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$ Brown was overwhelmingly elected to a second term as Governor in 1978, but he increasingly turned his back on state affairs to wage a second unsuccessful presidential campaign two years later. In 1982 California voters had so tired of his mercurial approach that he was soundly trounced by Republican Pete Wilson in a race for the U.S. Senate.
After that loss, Brown went into exile, studying Buddhism in Japan and working with Mother Teresa in India. The experiences, says Brown, "gave me distance on the whole business of power and ambition. With Mother Teresa there was so much openness and joy in the midst of what appeared to be hopeless situations. I believe what is missing from politics is that sense of joy, service and integrity."
Yet when Brown re-entered politics, he plunged neck-deep into the very cynical side of the business that he now deplores. In 1989 he became chairman of the state Democratic Party, a post that required him to devote himself to shaking down fat-cat contributors. In less than two years he raised $2 million -- but spent much of it on an outsize personal staff and other infrastructure at the party's chaotic office in San Francisco. That performance seems to clash with Brown's current lecturing. "Only last year he spearheaded an effort to throw out contribution limits. He was against many of the things he now says he's for," says Susan Estrich, Michael Dukakis' campaign manager in 1988. Concurs Republican political consultant Ed Rollins: "Right message. Wrong messenger."
How does Brown reconcile his background and his preachments? He doesn't, at least not fully. Serving as state party chairman, he says, was "a learning experience" that opened his eyes to the debilitating impact of money on politics. As Governor, he claims, he was "never one of the boys; the locker room of incumbents was never open to me in a spiritual sense." Now, he says, he is trying finally to do what he should have done years ago, "to close the gap between what I am saying and what I am doing." That is a welcome conversion, but in Brown's case it is probably too late.