File:Jerry Brown 92 Presidential Platform We the People.jpg: Difference between revisions

Jerry Brown / the 1992 Presidential Campaign

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A "Platform in Progress"

SJS / GreenPolicy360 Siterunner:

Personal reflections of 1991/1992 campaign work with Governor Brown, shaping and presenting the campaign's platform.

As the Cold War came to a sudden historic shift in the early 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a debate over the future of conservative, liberal and progressive policy was joined. The Democratic party was at a crossroads and many looked at a future of new possibilities. Earlier work and discussions of war and peace issues with Jerry personally led me to a renewed interest in shaping future national policy. Another campaign with the Governor was set in motion.

My participation in the 1992 Governor Brown campaign for US president began with the establishment of the national office in Los Angeles.

I worked to set up issues, media, and correspondence. I had learned in a "school of hard knocks" in 1988 in Boston, while writing for the Dukakis campaign, that a 'war room' response team was necessary (even as the Clinton campaign in 1992 set up their own War Room with several of the Dukakis campaign veterans who experienced directly Atwater-Ailes type politics). The lessons learned were don't let political attacks go unattended and unanswered, Governor Dukakis refused to fight back immediately, telling staff he would 'take the high road' because the attack ads coming from the Atwater-Ailes-Bush campaign didn't deserve to be answered. So the attacks did their damage without effective, appropriate countering. This would not be the case in 1992 and so I worked to put together a "24 hour" system for response to attacks.

First came our campaign's policies on issues, taken from Governor Brown's own words in his speeches, transcribed and parsed for specific positions. We instituted a "24 hour turnaround" standard for dealing with the media and press. It was, in effect, a version of the Clinton campaign "War Room". Clarify and hit back, hit back hard against false charges and attacks.

I moved to become chair of the Brown campaign in New Mexico and focused on the national platform. Early in the campaign I proposed to draft a formal campaign platform and worked with the campaign and Governor directly to complete our platform document. Our 'out front' positions on issues ranged from the Governor's well-known calls for political reform across to a 'blue-green' agenda bringing together American workers with business in an environmental/economic agenda. With the Governor, I argued our positions and policies throughout 1991/92, in debates, and at the Democrat platform hearings and Convention...

From the Brown campaign platform to the founding US Green party platform

As a note for history and future political reference, a number of policies and positions in the Brown campaign moved forward into the founding Green Party platform which I began drafting in 1993, having moved from the Democratic party to independent status after the 1992 campaign. In 1996, the new Green platform served as a basis of first Green presidential campaign. This platform continued to evolve as your GreenPolicy siterunner drafted and chaired (1995-2001) the platform committee of the newly organized national Green party. The new "official" national founding platform document was approved in 2000 and placed into our Federal Election Commission national committee/party application (and archives) in 2001.

For more history on the founding Green Platform and Green Party, see US Green Platform

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Brown Campaign Statement to the Democratic Party Platform Committee

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Brown_campaign_statement_to_PlatformMtg-1992-WethePeople-1.pdf

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Brown_campaign_statement_to_PlatformMtg-1992-WethePeople-2.pdf

Environmental Excerpts from Jerry Brown's "We the People - Take Back America" Platform of 1992

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Brown_campaign_notes_re_Platform_hearings-1992-SustainableEcon-1.pdf

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Brown_campaign_notes_re_Platform_hearings-1992-SustainableEcon-2.pdf

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Brown_campaign_notes_re_Platform_hearings-1992-SustainableEcon-3.pdf

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Brown_campaign_notes_re_Platform_hearings-1992-SustainableEcon-4.pdf

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SJS / GreenPolicy Siterunner:

From a memoir published by the Green Institute including personal recollections of the 1992 Brown presidential campaign ...

Recollections of the 1992 Presidential Campaign

An Insurgent Campaign

The Democratic Leadership Council and Bill Clinton became the voice of the national Democratic Party, but not before fending off an unexpectedly strong challenge in 1992 by the Jerry Brown for President campaign. Having worked with Governor Brown earlier, I joined up with the national campaign and went about helping organize the national headquarters operations, as well as coordinating the campaign in New Mexico and assisting in Colorado. Most important to me were my efforts with Jerry to put together our campaign’s platform.

The Brown campaign began on October 21, 1991 on the steps of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Governor Brown announced an “insurgent” campaign to “Take Back America.”

I am here today to make a commitment to each of you that I intend to keep and honor: That I will work with all my energy and that I will do whatever is necessary to bring about real change.

Permalink: http://www.4president.org/speeches/jerrybrown1992announcement.htm

Although our campaign ran a strong race, we finished second to the Clinton campaign.

The campaign’s message from the first speech had a steady beat – there had been “a hostile takeover” of American democracy by big money and corporate interests. We presented an historic moment, an attempt to breathe new life into America’s democratic experiment.

The announcement speech set out a political landscape we were entering: “In reality there is only one party: It’s the Incumbent Party. There are, of course, two major political organizations with different names, but at their core they are the same. They share the same worldview and they serve the power of the same private interests which, in return, finance the campaigns of both. When there are no substantial differences, there is no choice to be made. Without choices, there is no democracy and when there is no democracy there is no freedom; only a system which entertains us with illusions.”

Jerry quoted Thomas Paine from the Revolutionary pamphlet The Crisis. “These are the times that try men’s souls.” He quoted General Washington and the ‘dark hour before the dawn’ when Washington’s winter soldiers rallied when faced with imminent defeat. “I run for President because I believe America is at a crossroads… For 200 hundred years, each generation has earned the title ‘American’ by following a simple moral command: that we give our children better than we received; that we pass on a greater future with more freedom and more opportunity… If we, right now, are prepared in the spirit of our ancestors to join in common cause, putting principle before party and patriotism before profits, then we can reclaim for ourselves and our children the idea and promise of America. The hour has rung for us, we the people, to rise up and take back our democracy and our country!”

Micah Sifry wrote about the Brown campaign platform and Green platform in his book Spoiling for a Fight Third-party Politics in America.

Micah's political book worth a read if you're in the mood for diving into the proverbial "weeds", the details of what goes into insurgent and change-directed campaigns. A few excerpts are here.

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The Brown presidential campaign's overarching goal was to construct an ongoing campaign, a "Platform in Progress".

Governor Brown (and your GreenPolicy360 siterunner, Steve Schmidt) continued forward with the campaign's positions long after the '92 campaign...

GreenPolicy's siterunner with Governor Jerry Brown at Democratic platform hearing in 1992

As of 2017, the campaign's 800 number still works ;-

Now the number takes you to the California Governor's office again ;-

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