The Republicans have never stopped biting their foreheads over their decision to back Brown. For 15 years, Brown marshalled the power of the speaker in a way no previous speaker had, building a political juggernaut along the way. But a nagging question hovers over the Brown legacy: What good did all this power bring?
His critics say Brown's speakership was an exercise in power for power's sake. When Unruh was speaker, they say, he had broad, thoughtful policy goals he pursued. But Brown had no such goals.
"The problem with Willie," says Bee columnist Dan Walters, "is he has never been willing to use his power and his incredible intellect for much in the way of policy. It was always just for his own aggrandizement. He always felt the need, coming from where he did, to prove that he was the smartest, the most powerful, the hippest."
Walters, who has tracked Brown's entire Assembly career, continues: "He loves to make deals. He just loves it. It doesn't matter what the deal is, he just loves to make it. He pays very little attention to the content.
"Throughout his speakership I watched him become more and more the pragmatist," Walters adds. "He was just interested in moving bills, making deals, getting out of town. He became a technician, there wasn't much policy behind it."
James Richardson, the Bee reporter who's writing a biography of Brown, has a less strident analysis of Brown's tenure. He says Brown has two bedrock ideological planks: civil rights and education.
"In 1962, when he ran for Assembly, he published his platform in the Sun Reporter," Richardson says. "You read it, and it's exactly what he has always stood for. He has never wavered. The platform sets forth a defense of civil rights for all people and education as a way up for people.
"The rest of it," Richardson says, "he will deal away."
The archetypal story about Willie Brown's political style, according to Richardson and others, is the famous "napkin deal." Understand the moves, tactics, and aftermath of the napkin deal, and you understand Brown's strength, as well as his fatal flaw. Indeed, the deal is a cautionary tale for San Francisco voters.
The scene once again is Frank Fat's, a muggy September night in 1987, and the representatives of the state's four major economic powers have gathered over Kung Pao chicken to work out a truce. The mediators: Brown and Democratic state Sen. Bill Lockeyer of Hayward. The task before them nothing short of awesome: to rewrite California tort law.
On one side sit the representatives of the manufacturers, doctors, and insurance companies, all incensed by the huge damage awards handed down in malpractice and liability cases. On the other, the trial lawyers, there to protect the status quo.
The juice in the room is intoxicating; at each table is one of the state's biggest campaign contributors. Brown is in his element.
You'd think such august dealmaking would demand a more dignified finale. But when all sides agree to a compromise, worked out by a table-hopping Brown, Lockeyer has nothing to write on. So he grabs a napkin, scrawls DMZ, for "demilitarized zone," and writes out the terms of the truce.
The legislation is rushed into print 48 hours later and after kangaroo committee hearings it comes up for a vote on the floor of both houses on the last day of the legislative sessions. Consumer advocates and legislators cry foul -- Brown turns a deaf ear.
"I have the votes on the floor tonight," Brown tells Assemblywoman Jackie Speer, when she asks why the issue can't be put off until the next session.
Assemblyman Byron Sher, a Stanford law professor, jumps to his feet and demands a caucus meeting. "There will be no more caucuses tonight Mr. Sher," Brown shoots back.
The episode illustrates Brown at his best and worst: He freed a logjam, but damaged democracy by using dynamite to do it.
"Willie defines the public interest based on who's sitting at the table at any given moment," biographer Richardson says. "The problem is that is never the case. With the napkin deal he forgot to include the consumer advocates and what did we get? Prop. 103," he concludes, referring to the insurance reform measure that voters passed in 1989.
Willie Brown shows up for breakfast at the Terrace Cafe in the Cathedral Hill Hotel -- but something is eating him. The KGO-TV debate the night before was a pro-Jordan setup, he says, greeting me. "The hecklers," he says. "They were Jordan plants. They were white guys, clean-cut white guys from the Sunset."
But the hecklers were yelling at Jordan, I say.
"You're not being cynical enough," he says, pointing his finger at me.
Does he mean they yelled at Jordan to make him look beleaguered in the face of liberal yahoos, thus solidifying his conservative base? I ask.
"Now you got it," he says like a proud teacher.
Over Special K and grapefruit juice, he continues, alleging that KGO anchor Richard Brown was in on the pro-Jordan agenda.
"During my close they were playing chamber music," he says. "Goddamn funeral music."
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