Transcript: NPR's Full Interview With California Gov. Jerry Brown
In an interview with All Things Considered's Ari Shapiro, California Gov. Jerry Brown reflects on his nearly 50-year political career as he prepares to step down in January. Brown, who will have served four terms as the state's governor, discusses how politics has changed in his lifetime, income inequality and affordable housing, the environment and climate change, criminal justice and what lies ahead in California politics.
Ari Shapiro: Let's start with the big picture. Do you think that in your lifetime politics has changed for the better or the worse?
Gov. Jerry Brown: You know, it's easy to say it's changed for the worse because there's certainly a lot of evidence for that. But if you look over a longer historical time horizon — certainly the fighting between Adams and Jefferson and the Federalists and those who opposed them, the agrarians — there is a lot of nastiness. I mean, people called Lincoln all sorts of names. So we've had periods, in fact quite often, where politics degenerates into very bitter and very sharp name-calling. So I'd say we have a, democracy has this as one of its components and we see that today all over the world and in Brazil and the Philippines and all sorts of places that have democracies.
I would say, though, that the legitimacy, the respect for institutions, is definitely substantially weakened. And I would say that the two parties are certainly polarized. Whether it's greater than at the time before the Civil War, I'll leave that to historians. But between the two parties, there is a real sharp cleavage. It's a Grand Canyon of distance and gap, because Republicans talk different, think different, associate with different people in much of the country, live in very different places, than Democrats. And the older brand of moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats, forming a certain vital center, that's out the window. So I think there are a lot of differences, but I hesitate to too sharply define where we are.
It's interesting to hear you talk about the divide between the parties because for the last eight years you've had the advantage of strong Democratic majorities in the California legislature. And I'd like to talk about what some of your priorities over those last eight years have been. Beginning with By the way we not only have a $14 billion surplus — a rainy day fund that's locked in for uncertain times in the future — we have a $15 billion spendable deficit right now, and that deficit surplus. So yeah, there's a lot of money. We're talking closer to $30 billion.
