Epilogue on Chapter XIII: Reflection of the Jerry Brown Administration (1977-1981)
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Epilogue on Chapter XIII: Reflecting on the Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr., Administration
President Jerry Brown holding press briefing in Sacramento, CA: December 1980.
1981 finally arrived, signaling the end of the 'Chaotic 4 Years' of the Jerry Brown administration. The Chaotic 4 Years (1977-1981) as many would call it, had damn good reason for referring to the later part of the 70s as what many strongly viewed it: Chaotic.
Television had some good points too: ABC debuted the American mystery TV series, 'Hart to Hart' starring Robert Wagner & Stefanie Powers on August 25th, 1979. Other good breaking shows such as 'All in the Family', 'MASH', 'Saturday Night Live' including 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' & 'Sesame Street' each served as powerful beacons not only for the children but for the adults, who watched 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' & 'Sesame Street'. While American mystery procedural dramas like 'Quincy, M.E.' & 'Magnum P.I.' continued becoming more popular amongst the American people as well as the international front as well.
On the political front & economic side, the 70s was viewed quite poorly all throughout. Then-President Richard Nixon led them into the decade all right with his foreign policy smooth genius moves such as visiting PRC & the Soviet Union in 1972 which many view as one of the successful foreign policy achievements of his administration & his massive landslide victory over the overrated United States Senator George McGovern (D-SD) seemingly marked the end of progressive dominance over the time. However, Watergate quickly engulfed Nixon's second term & forced his resignation less than two years later on August 9th, 1974. His successor, Gerald Rudolph Ford, whom many felt was the hapless stooge but a nice guy, pardoned Nixon less than a month after ascending to the presidency as America's 38th Chief Executive which caused strong vicious backlash against the GOP in the 1974 Midterms. Suddenly, on September 5th, 1975, tragedy struck when Squeaky Fromme opened fire at President Ford while he was greeting crowd of spectators on the grounds of the CA State Capitol in Sacramento, CA: Ford was assassinated & Nelson Rockefeller ascended to the presidency as America's 39th Chief Executive.
Rockefeller immediately dismantled all of the Detente Policies of the Nixon & Ford administration & aggressively cleaned house by removing half of the Ford holdovers such as Dick Cheney & Don Rumsfeld for example. He also controversial gave the green-light of supporting a controversial CIA-backed military coup attempt in overthrowing Argentine President Isabel Peron in the botched 1976 military coup attempt which backfired following five months of deadly conflict inside Argentina, which the Peronist government emerged victorious & emboldened by wreaking havoc on those who opposed La Presidente: Videla & Massera were killed; Viola, Galtieri & Bignone were imprisoned. Despite several foreign policy controversies, Rockefeller remained a very popular President leaving office on January 20th, 1977 with a 67 percent approval rating. Rockefeller chose not to seek a first full 4-year term in 1976 due to health reasons. He would go onto serve as US Ambassador to Spain under his successor, President Jerry Brown until his mysterious death in May 1979 for reasons as of today are still unknown.
Despite not winning the popular vote but winning the electoral college in 1976 defeating Vice President Edward Brooke, then-CA Governor Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr., narrowly won the Presidency despite many Americans being quite suspicious of a 1st-term US State Governor leaving in the middle of their 1st term by becoming President (which annoyed many Californians). Upon his inauguration as the 40th President on January 20th, 1977 & making history as one of the youngest Presidents in American history at the age of 38, Brown was facing high expectations since he was the first Democrat to win the White House since LBJ in 1964.
It was also during his first year in office, that Brown married his girlfriend, Linda Ronstadt in a special White House ceremony on live television before millions of Americans & across the world, who called it "Wedding of the Year: 1977". Brown also signed the Puerto Rico Statehood Act of 1977 into law & the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was officially admitted to the Union as the 51st state of the United States, one of the most popular hallmarks of the Brown administration.
It was also when Congress secretly passed legislation called The Federal Government Stability Act of 1977 which eliminated term limits on the Presidency in May 1977, which President Brown quietly signed into law without much fanfare.
