I am intrigued to see Jerry Brown running for governor of California again. He served in that post from 1975 until 1983. Most news stories today say he served from 1974 but he was elected in '74 and assumed office in '75.
My recollections are that I found him very annoying and arrogant and humorless in his public statements but that he did a pretty good job of running an impossible-to-run state and cleaning up a large mess left by his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. (For what it's worth, I thought Reagan was not only a terrible governor his first term but that he did the kind of job that had it been done by anyone else, would have caused Ronald Reagan to demand the guy's resignation or recall. He was somewhat better in his second term and actually undid a fair amount of his own damage. Brown undid most of the rest.)
In a situation not unlike we see today with Barack Obama, and saw to some extent with Bill Clinton, Jerry Brown achieved many things as governor that were on Republican wish lists, mostly relating to fiscal responsibility. But because he was a Democrat, Republicans felt they had to figure out some way to trash him for them…and did. He also got painted as a kind of a nutcase for one or two ideas that have since proven to be eminently sensible. At one point, he proposed that the state investigate launching its own communications satellite and leasing its services out. It was prescient in terms of where technology was heading but at the time, his foes mocked him as some sort of stoned-out Trekkie who wanted to colonize the galaxy or something. "Governor Moonbeam," they called him and the label stuck — unfairly, I thought.
I have no idea what kind of governor he'd be today. Heck, I have no idea why anyone would even want to be governor of California these days. The financial crisis looks increasingly unfixable and may require not just a restructuring of our state treasury but of our state constitution, as well. But even as a Democrat, Brown has always been fiercer about controlling the size and spending of government than most Republicans who claim to believe in that kind of thing. I might change my mind the minute he starts campaigning but right now, I'm thinking he could be the right man for the job.