away. And I think at the end, we have to give more discretion to the teachers. They need some money, they need decent salary, and they need the tools and the resources. But I'm just saying that. So, I've learned, well, how can you not learn? I've done this job this my 16th year. I've heard every possible story. I've been lied to by experts. I've had people double-cross me. I've had the most really good people double-cross me. So that's a lesson that even good people watch them. So without getting cynical. So that's a trick. And I'm very enthusiastic. And I'm very excited about all the good things that can be done. But I don't have any illusions of what the world really is. I want to go back to the economic miracle that you pulled off in your home state leading to. The California pulled off. I just happen to preside. I make the announcements. Everyone else makes the money. Well, here's what Reuters wrote earlier this year. California Governor Jerry Brown appears poised to exit office next year with a top political priority in hand, free from the massive budget deficits that had weighed on his predecessors, buoyed by tax increases, passed under his administration, and a strong economy. Mr. Brown said that the state is projecting a $6.1 billion surplus for the next fiscal year. The United States currently has a total deficit of $21 trillion. This year's deficit will be $779 billion, a 17% increase over last year. What are we doing wrong? And how do we get it right? Well, first of all, you got to get the politics right. And the politicians have to get right and get clear. Obviously, we're spending too damn much money and not on the right things. And they want to spend more. They want massive $1 trillion nuclear arms build up. They want to make them more flexible, more usable. And they want to spend a lot of money on that. And then we all want to do all these things. If you look at the agenda, both Republican and Democrat, it exceeds what we're willing to pay in taxes. And that's a problem. And people are getting older. And the older you are, the more medical care you take. And we've got social security. In California and many states, we have public pensions. So you have to deal with that on pensions. I proposed a pension reform. I brought some litigation to try to give the states and the cities more flexibility in adjusting pensions when hard times come. But I'd say it's very unrealistic. The interest rates are going to rise. The debt is rising. The needs are rising. And if you look, just take one thing. China has built 5,000 miles of high-speed rail. The only high-speed rail we're building is in California right now. And it's not anywhere near that. And it's still challenged. Federal government has no infrastructure program. California had $55 billion in deferred maintenance. Now, under this tax measure, we're going to whittle that down. We'll have $52 billion in 10 years. So you've got to build, but you've got to pay for it. We used to have a slogan, not a slogan statement, 20 years ago. You pay as you go. That's how you didn't build a road if you didn't have the money. You couldn't get the money unless you had a tax. And then they got this idea we can borrow. You know, we'll have bonds. I think they called them, I think Arnold Schwarzenegger gave a name, economic recovery bond. It sounded great. $40 billion worth of debt. And it'll be there for 30 years. And we'll pay double. So I think it is borrow. And here's the little thing. I know all the Republicans, they don't like taxes, but they love borrowing. They like bonds. They like debt. Look at the, when you hear all the rhetoric, the problems with China, the Chinese are doing, all that. Well, the tax cut was primarily, it was not totally, but significantly financed by the Chinese borrowing and buying our debt, borrowing treasury bills, treasury bonds. So we're going to, we first, we attacked the Chinese. They said, oh, by the way, will you please finance our debt because we want to give a corporate tax break. That does not make any sense. You got to live, I don't say we don't need to spend. We need to be spending more, particularly in infrastructure. We have to curb, we want a medical care system. You got to control the, the farmer cost. You got to control even the money that's flowing in the system. It's a great system, but it's twice as expensive as the system in Europe. And I wouldn't say it's twice as good. It doesn't cover as many people percentage-wise. And yes, there's some pretty amazing things, but you've got to find a way either through competition and controls, or both, to keep costs down. Just take one point. We're not allowed to buy drugs from Canada. We're not allowed to publish the prices that are being, concealment is the federal order. And Medi-Cal can't negotiate. What would happen if Medicaid, rather? What if Medicaid and Medicare and a couple of big insurance companies decided, we're going to start negotiating? Well, they can't, they're not allowed to do that. So you got to control costs. You have to invest and find new revenues. I'm not going to use the word taxes because I still am an elected office and you don't use that word. But you don't get something for nothing and you get what you pay for. And we all complain that the Chinese took over the solar industry because they put a lot of money into it. And of course, they artificially and probably illegally lower the prices. But