The wandering years
Out of office, Brown took himself out of public life altogether. He headed out on what he called a “seven-year sabbatical of self-renewal and study” in Mexico and Japan — where he studied culture and Zen Buddhism — and in India, where he worked in Mother Teresa’s home for the dying.
“That was a very coherent, inspiring organization of selfless service and activity,” Brown said. “That is not what I find in Sacramento.”
Mother Teresa “had an optimism because of the way she would help poor people, but she couldn’t help all poor people,” he said. “Those she could, she did. That’s bigger than politics.”
In 1992, Brown resurfaced with another presidential bid and a call to arms against a political system “engineered by a confederacy of corruption, careerism and campaign consulting.”
Rejecting contributions over $100, he created a toll-free phone number for donations — anticipating the now-common campaign fundraising website.
He carried his Don Quixote crusade against Bill Clinton all the way to the Democratic convention, then was reborn again — this time, emerging as a talkshow host on noncommercial, far-left Pacifica Radio.
Barbara O’Connor, a retired political communications profes- sor at Cal State Sacramento, produced those radio shows. They gave Brown a new venue to demonstrate he is “very smart, very disciplined and in many ways a person who deeply cares about public service,” she said. “He’s done it in many forms over the course of his career — and he’s learned from each of them.”