THE FIRST TERM

Now that I had to govern California, it occurred to me there was something so basic about doing any job - call it common sense, if you will - that it didn't take a lot of reflection on my part to decide how I was going to approach my new occupation. First, I had to select the best people I could find for my administration - people whom I could rely on and trust; this we accomplished by going out and recruiting top people from the business world and elsewhere. Then, I had to set policies and goals I wanted these people to accomplish and to do whatever I could to help them achieve these goals. It seemed like simple, basic, sound management policy to me. It worked for me in Sacramento and it worked for me later in Washington. I've been criticized for what some people call a "hands off" management style. But I think the criticism has come from people who don't understand how we operated.

I told the cabinet members that I didn't want them to speak up only on the matters that affected their own departments. They were all my advisors, I said, and I wanted to hear everything that each of them had to say about whatever topic we were considering, whether it involved their department or not, including any reservations they might have about a proposal; this gave me the opportunity to get opinions from a variety of perspectives, not only from the people who might be supporting a certain project or program. Some people have suggested that both in Sacramento and in Washington my cabinet meetings resembled the meetings of a corporation's board of directors. I suppose that's true, but there was one difference: We never took a vote. Everyone pitched in and was involved in the give and take of debate, but when the discussion was over, they all knew it was up to me and me alone to make the decision.

Meanwhile, I learned that things were even worse for California than I'd thought they were during the campaign. Through accounting sleight of hand, the previous administration had concealed the fact that the state government was broke. One day, after he'd met with members of the outgoing administration, Caspar Weinberger, a San Francisco lawyer who was among the first people we brought from outside government to assist in the transition as director of finance, came to me and said: "The state's spending more than a million dollars a day more than it's taking in and it's been doing that for a year." The Democrats in Sacramento had known about the mounting deficit for almost a year, but had concealed it by altering bookkeeping procedures that pushed the deficit into the subsequent fiscal year; then, they had gone on spending as extravagantly as always, while avoiding the embarrassment of an election-year tax increase. Now suddenly the state faced its worst financial crisis since the Depression, and it was up to me to end it.

In my inauguration speech on January 2, 1967, I informed Californians about the financial mess we had uncovered and promised to do everything I could, as soon as I could, to put the state's financial house back in order. We hired a team of independent auditors who documented for the people how bad the mess was, and then I went on television and said I had no choice but to ask for a tax increase. It was not an enjoyable speech to make. I'd campaigned on a promise to keep the lid on taxes, now I was asking for an increase. But I swallowed hard and said that as soon as I could, I'd make sure we gave the people some of their money back to them. Over the next eight years, we did just that four times, but that's getting ahead of my story.

When I arrived in Sacramento it had been less than two years since a large portion of Los Angeles had gone up in smoke during the Watts riots. To find out what was going on, I decided to visit families who lived in black neighborhoods around the state as well as the large Mexican-American barrio in East Los Angeles. I decided to keep the visits secret from reporters and never told anyone about them: I'd disappear for a few hours, travel incognito to private homes, and talk to the family to learn what was on their minds. One of the first things I heard was a complaint that blacks weren't being given a fair shot at jobs in state government. I looked into it and confirmed that virtually the only blacks employed by the state were janitors or those working in other menial positions, largely because state civil service tests were slanted against them. Some blacks just hadn't had the opportunity to get the same kind of schooling as other Californians. They were as capable as anyone else, but the tests were skewed to make it difficult for them to compete on an equal footing with whites for the better jobs, trapping them forever at the bottom of the ladder. We then changed the testing and job evaluation procedures to make sure that, in the future, everyone got an even break.

At a meeting in East Los Angeles, several mothers told me that their kids weren't doing well in school, in part because their teachers were ignoring the fact that their native language was Spanish. One mother told me that because her son had had difficulty in school, his teacher had sent him to a special class for retarded children; luckily, another teacher realized his only problem was difficulty with English, and he was transferred out of the class and eventually graduated from high school with the highest honors. This mother told me she knew of other children who had not been as fortunate as her son. I suggested to the group of mothers that they volunteer to take turns visiting their children's classes to monitor whether their children were having a language problem. They looked at each other, then back at me, and said they'd be delighted to do that, but couldn't because only people with teacher's certificates could participate in classroom functions. I thought it was ridiculous that a parent couldn't assist in school and arranged for the rule to be changed. Later on, as an outgrowth of this, California became a national pioneer in a program that enlisted the help of parents in the early education of their children.