Suddenly, domestic challenges especially the Inflation Crisis, Energy Crisis including several foreign policy disastrous hot-spots such as Panama, Nicaragua, Iran, Colombia & Saudi Arabia shocked the Democrats, causing them to stumble. Their great fall from grace was caused by Brown's political & foreign policy blunders. Jerry Brown was elected in the desperate hope of many to bringing back the Good Ole Days of JFK & LBJ, in other words: Brown was given high expectations of continuing the legacies of Kennedy & Johnson. Yet, that myth "New Spirit of America" would soon & quickly fade under the weight of reality & from his administration's decision-making including aggressive micro-managing which annoyed many in Congress & everyone else across the country. The economic reforms which was called Brownomics, would prove insufficient & disastrous with massive rise of stagflation & seemed to further alienate Middle America, who never liked Brown in the first place. What also didn't help were these haunting words of Brown's inaugural address, which not only loomed over his administration, but the Dems as well:
"We are in an Era of Limits and we all better get used to it!"
This sent a loud message to liberals & progressives of his party that there would be no more free handouts or anything in the Era of Limits. It also angered many liberals that none of the major domestic programs would get approved in Congress despite the Democratic Party having supermajorities in both the US House of Representatives & United States Senate during Brown's 4 years in office. What also was an irritant was President Brown signing into law, the Consenting Adults Act of 1977, which banned homosexual & lesbian behavior between adults. He also signed Protect American Family Values Act of 1977, which banned LGBTQ people from receiving civil marriage licenses. These moves angered many in the LGBTQ community & many of whom not only pointed their anger not only at President Brown, but at Vice President Jimmy Carter including several conservative Dems in the United States Senate.
There was also anger & disappointment from many in the Civil Rights Movement with the Brown administration's reluctance of supporting the creation of a federal holiday honoring the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., due to strong opposition from conservatives in both the US House of Representatives & United States Senate especially the super staunch conservative Southern Democrats. Despite the Dems keeping both the House & Senate in the 1978 Midterms, Brown announced he wasn't going to be seeking reelection as President in 1980 which shocked the nation, but wasn't a surprise considering his approval ratings plunged downward. It opened the door for Vice President Carter to become the Democratic Party nominee for President at last, but not without difficulty & straining problems from the likes of former LA Governor Edwin Edwards (more on him later in the TL).
Given how many Americans were in tough economic times, which was influenced & worsened by some of his decisions on foreign policy (Iran, Panama, Nicaragua, etc.,), it left a large growing fire of anger, resentment & bitterness at President Brown. Much of the hostility was also coming from the international front: when Brown controversially announced he was supporting Argentina's right of controlling the Falklands, this angered then-British Prime Minister James Callaghan, who on a hot mic during a speech to the House of Commons, called Brown "a fucking dumbass son of a bitch" on live TV. Then-Korean President Park Chung-hee also disparaged Brown too, when he learned of Brown's controversial plan of reducing supporting military nuclear troops out of Korea & other countries. It caused deep hostility between the two Heads of State, leading US Defense Secretary Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., doing political gymnastics in repairing the strained ties between Washington DC & Seoul when he visited Park during face-to-face bilateral meeting in 1977. Eventually, US-ROK relations improved & because of strong conservative pressure from the likes of United States Senators Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), Russell B. Long (D-LA), etc., Brown increased the number of military nuclear troops in Korea to 71,000+; Brown also maintained close diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, France; he also carefully repaired strained ties with Thailand due to the backlash over the Ford administration's controversial handling of the Mayaguez Incident of 1975.
However, Brown still had his defenders & did still have some prominent good bits with him. His controversial but successful Detente Policy by reinstating full diplomatic relations with Cuba including a full red-carpet State Visit with Cuban President Fidel Castro was seen as a foreign policy success, but it angered many in the Cuban American community, who aggressively used their political influence by voting out many of those "Uppity Brown Democrats" in the 1978 Midterms & eventually the 1980 elections. President Brown also hosted both Egyptian President Anwar Sadat & Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at Camp David, where they stayed for nearly three weeks before the three leaders arrvied at the White House via Marine One & signed the Camp David Peace Accords, which is one of the most popular & successful foreign policy achievements of the Brown Presidency. He engineered the safe & peaceful rescue of then-Panamanian President William Alvarez & his family out of Panama & negotiated with the Vatican of ensuring the Alvarezes safe passage into Italy. Brown also had close personal friendships with Mexican President General Oscar Robles, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Liberian President William Tolbert, Jr., Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew, King Bhumidol Adulayeh of Thailand, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Taiwanese Presidents Yen Chia-kan & Chiang Ching-kuo, Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley among countless others.
