Sunday, The Los Angeles Times attempted to sell its readers on a “reinvented” Jerry Brown, this time as a man who has taken all measures to refashion himself into the “anti-politician politician,” charmingly dismissive of public perception and governing the country’s most populous state by brilliant and bold improvisation. Despite the author’s best efforts, however, the reader is left with the reality of a governor who shuns outside political advice, seemingly governing by whim and stubbornly promoting initiatives Californians largely oppose.

The article begins by describing the 75-year-old Brown, seeking an unprecedented fourth term as governor of California, as a man who has “reinvented himself again, this time as the anti-politician politician.”

He shuns most trappings of the office. There's no motorcade, no entourage. The governor showed up at the elections department with a lone campaign advisor and his wife, who snapped a photo using her smart phone.

Brown fashions many of his own speeches, veto messages and even press releases. His staff in the governor's office is about half that of his Republican predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who employed as many as 230.

For months at a time he foregoes public appearance, “sometimes holed up at his home in the Oakland hills,” occasionally calling “authors, experts and others he wrings for information,” but avoiding all political trappings. His isolation, the authors of the piece suggest, is supposed to be an attractive aspect of his governing style, stating,

It is as though Brown wants to run the most populous state in the nation more or less by himself, tackling matters large (California's budget) and small (picking a poem to mark Arbor Day) with the same degree of supreme confidence and minimal public display.

"Going dark," this unilateral and insulated approach the article paints as counter-cultural, anti-political, hip, a product of Brown's “acute sense of political timing”:

The conspicuously inconspicuous approach may be at odds with today's culture of rapid-fire tweets, blogging and around-the-clock news coverage. Other governors huddle with tacticians who stage-manage their public appearances, focus-group their statements and work to shoehorn them into every passing news event.

But ever since his last unsuccessful presidential bid, in 1992, Brown has shown an acute sense of political timing, serving as his own strategist and methodically climbing back to political power one elected post — Oakland mayor, state attorney general, governor — after another. (He has ruled out — reluctantly — a fourth try for the White House in 2016.)

The authors call his governing style “an almost improvisational form of governing” that lacks the “office structure or hierarchy typical of most governors,” quoting one insider who admits that the governor seems to be “[m]aking it up as he goes along, day-by-day, depending on the nuances."

But then, of course, there’s Brown’s deeply unpopular pet projects: the high-speed rail project and the water redistribution initiative. The exorbitant cost of the first (now estimated at $68 billion) and the environmental concerns of the latter have made public opinion sour. And even fellow state Democrats criticize the governor for ignoring skyrocketing pension costs and the need to seriously address public education, both issues the governor doesn’t seem overly interested in.

Ignoring fellow Democrats should come as no surprise since Brown doesn’t seem care much for outside advice, the inevitable outcome of an “anti-politician politician.” The LA Times, of course, doesn’t see that as a negative, spinning his unilateral, tone-deaf approach as a bold and self-confident interest in facts, not distracting, less-discerning outside opinion:

It is not advice that Brown seems to want from those he consults, said Areias and others who speak regularly with the governor, but rather facts and some perspective to help guide his decisions.

After all, it’s exactly this kind of shoot-from-the-hip, naysayers-be-damned style that allowed Brown the boldness to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses:

Democratic state Sen. Kevin DeLeon of Los Angeles was wrapping up a meeting with Brown outside that history-laden office last year when the lawmaker casually expressed concern that the governor would not approve a bill widely granting driver's licenses to immigrants in the state illegally.

"Send me the bill," Brown fired back, "and I'll sign it."

With that, a years-long political log jam was broken.