I don’t know how important Jerry Brown’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton will prove to be, but in the closing hours of the California Democratic primary campaign, and the closing days of the primary season itself, it cannot hurt. Brown is a four-term governor of California, three-time presidential candidate, and in the reliably dispassionate words of the New York Times, “stands as one of the most popular elected officials in the state.” Since Brown has been uncharacteristically reticent in this campaign season, the Times attaches considerable significance to his endorsement.
Perhaps with reason. But I had another reaction. I doubt that any vote cast for Clinton next week will be a consequence of Jerry Brown’s intervention—as a veteran editorial page editor, I am naturally skeptical of the value of endorsements—but the undue attention paid to his pronouncement suggests that the 78-year-old Brown, at long last, has achieved John Nance Garner status. That is to say, what Brown thinks and says has little significance in itself; but this year’s crop of candidates (Clinton, Bernie Sanders) felt obliged, if only for form’s sake, to seek his blessing.
John Nance Garner (1868-1967) was the Texas-born Speaker of the House in the early 1930s, vice president during Franklin Roosevelt’s first two terms, and a candidate to succeed FDR in 1940. But of course, Roosevelt chose to seek an unprecedented third term that year, sending the 72-year-old Garner into frustrated retirement at his home in Uvalde, Texas. Before long, and beginning with FDR’s successor Harry Truman, a ritual visit to Garner’s home by the Democratic candidate for president became a quadrennial tradition in politics, complete with friendly conversation and photo op. The last candidate to seek Garner’s apostolic blessing from the New Deal era was his fellow Texan, Lyndon Johnson, in 1964. Garner died, aged 99, in 1967—ironically, just a few weeks before Eugene McCarthy announced his intra-party candidacy to unseat LBJ.
The Republican equivalent to Garner, in the late 20th century, was Alfred M. Landon (1887-1987), onetime governor of Kansas, father of Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, and centenarian. But Landon’s parlor in Topeka lacked the resonance of Garner’s front porch: He had, after all, been decisively, even historically, trounced by Roosevelt and Garner in his own quest for the presidency (1936), which lent a certain poignance to the half-century of visits from subsequent GOP nominees.
Which leaves us with Jerry Brown. He is, by any measure, the leading candidate among Democratic elder statesmen for Garner status: He was first elected governor of the nation’s most populous state, succeeding Ronald Reagan, 42 years ago; and he launched his first presidential campaign as long ago as 1976. But Brown’s youthful, sometimes juvenile, manner, and his well-earned (if dated) nickname “Governor Moonbeam,” tend to argue against venerable status. He is, moreover, famously antagonistic to Hillary Clinton’s husband, who no doubt harbors memories of their 1992 rivalry. The Democrats might usefully seek another totem.
For if Hillary Clinton should be the Democratic nominee this year, and if she should choose to make the pilgrimage to Sacramento and call on Jerry Brown, it might well be the most awkward display of party unity since the antiwar Democratic nominee George McGovern was received in Texas (1972) by his reclusive Vietnam nemesis, the aforementioned Lyndon Johnson, whose shoulder-length gray hair was the big story of the day.