Despite many of these accomplishments on international affairs & foreign policy, crtics of the Brown administration would rightfully pointed at several key areas for Brown's obvious lack of plans: the Panama Canal Crisis when Torrijos launched a deadly attack on the Canal that briefly resulted in Brown deploying American military troops in securing the Canal (which was rebuilt); then came the Nicaraguan Revolution which ousted the Somoza family after 40+ years in power; Another key foreign policy debacle was the Civil War in South America which Argentina took advantage of the international chaos by launching a sinister deadly invasion of Chile on May 16th, 1978 which resulted in the deaths of over 73,000+ & possibly more Chileans. There was also the controvesy surrounding the shocking assassination of Chilean President Captain General Augusto Pinochet in Summer 1979 which many suspected the Peronist government to have been involved & as of this day, it's unknown who ordered the assassination, but experts strongly believe it's likely that the controversial Jose Lopez Rega & several cohorts of the Secret Task Force including Triple A for being involved in the Pinochet assassination.
Then came the most significant foreign policy tests: Colombia fell to a populist leftist military coup d'etat in the Summer of 1977 which resulted in Army Major General Seymour Quintero taking over the Presidency & establishing a leftist dictatorship. Quintero's aggressive attacks on the Brown administration's foreign policy would result in future leftist leaders dominating Latin America in the future such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, & most of all Nestor & Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, all of whom taunted the US on foreign policy in later decades to come as they would became nagging headaches for future US Presidential administrations going forward.
On January 16th, 1979, the Iranian Revolution exploded which caused the downfall of the Shah & resulted in the Islamists led by Ayatollah Khomeini taking over the Iranian government. The Iranian Hostage Crisis exploded not too long afterwards. As if Iran was giving the Brown administration headaches, then came Saudi Arabia when the Saudi Royal Family was overthrown in a military coup d'etat led by General Jamal Al-Fayheed, who quickly abolished the Royal Family & banned them from ever coming back to the country; plus Al-Fayheed was inaugurated as the Saudi Arabia's first President.
Beyond the constant & multiple growing foreign policy challenges facing the Brown administration, many people began to wonder if America would've been better off if Ford hadn't been assassinated. Hell, many strongly felt Rockefeller would've prevented majority of this mess if he hadn't abruptly retired. This was not a good look for the Democratic Party as they held the trifecta (White House, US House of Representatives & United States Senate) & that meant lots of heavy scrutiny. When people were asked of their opinions of the Brown administration's policies overall: they painted obvious unpleasant collective viewpoints of what was called "The Chaotic 4 Years": massive economic troubles, aggresive micromanaging, foreign policy blunders & various negative actions such as the Panama Canal Crisis, Civil War between Argentina & Chile, Iranian Revolution & Iranian Hostage Crisis. These crises caused lots of heavy burdens for Vice President Carter to carry going into the 1980 Presidential election & despite delicate balancing attempts to distancing himself from Brown, the GOP wasn't going to let Carter get away with it. They were going to tie everything over the past 4 years around "That Peanut Farmer's Neck".
Unsurprisingly, this was a huge & massive opportunity for the GOP. Beyond seeing their crippled foe's approval ratings plunging into the teens, the staunch neo-conservatives & evangelical Christians were determined to taking back America by any means necessary in 1980 & leading the GOP into the White House was former CA Governor Ronald Reagan, who narrowly won the White House following a hard-fought election & Reagan's coattails helped the GOP regain control of the United States Senate by flipping 12 US Senate seats in AL, AK, FL, GA, NC, NH, SD, IA, WI, IN, AK, ID, WA St. GOP also flipped three Governorships in ND, MO & WA St on the coattails of Reagan. For many inside the GOP, it was time for payback after 4 years of the chaotic Brown administration & they were determined & hell-bent on reshaping American politics to a more staunchly conservative direction for decades to come.
Brown was persona non-grata after leaving the White House on January 20th, 1981 with the worst job approval rating of any outgoing US President: 19 percent of Americans approving his job performance. In 1982, Brown attempted a political comeback & got trounced by then-San Diego Mayor (later CA Governor) Pete Wilson in the 1982 CA US Senate election, which all but doomed Brown's political career.
Sometime around 1984, Jerry & Linda quietly divorced & went their separate ways although both remain closed friends as of this day.
