Word: californiaisms
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Five million people have moved to California since 1958, mostly from the South and the Midwest. Settling in Southern California, they have prospered and do not understand why Negroes and Mexican-Americans cannot also bull themselves up by their bootstraps. These self-made men have vague, probably unsubstantiated fears about open housing legislation, Negro riots, and "lawlessness" and "immorality" at Berkeley. They resented Brown because their property taxes had doubled; they suspected the governor of handing out their money to every "no-good" in the state. Voters like these probably voted Democratic in other years, because many are union members...
...respects, Edmund "Pat" Brown fits the comic strip caricature of a politician. Heavy-set and florid, he talks in superlatives and looks at ease on a campaign platform. Genial most of the time, he blusters and pounds his fist if someone maligns Lyndon Johnson or another Democrat. He knows California as few other people do: probably no one else could be so effusive about the redwoods or the Los Angeles freeway system; probably no one else can name the tiny settlements that dot Highway 395 as it climbs from Barstow to Bishop...
Even during his visit here in March, four months after the election, Brown still seemed stunned that "the people of California turned me out for a motion picture actor--and not a very good actor at that." He gives Ronald Reagan credit for being a "likable man," but still finds it hard to believe that the achievements of his two terms "didn't make any impression at all on voters." When he is pressed to explain his loss to Reagan, Brown confesses--somewhat helplessly--that he just doesn't "understand" the voting public anymore. "I don't think that...
...with intangible sociological phenomena, but his explanation for his loss is particularly apt. Certainly his sponsorship of an unpopular fair housing act, the Watts and Fillmore riots, and repeated demonstrations at Berkeley also played a part in his loss, but behind these issues lies a more important truth about California: the state today is very different from what it was eight years ago, when Brown was first elected governor. And Brown's mistake was that he realized this too late -- after the election...
...understand" the electorate may mean bad days ahead for the old-time political pros. If elections continue to be wide-open, if voters continue to demand new faces and refuse to face the realities of this unlovely urban world, what happened to Brown may happen to other established politicians. California is not the weird anomaly the rest of the country considers it. As the Beach Boys, those insightful amateur sociologists, express it, "this country is becoming just one big California...