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WOAH there... Brown might be a lot of things, but he's no Donald Trump. Friends and foe alike describe Brown as "the smartest guy in the room." Brown is an inte
by butterfi 9y ago
WOAH there... Brown might be a lot of things, but he's no Donald Trump. Friends and foe alike describe Brown as "the smartest guy in the room." Brown is an intellectual powerhouse compared to Trump and way more politically savvy then Trumps ever been.
- CalChris 9y agoSmart solves problems. Least principled gets deals done. Brown got a shit ton of deals done. Still, you would think that after a certain level of success that he wouldn't care about the next deal. But that appears to be all there is to the man. Witty, I'll give you. But you'll have to give me an example of him being smart.
- butterfi 9y agogranted, my information is second-hand, but one of the smartest people I know (very accomplished) had worked with Brown personally over several years and remarked that Brown was the "smartest person in the room" and frequently could get to the core issues of a given problem quickly.
- CalChris 9y agoI'm sure he could. I'm not calling Brown an idiot. But he's no genius either. Bluntly, we're mostly talking about real estate deals where he had the ability to block and unblock progress at will. If he unblocked progress (UCSF Mission Bay) I'm sure he looked like a genius. But what does he have to show for it all? The replacement of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge was $6.5 billion, at least a decade late, up from $250M original, and then he wanted it named after himself. Really. I'm supposed to call that smart? It used Chinese steel (Rose Pak thanks you) that was delayed every time there was a price fluctuation. Really. The guy was a power broker. But he wasn't an effective politician. He just cut deals.