looking forward, let's take the next car and the next seven to 10 years, very few people are going to want to buy anything but an electric car. It's going to happen. They're cleaner, they're quieter. Every way, it's the future. One's like a horse and buggy belching a lot of toxic material out the tailpipe. The other isn't. OK, so that's the way. I'm sorry, Texas, that's going to happen. You're not going to be able to fill all our cars. By the way, I speak in a state that has 32 million vehicles that drive, that go, vehicle miles traveling 355 billion miles a year. So we're into this thing big time. However, when you look at what China has a goal, 2025, they want to dominate the battery. They want to be the masters of the battery. They want to have the patents, the technology, and the business. On the other hand, President Trump wants to roll back the automobile standards that we have, the emission standards, which are very important in pushing us into cleaner vehicles and zero emission vehicles, electric cars and hydrogen cars. So he is kind of working hand in glove because by making it less attractive to build the electric cars of the future by rolling back the existing rules, and the Chinese are spending hundreds of billions in the R&D, and they're requiring this. So they're going in an absolute opposite regulatory direction and they're putting a lot of money behind it. So do we want to have a diminished, if at all, automobile industry in the next 10 to 15 years? You've got to think out. It's not about four years. We're still mostly around 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. So you've got to think out and you have to be willing to spend and invest and you've got to bring the cost out. So I'm not just saying put on a hair shirt and everybody cut their standard of living, but I do say we need much greater control on the costs. We need more competition where it doesn't exist and we need research and investment where it brings us the technology and ways of the future. Governor, you just passed a law that will ensure that the boards of California-based publicly traded companies have at least one female board member, a number that will increase to three in 2021. And you said of the law, I don't minimize the potential flaws that indeed may prove fatal to its ultimate implementation. Nevertheless, recent events in Washington DC and beyond make a crystal clear that many are not getting the message. Do you think this law will make a difference? Well, I'll tell you, if I vetoed it, that would have been a difference. So that's the way to put it, we either sign or we veto. Now, as the environment that we're in, all the stories, the violence, the harassment that had become so public and manifest these last few years, it just tells me that women, they're half the population. Why can't, I don't think it's that hard to do. Whether California can dictate to the rest of the country, that's a valid question whether that's true. But what I said never gets quoted in my message. I quoted the Supreme Court in the Santa Clara case from 1870 or whatever the hell it was where they said, corporations are persons. This is before women were given the right to vote. So by my judgment logic, I said, hey, if you could make corporations persons, why can't you put women on all the corporate boards of America? That's a tell me unit logic, by the way. You will step down in January of next year? Yeah. What are you gonna miss most about the job? What am I gonna miss most? Until I start missing it, I'm not really sure. That's a good question. What am I gonna miss? I mean, I'll miss nothing. I mean, I've done it for so damn long. I should have gotten it out of my system by now. So I do like living in the governor's mansion. I have to tell you that. You shouldn't say that, right? Because this is all about service. But it's a hell of a nice mansion that 12 governors lived in. Ronald Reagan and Nancy lived there for a month. They moved out because they didn't like the neighborhood. Downtown Sacramento. So the next four or five governors didn't live there. And in fact, Nancy Reagan, just to give you a little color from California, when she was there, 1967 to 1974, she supervised the building of a new modern governor's mansion out in the suburbs. It was too far away. It was kind of emblematic to go from the inner city to the suburbs. But when I was elected, I didn't want to move in. I called it Taj Mahal. I was running on a very austere platform. I had a blue Plymouth. I got a little apartment. I paid my own rent. I had a modest mattress. So I was in the... I was in... On the floor, no government? Well, I was on the floor. I was on a little box. It was on something. But as a matter of fact, I like sleeping on the floor, because then you roll off the middle of the night. You don't have to afford to go. But anyway, so she, I would freeze to move into this mansion. It would cost more if I lived there and I had a little apartment. I was right across from the Capitol. Could walk to work. That was good. So anyway, I made such a thing out of it that the next governor, after me, it was Republican, he wouldn't move in. And then by the time he left, they sold it, they invested the money. By the way, the money for this mansion came from the political donors of Ronald Reagan. So this was his kitchen cabinet. They put up the money. So they sold the mansion. They put it in the fund. It earned