The IGS Buzz

An occasional blog about IGS happenings, people, and news contributed by Noor Al-Samarri (Class of 2014).

Mill Valley Film Festival and the Life of Governor Pat Brown

October 19, 2011

Ethan Rarick, Director of the Robert T. Matsui Center on Politics & Public Service at the Institute of Governmental Studies, was consulted with and interviewed in a new documentary about the life and times of Governor Pat Brown - the father of Governor Jerry Brown. In 2005 Rarick published the first biography of the legendary governor, California Rising: The Life and Times of Pat Brown.

For seven years Rarick sifted through Brown's diary, love letters he wrote to his wife, interviews and an array of historical sources to tell the story of the governor, and the era of American politics at the time.

The film, California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown, premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival last week. It was directed by Sascha Rice -Brown's granddaughter - and through home video clips it melds the portrait of a family man with the politician. Another of Brown's granddaughters, Hilary Armstrong, served as executive producer of the film.

What follows is a Q & A with Ethan Rarick about the film, and the man who is its subject.

So, what is your involvement in the film?

My book and the film are about the same topic and I do know Sascha and Hilary who are two of Pat's granddaughters who made the movie. They would occasionally call me up when they were doing research. They would be looking for some document or some source on a given topic and I would try to point them in the right direction. I didn't have anything to do with making the movie, but I was interviewed for it. I think it's very good but I don't want to take any credit for it.

What makes Pat Brown a "legendary" governor?
I think Pat Brown is remembered so fondly now for two reasons. One of which is to his credit, and one really isn't. First, I think he's remembered fondly because he was a good governor and he was a good governor really because he believed that government could do good things. He did not believe as Ronald Reagan said later that government was the problem, not the solution. Pat thought that government could be part of the solution, and so he was an advocate for government in a way that we haven't had in the last 30 or 40 years. Bill Clinton said the era of big government is over. Democrats have started to sound a little defensive about big government in the last 30 or 40 years. Even among Democrats, nobody today really talks about the ways in which government can do things to enrich our society and make our society better, and therefore the anti-government side of the argument often wins by default. Pat was someone who believed in government doing good things and who talked about that - who sold that to voters. And so as a result, while he was governor the California government did a lot of good things - invested in universities, invested in public water projects, invested in public education - and those things built infrastructure that we still enjoy and cherish.

The second part is that he's remembered well because the post-war era - the 50's and early 60's - was an incredibly affluent time in California. The nation as a whole was incredibly rich. California was richer than the rest of the nation. People were moving here in great numbers, and there was an enormous amount of optimism and confidence. People remember that time fondly because things were booming and it seems in retrospect like a kind of "golden era."

Some of this wasn't Pat's doing; he didn't singlehandedly make the economy boom and make people move here. But he gets credit for that because he was governor during a time when the state was prosperous and growing.

What lasting effects on the position has he had?
I don't know that I would say he had lasting effects on the position of governor. I would say that some of the stuff that Pat did as governor had lasting effects on the state.

For example, while Pat was governor for two terms, the state built three new University of California campuses - San Diego, Irvine, and Santa Cruz. They also built eight new CSU campuses, and many new community colleges. Since Pat was governor, the state has opened one more UC campus (Merced) and a few more CSU campuses, but not eight in any one eight-year period. So, that would be an example of something he did which continues to affect the state, because those university campuses have grown into major research universities that educate a lot of young people, that conduct important research, that have a positive economic impact on the state.

Another example would be the California State Water Project that dams the Feather River in the North, and then channels the water South for 500 miles in a canal to farms in the Central Valley and then to Los Angeles. Whether people like large water projects or not - and some people don't because of the environmental impacts - that project continues to provide an enormous amount of water to farms and cities. And without that project the state would be a very different place. That's another example of something they did in that era that changed the state with lasting effects.

Since Pat was governor the population of the state has about doubled. The things they did back then have allowed that doubling of population growth. They've allowed us to educate more young people. They've allowed us to build more housing. All of the infrastructure they built is what has allowed us to deal with the population growth in the last 40 years.

Rice used home videos as well as archival footage to illustrate the life of the governor. Did that help her storytelling?
One of the things I liked about the movie is that Sascha narrates it and is very open about the fact that Pat was her grandfather. I think she did a good job of being fairly objective and including some material that I suspect some family members would not have included. She has a section, for instance, about how her mother Kathleen Brown ran for governor and lost. So I give her credit for that. But it's also true that the film is a subjective portrayal of Pat done by two of his granddaughters. I think that's a strength of the film, but I'm not sure that we'd want the only history of an important California figure done by his family members. So I think my book provides a different perspective that doesn't come directly from Pat's family members. But I think it's good to have both of those things. I like her movie because it's a very personal portrait of Pat's governorship and life.

How does Jerry compare with his father?
He's very different than his dad. The biggest difference is that Pat's politics were formed by the New Deal and by Franklin Roosevelt. Pat's perception that Roosevelt helped lead the country out of the Great Depression gave him this sense that government could do great things, gave him a sense that government could help average people overcome great problems.

That was mixed together with the fact that in the 1920s through the 1960s - the bulk of Pat's adult life - there was very little focus on environmental concerns. The modern environmental movement didn't really start until the mid- to late-1960s. So Pat's generation had very much a sense of boundless optimism, that there were no limits to what was possible. And this was possible both because they believed government could accomplish great things and they had no sense of environmental limits.

Jerry begins his political career just as two things are happening. One, the start of the environmental movement (he was first elected to office in 1969, which was also the year of the first Earth Day). So he begins his career as the modern environmental movement gets underway. He also begins his career just as the oil shocks of the 1970s start to slow down the long-term growth rate of the US economy, just as incomes begin to stagnate when adjusted for inflation. So the huge economic growth following World War II to the early 70s begins to slow down. Jerry is someone who sees many more limits to what is possible.