California Rising: The Life and Times of Pat Brown

13. Rejection

271 13 REJECTION HOME AT LAST AFTER six weeks in Europe, Brown found it difficult to readjust.1 Returning to workaday concerns was not the only adaptation he faced, for that fall he and Bernice passed a milestone of aging:Their last child enrolled in college. Kathleen’s choice baffled and frustrated her father, for she decided to attend Stanford.The builder of campuses for the University of California could not understand why his daughter would snub the state’s great public university. But he agreed to let her go, swayed by the advice of the nuns who ran her boarding school and the willingness of Lou Lurie, a rich businessman and supporter, to pay her tuition. Coming to peace with some of her decisions once she reached the campus proved impossible. She dropped French for art history, which seemed absurd to the practical graduate of a night law school. When she told him about the switch, he hung up the phone.2 He made time to visit, and as always, he sought attention. Amazingly, he seemed genuinely mystified that his children found the trait embarrassing. He wrote to Kathleen afterward: I couldn’t understand the other day why you were so quick to get me out of the dining room where you were with all of those girls. I wish you would explain to me what is wrong with being the governor of California. I thought you would show me off to those young ladies instead of giving 272 FALLING me the bum’s rush out of the dormitory. Next time I will come earlier, blow the siren in front of both the men’s and women’s dorms, have the red light on, and I’ll have three highway patrolmen with me instead of just one.3 The trip to Palo Alto was followed by a brief return abroad: Brown stood in for Kennedy at the inauguration of Argentina’s new president. Brown’s official car—adorned with the Stars and Stripes on the front fender—was pelted with gravel and coins by demonstrators chanting “Castro sí, Yankee no.” “I don’t consider it very important,” the governor told reporters as he arrived back in the United States, “because no harm was done.”4 But perhaps it was an omen. Second terms are often a grinding chore, and, in that fall of 1963, Brown was marching toward trouble. In the coming months, he would face a complicated and perplexing swirl of events with intertwined story lines of presidential politics, bitter personal rivalries, race relations, even life and death. At varying times and with varying degrees of justification, he would be portrayed as an extraordinarily decent man, a conniving politician, a dedicated liberal, a compromising moderate, a sharp tactician, a bumbling dolt. More than at any other time in his career , success would blend with failure, although in the long run his world would slowly disintegrate from the joy of political triumph to the bitterness of political rejection. Worse, it was only the beginning of his woes. ——— On November 22 Brown was working in his office on the first floor of the Capitol when an aide came in to tell him that President Kennedy had been shot. They waited a time to get more news, but as the situation clarified horrifically, Brown decided he should make some comment.5 His voice laden with emotion, he spoke haltingly, searching for words, a rare thing for him. “One of the great American presidents has died,” he began. He hoped that Kennedy’s death might bring about “a lessening of some of the hatreds not only in our own country but in the world.” He mentioned his personal feelings of loss, extended his condolences to the family, and asked Californians to pray for the new president and the country . “I’ve asked everyone to go home,” he said. “I don’t think it’s fitting that there be any more work today, and I myself, I’m going to cancel everything else today.” Then he added simply, as if he did not know what else to do, “Now that’s all I want to say.”6 REJECTION 273 It was decided immediately that he would attend the funeral. Brown’s back had been hurting him, but that was nothing under the circumstances, so he boarded the Grizzly for the short flight to San Francisco and then...