Afterwards, he was in political exile for several years before being tapped to serve as chairman of the CA Democratic Party from 1989 to 1991 before abruptly resigning when he briefly ran for the United States Senate in 1992 to replace the retiring United States Senator Wilson Riles (D-CA), before abandoning that Senate campaign by making an unsuccessful comeback attempt for the Presidency in 1992: losing to then 6-term AR Governor Bill Clinton for the Democratic Party presidential nomination (which got uglier & nasty between them due to personal attacks) & Brown faded temporarily but not before making one of the miraclous comebacks: winning election as Mayor of Oakland in 1998 & winning reelection in 2002, both in landslide victories; It was during this time, Brown married for the second time, when he married Anne Gust in 2005 during a special ceremony officiated by United States Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Gust-Brown served as First Lady of Oakland from 2005 to 2007 & she would become a key major political partner in shaping Jerry's political comeback in statewide office when he decided to run for CA State Attorney General.
In 2006, Brown won statewide office again, this time getting easily elected as CA State Attorney General in a resounding landslide victory due to the Blue Wave of 2006 & his popularity as the Golden State's Chief Law Enforcement Officer among Californians greatly improved & then suddenly, explosive scandals engulfed CA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's second term in Sacramento once allegations came out of Schwarzenegger's sexual infidelities with one of his housemaids resulted in her getting pregnant & giving birth to a son. The explosive allegations & the usage of campaign funds in keeping the secret families a secret angered many Californians, who signed petitions in forcing a recall election which was ultimately successful in the Fall of 2007: forcing Schwarzenegger out of the Governorship & in return, Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr., completed one of the most miraclous political comebacks of anyone: winning back the Governorship in a recall election with 58%, being inaugurated as the Golden State's 40th Governor on October 15th, 2007 inside the CA State Capitol Building Rotunda in Sacramento. He would go onto to winning reelection in 2010 defeating Meg Whitman (R) by double digits (53% to 40%) overcoming the massive financial advertising of Whitman's mega billions including overcoming the national Tea Party Wave of 2010 & was easily reelected again to a historic 4th term in 2014 defeating Neel Kashari (R) in a landslide victory (59% to 40%), serving a total of 13 years in the CA Governor's Mansion as the longest-serving Governor in CA history leaving office with a resounding 73 percent approval rating when he left office on January 7th, 2019.
Coming Soon in the Cursed American Presidency: Chapter XIV begins 😎
Epilogue on Chapter XIII: Reflecting on the Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr., Administration
President Jerry Brown holding press briefing in Sacramento, CA: December 1980.
1981 finally arrived, signaling the end of the 'Chaotic 4 Years' of the Jerry Brown administration. The Chaotic 4 Years (1977-1981) as many would call it, had damn good reason for referring to the later part of the 70s as what many strongly viewed it: Chaotic.
Television had some good points too: ABC debuted the American mystery TV series, 'Hart to Hart' starring Robert Wagner & Stefanie Powers on August 25th, 1979. Other good breaking shows such as 'All in the Family', 'MASH', 'Saturday Night Live' including 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' & 'Sesame Street' each served as powerful beacons not only for the children but for the adults, who watched 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' & 'Sesame Street'. While American mystery procedural dramas like 'Quincy, M.E.' & 'Magnum P.I.' continued becoming more popular amongst the American people as well as the international front as well.
On the political front & economic side, the 70s was viewed quite poorly all throughout. Then-President Richard Nixon led them into the decade all right with his foreign policy smooth genius moves such as visiting PRC & the Soviet Union in 1972 which many view as one of the successful foreign policy achievements of his administration & his massive landslide victory over the overrated United States Senator George McGovern (D-SD) seemingly marked the end of progressive dominance over the time. However, Watergate quickly engulfed Nixon's second term & forced his resignation less than two years later on August 9th, 1974. His successor, Gerald Rudolph Ford, whom many felt was the hapless stooge but a nice guy, pardoned Nixon less than a month after ascending to the presidency as America's 38th Chief Executive which caused strong vicious backlash against the GOP in the 1974 Midterms. Suddenly, on September 5th, 1975, tragedy struck when Squeaky Fromme opened fire at President Ford while he was greeting crowd of spectators on the grounds of the CA State Capitol in Sacramento, CA: Ford was assassinated & Nelson Rockefeller ascended to the presidency as America's 39th Chief Executive.
