Willie Brown: A Biography

left-leaning love letter to a fascinating political figure: Parts of the book are overly detailed, yet some parts are quite sparse. The portrait of Brown's hometown of Mineola, Texas is riveting yet there are few details of what Brown was like as a child -- readers wanting to find out what books, philosophers or anything that inspired Brown will be left wanting. We must settle for the unsupported statement that he was a voracious reader. Also, there seems to be a mismatch in focus -- over half of the book is devoted to Brown's career before becoming speaker when he really was a marginal figure. Perhaps a dozen pages are devoted to obscure delegate credentialling details about the '72 convention that could have been covered in a fraction of the space.On the objective side, the book does call Brown to task for several ethical and race-baiting missteps, and he largely accepts the common view of Brown as a fixer extraordinare who made the trains run on time in the legislature at the expense of an agenda. The author also perceptively highlights why Brown succeeded tactically in holding his Speakership for so long, sometimes by pulling absolute political miracles. This is when the book is at its best, showing how Brown has become one of the most powerful, savvy figures in California political history. On the minus side (for those who prefer their history unfiltered by the author's personal politics) references abound throughout the book to "ultra right conservatives", "hard right conservatives" and the like but there are no similiar references to figures on the left; Jesse Unruh and Ronald Reagan have "cronies" while Brown has friends. While clearly critical on occasions, at other times the author blatantly bends over backwards to make Brown look good. When Brown made some vicious personal public remarks about then Governor Duekmajian (sp?) the author criticizes Brown yet excuses him by saying he was just doing so to satisfy the Democrat Assembly members who disliked the Duke, yet its impossible (for me at least) to believe Brown's Assembly delegation ever included people who demanded hateful comments from the Speaker. Throughout the book, Brown is portrayed as a consummate, off-the-cuff showman who's unmatched with his rapier-like comments, yet we're expected to believe this one was done calculatingly to satisfy people who insisted that Brown engage in brutal personal insults. This doesn't hold water. The author also uncritically accepts Brown's assertion that he went to law school on a whim and says if he hadn't seized this seemingly random impulse, he never would have gone into politics. This seems a stretch to say the least, largely because the author paints a quite vivid picture of Brown the showman who lives for thie limelight -- it's virtually impossible to imagine this truly unique personality not in politics. That, and the fact that he was running for office by the time he was 28 indicate to me that like Bill Clinton, Willie Brown was intent on being a politician at an early age. In the "give Willie the benefit of the doubt" category, outrageous remarks that can be fairly categorized as inciting violence are excused because Brown, according to the author, was so personally devastated by RFK's assissination a few weeks before. Yet the author provides nothing to support this strange assertion. It seems reasonable to conclude the author is going to extremes to excuse some of Brown's most inexcusable conduct. At the end, the author drops all pretense of objectivity and discloses that he was a McGovern delegate at the '72 convention (which explains why, although doesn't justify, the excessive focus on that convention's minutae) and highlights Brown's greatest achievement as stymying the agendas of numerous Republican governors during his Assembly career. The book was enjoyable largely because the subject is so fascinating. Parts of it are extremely well written, filled with strong analysis and the author undeniably did a tremendous job researching the book, but even more, in landing firsthand interviews with the major participants. Nonetheless, the book is unevenly focused, lavishing attention on Brown's flamboyance at the expense of personal insights. There is also a sometimes subtle but unmistakable bias from beginning to end in favor of Brown's leftist politics and Brown himself.