During those first few months in Sacramento, Nancy began to realize that being the wife of a man in public life could bring with it the unwanted role of serving as a target of potshots meant for him; but it wasn't easy for her, and it never would be. I know it never became any easier for me. I wish I had been able to find as easy a way to deal with attacks on her. In some ways Nancy and I are like one human being: When one of us has a problem, it automatically becomes a problem for the other; an attack on one of us is an attack on both of us. When one suffers, so does the other. Over the years, I've often felt guilty that so much flak meant for me was aimed at her. When somebody would say something untruthful or nasty about Nancy and I'd get upset about it, people would tell me, "Oh, that's just politics." Well, I never agreed with that or got used to it. There is no justification for a political opponent or someone in the press to go after a man's wife just because he is in politics.

We hadn't been in Sacramento for more than a few months when I came home one day and told Nancy: "I spent thirteen years at Warner Brothers and they couldn't give me an ulcer, but I think I'm getting one now." I'd felt a sharp pain down in my stomach that wouldn't go away. When I told Nancy's father and brother, who was also a doctor, about it, they agreed it sounded like an ulcer, then my regular physician confirmed the diagnosis. I'm not sure when I started to get the ulcer; it's possible it started when I first came under that pressure to run for governor, when I couldn't get people to take no for an answer. Whatever its origins, my battles with the legislature, the continuing upheaval on our campuses, and the other problems we ran into during that first year or so contributed a lot to that pain down in my stomach.

I was ashamed for having an ulcer. I'd always regarded an ulcer as evidence of weakness, and now I had one. I didn't want anybody to know about it and so I kept it a secret from everyone except the family. I certainly didn't want the press saying the Democrats had given me an ulcer. I watched my diet, avoided the inevitable fried chicken, took a daily dose of Maalox, and prayed the ulcer would go away. But as we continued to open drawers and find more problems, the ache in my stomach got worse. A little over a year later, however, I reached for my bottle of Maalox one morning and something inside me said, "You don't need this anymore." So I put down the bottle and didn't take my medicine that morning. An hour or two later, I had an appointment with a man from Southern California who had a problem he wanted to discuss with the governor. As he was leaving my office, he turned around and said, "Governor, you might like to know that I'm part of a group of people who meet every day and pray for you."

I was taken aback by what he said, but thanked him and said I also put a lot of stock in the power of prayer. Later the same day, another person, this time a man from Northern California, came to see me about a different matter, and as he was leaving a similar thing happened: He turned around and told me that he met with a group of people who prayed daily for me. Not long after that, I went to the doctor for my regular checkup. He poked my stomach and did the usual battery of tests. When he was finished, he looked up at me and said it seemed I didn't have an ulcer anymore. When more test results came in, he said there was no evidence that I had ever had an ulcer. The power of prayer? I don't know, but I'd prayed daily for relief and I can't forget that impulse I had to stop taking my medicine, and then hearing about those prayers other people were saying for me.

Around the same time that my ulcer disappeared, things had started to turn up for me in Sacramento. Our spending cutbacks and the tax increase had begun to put the state's financial house in order; I was learning a little more about how to deal with a hostile legislature; I was learning how valuable the line-item veto, the governor's authority to veto individual items in a budget proposal, can be when you're dealing with an unfriendly legislature; and I was learning probably the most important political lesson of my years in Sacramento: the value of taking my case to the people. Although the Democrats controlled the legislature, it occurred to me that I had an opportunity to go over their heads. Franklin D. Roosevelt gave me the idea with his Fireside Chats, which made an indelible mark on me during the Depression. By going on television or radio and telling the people what was going on in Sacramento and what we were trying to do about it, I thought I might be able to get public opinion on my side. It worked better than I ever dreamed it would.

One day in 1968, Cap Weinberger, the state finance director, came to my office to tell me he had been going over the books and that he expected the state to have a budget surplus of more than $100 million the following fiscal year. The surplus was a result of the tax increase I'd signed to close the Brown administration deficit and some of our initial cost-cutting efforts. Cap said no legislators knew about the projected surplus yet and he asked me if I had any ideas on how I wanted to spend it - whether, for example, I wanted to proceed with projects or programs we'd had to curtail because of the deficit crisis. Before legislators could learn about the extra money, I decided to go on the air and tell Californians about the surplus and suggest that it be returned to them. Since the surplus was expected to equal about ten percent of the revenue normally collected through the state income tax, I suggested the best way to deal with it was for Californians, when the computed their income tax the following year, to send a check for only ninety percent of what they owed. When the legislators heard that, they went wild. But it was too late; the people knew about the surplus. They wanted it back - and they got it back.