Rockefeller immediately dismantled all of the Detente Policies of the Nixon & Ford administration & aggressively cleaned house by removing half of the Ford holdovers such as Dick Cheney & Don Rumsfeld for example. He also controversial gave the green-light of supporting a controversial CIA-backed military coup attempt in overthrowing Argentine President Isabel Peron in the botched 1976 military coup attempt which backfired following five months of deadly conflict inside Argentina, which the Peronist government emerged victorious & emboldened by wreaking havoc on those who opposed La Presidente: Videla & Massera were killed; Viola, Galtieri & Bignone were imprisoned. Despite several foreign policy controversies, Rockefeller remained a very popular President leaving office on January 20th, 1977 with a 67 percent approval rating. Rockefeller chose not to seek a first full 4-year term in 1976 due to health reasons. He would go onto serve as US Ambassador to Spain under his successor, President Jerry Brown until his mysterious death in May 1979 for reasons as of today are still unknown.
Despite not winning the popular vote but winning the electoral college in 1976 defeating Vice President Edward Brooke, then-CA Governor Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr., narrowly won the Presidency despite many Americans being quite suspicious of a 1st-term US State Governor leaving in the middle of their 1st term by becoming President (which annoyed many Californians). Upon his inauguration as the 40th President on January 20th, 1977 & making history as one of the youngest Presidents in American history at the age of 38, Brown was facing high expectations since he was the first Democrat to win the White House since LBJ in 1964.
It was also during his first year in office, that Brown married his girlfriend, Linda Ronstadt in a special White House ceremony on live television before millions of Americans & across the world, who called it "Wedding of the Year: 1977". Brown also signed the Puerto Rico Statehood Act of 1977 into law & the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was officially admitted to the Union as the 51st state of the United States, one of the most popular hallmarks of the Brown administration.
It was also when Congress secretly passed legislation called The Federal Government Stability Act of 1977 which eliminated term limits on the Presidency in May 1977, which President Brown quietly signed into law without much fanfare.
Suddenly, domestic challenges especially the Inflation Crisis, Energy Crisis including several foreign policy disastrous hot-spots such as Panama, Nicaragua, Iran, Colombia & Saudi Arabia shocked the Democrats, causing them to stumble. Their great fall from grace was caused by Brown's political & foreign policy blunders. Jerry Brown was elected in the desperate hope of many to bringing back the Good Ole Days of JFK & LBJ, in other words: Brown was given high expectations of continuing the legacies of Kennedy & Johnson. Yet, that myth "New Spirit of America" would soon & quickly fade under the weight of reality & from his administration's decision-making including aggressive micro-managing which annoyed many in Congress & everyone else across the country. The economic reforms which was called Brownomics, would prove insufficient & disastrous with massive rise of stagflation & seemed to further alienate Middle America, who never liked Brown in the first place. What also didn't help were these haunting words of Brown's inaugural address, which not only loomed over his administration, but the Dems as well:
"We are in an Era of Limits and we all better get used to it!"
This sent a loud message to liberals & progressives of his party that there would be no more free handouts or anything in the Era of Limits. It also angered many liberals that none of the major domestic programs would get approved in Congress despite the Democratic Party having supermajorities in both the US House of Representatives & United States Senate during Brown's 4 years in office. What also was an irritant was President Brown signing into law, the Consenting Adults Act of 1977, which banned homosexual & lesbian behavior between adults. He also signed Protect American Family Values Act of 1977, which banned LGBTQ people from receiving civil marriage licenses. These moves angered many in the LGBTQ community & many of whom not only pointed their anger not only at President Brown, but at Vice President Jimmy Carter including several conservative Dems in the United States Senate.
There was also anger & disappointment from many in the Civil Rights Movement with the Brown administration's reluctance of supporting the creation of a federal holiday honoring the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., due to strong opposition from conservatives in both the US House of Representatives & United States Senate especially the super staunch conservative Southern Democrats. Despite the Dems keeping both the House & Senate in the 1978 Midterms, Brown announced he wasn't going to be seeking reelection as President in 1980 which shocked the nation, but wasn't a surprise considering his approval ratings plunged downward. It opened the door for Vice President Carter to become the Democratic Party nominee for President at last, but not without difficulty & straining problems from the likes of former LA Governor Edwin Edwards (more on him later in the TL).
