Jerry Brown is serving the second year of his fourth term as the governor of California, and his approval rating is at an all-time high.
Newsweek put Brown on its cover in 1979, the first year of his first second term as governor. He's on the magazine's cover again, the star of a story about how he saved the state from ruin.
Reporter Alexander Nazaryan, the author of this week's cover story, says that the politician is "the kind of 78-year-old you fear might run the mile faster than you do."
Nazaryan notes that Brown "has not forgotten his early Jesuit training... The office in which we now sit has barely enough pomp to suit a first-term legislator from Yuba County."
On KPBS Midday Edition Friday, Nazaryan talks about Brown's early prescience on the effects of climate change, his fiscal restraint, his liberal social conscience and his legacy. The reporter also muses about how this year's presidential race would have been much different had Brown been 10 or even five years younger.