Then early in 1968, several leaders of the state Republican party came to see me and said they wanted me to run for the Republican presidential nomination on the California primary ballot the following June as a favorite-son candidate. If I did, he said the party could avert a repeat of the kind of bloody battle between moderates and conservatives that split the party so badly in 1964. I agreed with them that there were still lots of hard feelings left over from the Goldwater-Rockefeller primary fight and that a heated primary race between the three major candidates in 1968 - Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, and George Romney - would probably reopen the wounds. But running for president was the last thing on my mind. I'd been governor for less than two years and I said it would look ridiculous if I ran for president. But they countered: "A favorite-son candidate is not the same thing as a real candidate. If you enter the primary as a favorite son, the major candidates won't enter the race, so we'll avoid a disastrous primary fight; as governor, you'll win the primary, but that only means you'll head the delegation to the convention."

"Okay," I said, "I'll do that, I'll enter my name as a favorite son, but that's all, and only on one condition: that our delegation be representative of all sides in this split, not just one group." They promised to balance the delegation - and they did.

By the time the convention opened in Miami Beach in early August, George Romney had lost his initial momentum and the race had boiled down to a battle between Rockefeller and Nixon, who was completing his great political comeback after the defeats of 1960 and 1962. When I arrived at the convention, I was surprised to learn quite a few delegates had pledged their support to me, but I continued to tell them I wasn't a candidate and didn't want it. But they'd just go away and say I was a candidate. Well, when the balloting took place, I got a sizable number of votes behind Nixon and Rockefeller, but Nixon had the clear majority and so I ran up to the front of the hall and jumped on the platform and asked the chairman for permission to address the convention.

At first, I was turned down because of a procedural rule, but after a minute they agreed to waive the rule and let me speak and I made a motion that the delegates nominate Richard Nixon by acclamation and they did so with a tremendous roar. Because I consented to be a favorite-son candidate that year, some people have suggested that I was bitten by the presidential "bug" back in 1968. But it wasn't true. When Nixon was nominated, I was the most relieved person in the world. I knew I wasn't ready to be president. I knew there was still lots of work to be done in Sacramento.

During the peak of unrest on our college campuses, student leaders from the nine campuses of the University of California asked to see me in Sacramento. I was delighted to see them. During those days, if I'd visited one of their campuses, I'd have started a riot. When I'd been campaigning, I was cheered by students because I was running against an incumbent who was part of the establishment. Now, I was the establishment. When the delegation arrived in the capitol, some were barefoot and several were wearing torn T-shirts; when I entered the room, they sat silently where they were, some sprawled out on the floor. No one stood up. Then their spokesman began: "Governor, we want to talk to you, but I think you should realize that it's impossible for you to understand us - It's sad, but it's impossible for the members of your generation to understand your own children. "You weren't raised in a time of instant communications or satellites and computers solving problems in seconds that previously took hours or days or even weeks to solve. You didn't live in an age of space travel and journeys to the moon, of jet travel or high speed electronics." While he paused to take a breath, I said: "You're absolutely right. We didn't have those things when we were your age. We invented them"

As a seventeen-year-old college freshman, I'd known something about student protests firsthand. But what occurred on California's campuses during the late 1960s didn't bear any resemblance to our placid protest at Eureka College against an administration plan that would have denied dozens of upperclassmen their chance for a college degree. When it began, perhaps students at the University of California had grounds for grievances against the institution they had entered: Full of dreams and full of ambition, they had been herded into gigantic classes and handed over to a faculty they seldom saw, one that spent most of its time on "research," and turned over its responsibility to teach to inexperienced teaching assistants not much older than the students themselves. The students were given little attention as individuals.

I understood their sense of alienation, but whatever the source of this alienation, it was expropriated by articulate agitators - many of whom had never been inside a college classroom - who then turned it into an ugly force that could not be tolerated. A great educational institution became paralyzed. In later years, some participants in those revolutionary days have tried to look back on them as heroic and noble. Whatever it might have been at the beginning, the upheaval that shook so many of our campuses when I was governor wasn't a gallant or idealistic rebellion to right some wrongs: It was violent anarchy; the campuses were literally set afire by rioting mobs in the name of "free speech."

