Willie Brown: A Biography.

• Author: Meyerson, Harold

When the galleys of James Richardson's biography California's legendary assembly Speaker arrived in the mail, I mentioned the book to a friend, a longtime Sacramento staffer and lobbyist. "It's a little early for the definitive biography of Willie Brown," she said. "Since he's just starting out as San Francisco mayor?" I asked. "No, since the statute of limitations hasn't run out," she replied.

Which remains the rap on Willie Brown, the fiery '60s liberal who, to general astonishment, became the ultimate player of inside politics in the nation's most populous state; the pol who set the standard for fundraising, for deal-making, for all the aspects of the politicians trade that the public has come to loathe. And early though it may be, Richardson's thorough and engrossing study is indeed likely to stand as the definitive biography of Brown - as well as an authoritative account of the descent of the California legislature into gridlock and irrelevance.

Richardson's volume comes a year after his colleague John Jacobs's marvelous biography of Brown's mentor, California Rep. Philip Burton. But it falls somewhat short of Jacobs's effort, and chiefly, one is forced to conclude because Brown's story is ultimately a good deal less compelling than Burton's. Both were driven men, both were masters of the game, but Burton played the game to ideological ends; the Byzantine deals with right-wingers would ultimately result in more welfare coverage, or new black lung legislation, or additional national parks. Brown's deals were often no less Byzantine or brilliant, but their goal was more commonly simply to perpetuate his hold on power. That is partly because Sacramento was more gridlocked during Brown's tenure than Washington was during Burton's. It is partly because the means Brown used to stay in power made the progressive advances he professed to desire all the harder to attain. And it is partly because Brown, in complete contradistinction to Burton, was consumed by the game itself.

It's not the consummation one would necessarily have predicted for the young Willie Brown. Surprisingly, the most absorbing section of Richardson's work is the first. Brown grew up in the most segregated and Mississippi-like corner of Texas in the 1930s and '40s, within a very functional extended family that supported itself at least partly through activities on the far side of legality. His uncles ran a casino and a bootleg-liquor operation, and Brown learned early that...