Given how many Americans were in tough economic times, which was influenced & worsened by some of his decisions on foreign policy (Iran, Panama, Nicaragua, etc.,), it left a large growing fire of anger, resentment & bitterness at President Brown. Much of the hostility was also coming from the international front: when Brown controversially announced he was supporting Argentina's right of controlling the Falklands, this angered then-British Prime Minister James Callaghan, who on a hot mic during a speech to the House of Commons, called Brown "a fucking dumbass son of a bitch" on live TV. Then-Korean President Park Chung-hee also disparaged Brown too, when he learned of Brown's controversial plan of reducing supporting military nuclear troops out of Korea & other countries. It caused deep hostility between the two Heads of State, leading US Defense Secretary Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., doing political gymnastics in repairing the strained ties between Washington DC & Seoul when he visited Park during face-to-face bilateral meeting in 1977. Eventually, US-ROK relations improved & because of strong conservative pressure from the likes of United States Senators Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), Russell B. Long (D-LA), etc., Brown increased the number of military nuclear troops in Korea to 71,000+; Brown also maintained close diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, France; he also carefully repaired strained ties with Thailand due to the backlash over the Ford administration's controversial handling of the Mayaguez Incident of 1975.
However, Brown still had his defenders & did still have some prominent good bits with him. His controversial but successful Detente Policy by reinstating full diplomatic relations with Cuba including a full red-carpet State Visit with Cuban President Fidel Castro was seen as a foreign policy success, but it angered many in the Cuban American community, who aggressively used their political influence by voting out many of those "Uppity Brown Democrats" in the 1978 Midterms & eventually the 1980 elections. President Brown also hosted both Egyptian President Anwar Sadat & Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at Camp David, where they stayed for nearly three weeks before the three leaders arrvied at the White House via Marine One & signed the Camp David Peace Accords, which is one of the most popular & successful foreign policy achievements of the Brown Presidency. He engineered the safe & peaceful rescue of then-Panamanian President William Alvarez & his family out of Panama & negotiated with the Vatican of ensuring the Alvarezes safe passage into Italy. Brown also had close personal friendships with Mexican President General Oscar Robles, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Liberian President William Tolbert, Jr., Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew, King Bhumidol Adulayeh of Thailand, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Taiwanese Presidents Yen Chia-kan & Chiang Ching-kuo, Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley among countless others.
Despite many of these accomplishments on international affairs & foreign policy, crtics of the Brown administration would rightfully pointed at several key areas for Brown's obvious lack of plans: the Panama Canal Crisis when Torrijos launched a deadly attack on the Canal that briefly resulted in Brown deploying American military troops in securing the Canal (which was rebuilt); then came the Nicaraguan Revolution which ousted the Somoza family after 40+ years in power; Another key foreign policy debacle was the Civil War in South America which Argentina took advantage of the international chaos by launching a sinister deadly invasion of Chile on May 16th, 1978 which resulted in the deaths of over 73,000+ & possibly more Chileans. There was also the controvesy surrounding the shocking assassination of Chilean President Captain General Augusto Pinochet in Summer 1979 which many suspected the Peronist government to have been involved & as of this day, it's unknown who ordered the assassination, but experts strongly believe it's likely that the controversial Jose Lopez Rega & several cohorts of the Secret Task Force including Triple A for being involved in the Pinochet assassination.
Then came the most significant foreign policy tests: Colombia fell to a populist leftist military coup d'etat in the Summer of 1977 which resulted in Army Major General Seymour Quintero taking over the Presidency & establishing a leftist dictatorship. Quintero's aggressive attacks on the Brown administration's foreign policy would result in future leftist leaders dominating Latin America in the future such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, & most of all Nestor & Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, all of whom taunted the US on foreign policy in later decades to come as they would became nagging headaches for future US Presidential administrations going forward.
On January 16th, 1979, the Iranian Revolution exploded which caused the downfall of the Shah & resulted in the Islamists led by Ayatollah Khomeini taking over the Iranian government. The Iranian Hostage Crisis exploded not too long afterwards. As if Iran was giving the Brown administration headaches, then came Saudi Arabia when the Saudi Royal Family was overthrown in a military coup d'etat led by General Jamal Al-Fayheed, who quickly abolished the Royal Family & banned them from ever coming back to the country; plus Al-Fayheed was inaugurated as the Saudi Arabia's first President.
