Brown's Long Non-Farewell Tour

You’ve probably seen at least a few “exitinterviews” with outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown over the past several months. And if you’re like me, there’s really never enough. The man is endlessly fascinating and a veritable quote machine (even if you need a translator).

The New York Times’ Los Angeles bureau chief, Adam Nagourney, recently visited the governor on the tail end of a non-farewell tour before Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom takes over Monday. Here, Adam shares what it’s like to interview Brown:

After nearly 50 years in California public life, including 16 years as governor, it’s difficult to think of a question that Jerry Brown has not heard before. And Brown can be an ornery interview, particularly when asked questions that strike him as obvious or familiar, as we were reminded during the visit to his ranch.

Like, for example, when Brown was asked if he had any regrets about problems not tackled. Probably not the best question to ask.

“Wouldn’t you say that is a condition of life — that if you do one thing, you don’t do something else?” Brown said. “I have a saying that fits that. Commitment is the enemy of opportunity. To do one thing is not to do something else.”

Fine.

Brown has been famously frugal. The new governor, Gavin Newsom, brings a more liberal view of the world; he’s already moving to spend $1.9 billion in his first budget on preschool programs. The new Legislature will be ruled by a huge Democratic majority.

Does that worry Brown?

“That pressure, it’s always there,” he said. “Pent-up demand.

“Organized demand. Environmentalists. Soda companies. Real estate companies. A hundred different interests.”

Brown said that the dire economic climate he encountered upon taking office eight years ago — a $26 billion deficit — was almost welcome. “I was also able to say no,” he said. But the governor is leaving a $14 billion surplus to his successor, so one big question now is whether Newsom will be able to (or want to) say no.

“We’ll see,” Brown said. “I think he’ll be careful. But the Democratic constituencies want more money and more laws.”

And if the new governor doesn’t say no, Brown said, California’s famous boom-and-bust economy might do it for him.

“There’s a certain exuberance,” he said. “But the business cycle has a limiting influence. Because the recession probably already has begun.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.