Nation: Long Hot Summer of Discontent

Brown lurches left as he plans his run for the White House

California Governor Jerry Brown has become a serious presidential contender, in part because of his engaging unpredictability as he looks for fresh approaches to old problems. First a move to the right, then one to the left, in a deft political dance that has confused and enraged his enemies and charmed and encouraged his friends. Brown now plans to announce for the presidency in late September or early October. But during a summer of discontent, of battles fought and lost, he may have miscalculated and taken one step too far to the left. The man who has stressed cutting spending and balancing the budget has wound up on many issues in the same camp with those left-wing luminaries, Jane Fonda and her husband Tom Hayden.

For the ever restless Governor, his shifts to the right did not seem to be paying off. Determined to honor his pledge to reduce spending, he vetoed two bills that would have given state employees a bigger pay increase than he favored. But both vetoes were overridden by a mutinous state legislature, which also overturned a third Brown veto. Until this rebellion, the legislature had overridden only three vetoes in 33 years. Another of Brown's favorite conservative causes is bogged down: the drive for a Constitutional Convention to approve an amendment to balance the federal budget.

With little action on the right, Brown has been cozying up to the left. He believes the Haydens can help him put together a national constituency based on opposition to nuclear power, all-out support of solar energy, attacks on big corporations, a noninterventionist foreign policy and a lingering nostalgia for the impassioned politics and communal undertakings of the 1960s. The Governor has even adopted much of the Haydens' rhetoric, including their favorite image for describing the energy crisis: "The Viet Nam of the 1980s."

Brown revealed his new strategy in a series of controversial appointments. In July he named Edison Miller, a former P.O.W. in Viet Nam, to the Orange County board of supervisors. Miller had been formally censured by the Navy Department after an investigation into charges that he had collaborated with the North Vietnamese. But he was recommended by Fonda, who met him when she was broadcasting anti-American messages from Hanoi during the war. She also served as matron of honor at Miller's recent second marriage; Hayden was best man.

The California Democratic establishment was livid over Brown's choice. State Assemblyman Richard Robinson described Miller as "Hanoi's answer to Tokyo Rose." Unable to block the appointment, the Democratic-controlled legislature sought revenge. Earlier, Brown had appointed Fonda to the California Arts Council, a post of no great consequence. But in retaliation for Miller, as well as for Fonda's defense of the North Vietnamese for expelling the boat people, the senate rejected her appointment, 28 to 5. Expressing the feelings of most of the people who had written to the senate, Republican Robert Nimmo said: "By all standards by which I was raised, Fonda was guilty of having committed treason."