Beyond the constant & multiple growing foreign policy challenges facing the Brown administration, many people began to wonder if America would've been better off if Ford hadn't been assassinated. Hell, many strongly felt Rockefeller would've prevented majority of this mess if he hadn't abruptly retired. This was not a good look for the Democratic Party as they held the trifecta (White House, US House of Representatives & United States Senate) & that meant lots of heavy scrutiny. When people were asked of their opinions of the Brown administration's policies overall: they painted obvious unpleasant collective viewpoints of what was called "The Chaotic 4 Years": massive economic troubles, aggresive micromanaging, foreign policy blunders & various negative actions such as the Panama Canal Crisis, Civil War between Argentina & Chile, Iranian Revolution & Iranian Hostage Crisis. These crises caused lots of heavy burdens for Vice President Carter to carry going into the 1980 Presidential election & despite delicate balancing attempts to distancing himself from Brown, the GOP wasn't going to let Carter get away with it. They were going to tie everything over the past 4 years around "That Peanut Farmer's Neck".
Unsurprisingly, this was a huge & massive opportunity for the GOP. Beyond seeing their crippled foe's approval ratings plunging into the teens, the staunch neo-conservatives & evangelical Christians were determined to taking back America by any means necessary in 1980 & leading the GOP into the White House was former CA Governor Ronald Reagan, who narrowly won the White House following a hard-fought election & Reagan's coattails helped the GOP regain control of the United States Senate by flipping 12 US Senate seats in AL, AK, FL, GA, NC, NH, SD, IA, WI, IN, AK, ID, WA St. GOP also flipped three Governorships in ND, MO & WA St on the coattails of Reagan. For many inside the GOP, it was time for payback after 4 years of the chaotic Brown administration & they were determined & hell-bent on reshaping American politics to a more staunchly conservative direction for decades to come.
Brown was persona non-grata after leaving the White House on January 20th, 1981 with the worst job approval rating of any outgoing US President: 19 percent of Americans approving his job performance. In 1982, Brown attempted a political comeback & got trounced by then-San Diego Mayor (later CA Governor) Pete Wilson in the 1982 CA US Senate election, which all but doomed Brown's political career.
Sometime around 1984, Jerry & Linda quietly divorced & went their separate ways although both remain closed friends as of this day.
Afterwards, he was in political exile for several years before being tapped to serve as chairman of the CA Democratic Party from 1989 to 1991 before abruptly resigning when he briefly ran for the United States Senate in 1992 to replace the retiring United States Senator Wilson Riles (D-CA), before abandoning that Senate campaign by making an unsuccessful comeback attempt for the Presidency in 1992: losing to then 6-term AR Governor Bill Clinton for the Democratic Party presidential nomination (which got uglier & nasty between them due to personal attacks) & Brown faded temporarily but not before making one of the miraclous comebacks: winning election as Mayor of Oakland in 1998 & winning reelection in 2002, both in landslide victories; It was during this time, Brown married for the second time, when he married Anne Gust in 2005 during a special ceremony officiated by United States Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Gust-Brown served as First Lady of Oakland from 2005 to 2007 & she would become a key major political partner in shaping Jerry's political comeback in statewide office when he decided to run for CA State Attorney General.
In 2006, Brown won statewide office again, this time getting easily elected as CA State Attorney General in a resounding landslide victory due to the Blue Wave of 2006 & his popularity as the Golden State's Chief Law Enforcement Officer among Californians greatly improved & then suddenly, explosive scandals engulfed CA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's second term in Sacramento once allegations came out of Schwarzenegger's sexual infidelities with one of his housemaids resulted in her getting pregnant & giving birth to a son. The explosive allegations & the usage of campaign funds in keeping the secret families a secret angered many Californians, who signed petitions in forcing a recall election which was ultimately successful in the Fall of 2007: forcing Schwarzenegger out of the Governorship & in return, Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr., completed one of the most miraclous political comebacks of anyone: winning back the Governorship in a recall election with 58%, being inaugurated as the Golden State's 40th Governor on October 15th, 2007 inside the CA State Capitol Building Rotunda in Sacramento. He would go onto to winning reelection in 2010 defeating Meg Whitman (R) by double digits (53% to 40%) overcoming the massive financial advertising of Whitman's mega billions including overcoming the national Tea Party Wave of 2010 & was easily reelected again to a historic 4th term in 2014 defeating Neel Kashari (R) in a landslide victory (59% to 40%), serving a total of 13 years in the CA Governor's Mansion as the longest-serving Governor in CA history leaving office with a resounding 73 percent approval rating when he left office on January 7th, 2019.
Coming Soon in the Cursed American Presidency: Chapter XIV begins 😎
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