As Americans, the Constitution guarantees them the right of free expression. But there was nothing noble about those who under the anonymity of a mob injured others, burned, destroyed, and acted like storm troopers on the streets of Berkeley and other college towns. The vast majority of students at the university only wanted an education. But for months they were robbed of it by the rampaging of a minority; meanwhile, many moderate voices on the faculty were silenced by the intimidation of left-wing professors whose vision of freedom of speech was limited to speech about things they agreed with. As I've said, I campaigned for the governorship by saying the campus rioters should "Obey the rules or get out," and that was the policy I applied when I became governor. The state had a responsibility to establish rules of behavior for the students to whom it gave an education, and, as governor, it was my job to enforce them.

One day during the spring of 1969, more than two thousand rioters charged down a street in Berkeley toward a line of policeman and literally trampled them underfoot, sending forty-seven to the hospital. The president of the university called me from the chancellor's office at the Berkeley campus and said he was with the mayor and police chief of the city. They had agreed unanimously, he said, that they could no longer guarantee the safety of citizens in Berkeley and wanted me to send in the National Guard to quell the rioting. These were stormy times, but I'll never forget one very quiet moment during that period. One day, I arrived at the University of California campus in San Diego for a meeting of the Board of Regents and there was a huge crowd of demonstrators waiting outside.

The security people told me to remain in the car so that they could drive around to a rear entrance of the building away from the demonstrators. Well, I didn't want to do that. I told them I'd walk through the front door of the university administration building as I was supposed to. It was a long walk, about 150 yards, to the building. On one side was a knoll and on the other side a smaller rise; both areas were packed with demonstrators all the way from the street to the front door of the building, and I had to take that long walk between them by myself. The protestors had decided to hold a silent demonstration, with not a sound, and everyone just standing and glaring at me as I made the walk; the silence had an effect and pretty soon it began to seem like a very long walk and I was feeling a little uncomfortable. I had almost reached the building when one girl left the crowd and started descending from the knoll, headed right for me, and I thought, Lord, what have they got planned now? As I approached her, she was waiting for me and she held out her hand and I took it. Then her voice broke the start silence and said: "I just want to tell you, I like everything you're doing as governor."

I'll never forget the sound of her voice rising out of the silent crowd. I was going on into the building, she was going to be left outside with her peers in a crowd with whom she had held the courage to disagree. In subsequent years, sometimes when I had a decision to make and the easy way out was to go along with the crowd, I have thought about this young woman's demonstration of courage. And I have always felt terrible that afterward I didn't try to learn her name so that I could tell her how much it had meant to me that day. Once the National Guardsmen restored order on the campuses, no more policemen or other people were attacked by rioters and peace began to be restored to our universities.

Once the campuses were quieter, I could turn back to our efforts to cut costs and try to make government efficient. The teams of business people that I appointed right after the election had conducted in-depth studies of sixty-four state agencies and confirmed what I had suspected: Many were run in such an old-fashioned and inefficient fashion that they wouldn't survive in the real world outside government for more than a few weeks. Giving of their time month after month, sometimes to the detriment of their own businesses, members of our task forces (who dubbed themselves "Reagan's Raiders" and had cuff links made with a replica of my head on them) helped implement thousands of recommendations to upgrade the efficiency of the state departments. They saved taxpayers hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of dollars, often simply by incorporating into the state government the most basic modern business practices found in any forward-looking business.

I got a call from several black leaders from the San Francisco Bay Area who said they wanted to talk to me about my "treatment of blacks." When they arrived in my office, it was clear what was on their minds; there was a look of hostility on their faces and it was evident they were just itching to attack me as a racist. And so, I said: "Look, are you aware that I've appointed more blacks to executive and policy-making positions in the state government than all the previous governors of California put together?"

One said, "Yes, but why aren't you out there telling people about it? How come you haven't bragged about it?" Well, I was amazed by the question. "In appointing these people, I just was doing what I thought was right," I said. "I think it would have been cheap politics if I'd gone out and started singing a song about it. Besides, they were the best people for the job; I didn't appoint them just because they were blacks." With that, the whole atmosphere of the meeting changed. They said they thought I had been quiet about it because I was fearful of angering my more conservative white supporters. When we left the room, we left literally with our arms around each other.

Courtesy of Simon and Schuster