good interest. So by the time I came along, they had a nice $4 million fund and I went back to the old mansion and totally reverberated it, picked it up, bought great chandeliers, great, my wife and I picked out the drapes and it was lots of fun. And it was good. And 12 governors live there. And it's, when I had to get the vote on the gas tax, I had the people there till two o'clock in the morning and it has a certain aura to it. So it's functionally, it's functionally productive and it has nostalgia for me. My father, when he was there in 1959, he would, in his bathrobe, go across the street to the mansion, what is it called? The mansion motel, I think. And my mother was very embarrassed because they had a pool over there. So she got his contributors to build a pool, which we still have. And his children swam in it, his grandchildren. And now his great-grandchildren get to swim in the pool. And that's a minor thing. That is not greatly in the public interest, but it's kind of a neat thing. But I will tell you, walking down the stairway, being up the third floor, which is the old ballroom, knowing that Earl Warren spent 10 years there with his family, Lincoln Stephens, a great muck raker around the turn of the century. He owned it before the state bought it. It has a tradition to it. And it gives a certain salinity and weight to the discussions that take place there. And I've invited legislators and all sorts of other people. John Kennedy came there and had a breakfast in the breakfast room, which we use quite frequently. And I was talking to my father when he ran for president. This was when he was a senator. And Dira Gandhi came out there. So there's pictures, there's stories. It has a life. And everything is not disruption and change. There has to be continuity, rootedness, and memory. And that's also part of who we are as a people, where we've come from. So it isn't the White House, but it's better than what some of the other governors chose in the intervening period. So I like that. But what will I miss? That's a good question. I'm only moving an hour away to a ranch that my great-grandfather started in 1878. And he was very smart, because it was a dollar an acre. And I've got 2,500 of them, so I'm very happy. And he was a German who couldn't speak English, but he know how to lend money to people and take their land when they didn't pay them back. But anyway, this is a stagecoach stop. So I feel I'm very grounded in the history of California and a place that is so innovative and everything is disruption, change, Uber and all the rest of this stuff. Okay, good, but you also have to have a past, a structure, an idea. What is the idea of California? The idea of America and that is very important because that is what can unify us because we can be a part of something more generic, something more general as opposed to these smaller loyalties and identities that are pulling the country apart. The governor mentioned his wife, Ann, and I should mention to you that we got a California two for tonight. Not only did we get Governor Brown, but his wife, Ann, is here and we're honored to have you as well, Ann. Thank you. Yeah. Governor, we have a number of students in the audience from the LBJ School of Public Affairs and you have spent your life devoted to serving the public. What advice would you give these young folks? What advice? Well, if you want to get into politics, get in. You have to go work for somebody. Work for a senator or a local official or maybe a think tank or get in a campaign. The campaigns are among the most open pathways of employment that you can imagine. In fact, I think my wife was shocked when we were talking about my campaign in 2010. Who are we gonna hire? Well, we don't go to a recruitment firm. I said, we'll just open this headquarters and people are gonna start coming in the door. And they did and you find good people. So you can actually go into a campaign and if you're good at writing a better, if you're good at fundraising, if you have any organizing ability or functioning, if you got the time, that's a place to start in campaigns. And I've met a lot of people that way. Since I've had a lot of campaigns. I mean, I've been campaigning a lot. My father started, ran for district attorney of the city of San Francisco in 1939 when I was one. I didn't know about that campaign, but he lost every four years later, 1943. And I remember that very well. He had out little cards that said, crack down on crime, pick brown this time. And I used that in my campaign for attorney general. It worked. But so every four years, my father was on the ballot till Reagan beat him in 66. And then after four years later, I was on the ballot, running for secretary of state. And I ran as long as I could. And then in 1982, I had to take a slight sabbatical, extended sabbatical, and then I came back. So I can tell you, campaigns are worth being a part of or working in maybe political offices or maybe in a more policy-oriented way that the school, public policy is a way to both study it and maybe be a part of in some way. So I think there's a lot of entry points which you could realize your political dreams. Governor, you've had a remarkable career. Congratulations on ending your remarkable tenure as the governor of California. And thank you so much for being here tonight. It's been a great honor to have you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.