united in our calm determination

Jerry Brown is Governor of California.

Again.

He was governor of the Pacific Coast state from 1975 to 1983.

I thought that was an interesting development.
I hadn't been following California scene, so this information kind of sneaked up on me.  (Snuck?)

----------------[excerpt, Convention, by Richard Reeves] -- ...New Orleans and Kansas City simply did not have enough hotel rooms; and Los Angeles -- the city of angels was ruled out because the Democrats were convinced that the governor of California was crazy.

Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Jr., was not crazy at all.  He was a clever politician with a talent, at least as impressive as Jimmy Carter's, for reaching people, especially young ones.  Trading smartly on the name and connections of his father -- former California Governor Pat Brown -- he had barely won election in 1974, but had become phenomenally popular since. 

A former Jesuit seminarian who was inaugurated to the chants of a Sufi choir, Brown captivated Californians by circumventing liberal-conservative dogma and by wittily espousing an evolving, cerebral mix of the teachings of Saint Ignatius and Thomas Aquinas, Buddha, the existentialists, and Machiavelli.

...Jerry Brown arrived in New York as a serious presidential candidate, having won 320 or so delegates in a series of spectacular late primary victories.  He started too late to stop Carter --

the Georgian was a declared candidate before Brown took office on January 1, 1975,

and the Californian was forced to wait a while before flashing his ambition.  But in the stretch, Brown badly embarrassed the front-runner.  He out-Cartered Carter -- Brown became the fresh face, the mysterious outsider, and Carter was the Establishment figure trying to consolidate his holdings.

Even after Carter had clinched the nomination by winning the Ohio primary on June 8, Brown refused to quit, traveling the country needling the Georgian and picking up a few loose delegates here and there.  Now, as usual, no one was sure what the hell Jerry Brown was going to do next. ...

On Carter's floor of the Americana and on Strauss's floor of the Statler Hilton, the fear was that Brown would try to address the Convention and perhaps spark a movement for himself as the vice-presidential candidate.  It was a measure of the pull of Brown's vague rhetoric about a new generation of leadership and planetary realism that both Strauss, and Carter's senior adviser Charles Kirbo, agreed that everything possible should be done to prevent Jerry Brown from getting near the podium.

...[at the end of Convention, Jimmy Carter's acceptance (of the Dem. nomination) speech]...
"All my life I've heard promises about tax reform, but it never quite happened.  With your help, we are finally going to make it happen, and you can depend on it!

It's time for our government leaders to respect the law no less than the humblest citizen, so that we can end once and for all a double standard of justice.  I see no reason why big-shot crooks should go free, and the poor ones go to jail.

We have an America that in Bob Dylan's phrase is busy being born, not busy dying....

We will go forward from this Convention with some differences of opinion, perhaps, but nevertheless united in our calm determination to make our country large and driving and generous in spirit once again; ready to embark on great national deeds and once again, as brothers and sisters, our hearts will swell with pride to call ourselves Americans.

Thank you very much.  God bless you."

Bob Strauss bounced up to the microphone and began a long final cheer of unity, his unity, calling name after name and waving Democrats to the podium:  "Senator Scoop Jackson . . . Congressman Morris Udall . . . Senator Frank Church . . . Governor Jerry Brown . . .

... Jerry Brown walked back to the McAlpin along West 33rd Street, smiling when a teenager called out:  "We want you for president, Jerry!"

"Well, keep it in mothballs," Brown yelled back.------------------- [end excerpt]

=========== First you love me,
then you get on down the line...
(Fleetwood Mac)

------------------------------
{excerpt from Convention, written by Richard Reeves.  Copyright 1977.  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.  New York and London.}

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