“Today I’ve spent time on prisons,” Brown said, glancing around a nearly empty restaurant in Sacramento as the hour reached 9:45 p.m. “And renewable energy. Fixing the energy issue. I’ve been doing a lot of things. You can chew gum and jump rope at the same time. Right now I am focusing on my brussels sprouts. And my pinot grigio. So we can do a lot of things. It’s not like I’m waking up and going to bed thinking only about the budget.” This was back in January. Brown had turned slightly defensive at the suggestion that the budget could hijack his entire governorship. Yet it seems almost self-evident: the next few months could be the whole game here. If he is not able to meet this challenge, his next four years are likely to be devoured by the state’s financial problems. He will not have the time, energy, money or capital to do anything else.

Brown is confronting many of the same obstacles that burden governors across the country. But because of the magnitude of the dollars in question and the essential collapse of California’s system of government, his situation seems more dire, more intractable. The state’s $26.6 billion shortfall was the equivalent to almost a third of next year’s budget. Brown promised during the campaign that he would not raise taxes without putting it before voters. To do that, short of gathering signatures, he would need to win the support of two-thirds of the Legislature, which means finding four Republican votes. Republican governors like Chris Christie of New Jersey, Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio have chosen confrontation in the face of their budget upheaval, but Brown — who was certainly a bomb-thrower in his day — has been as calm and patient as the Jesuit student he once was, solicitous of his opponents and, at least in appearance, their ideas: sharp spending cuts, reductions in pension benefits for union workers, deregulation. “Scapegoating is very powerful stuff,” he told me during a break in negotiations with Republicans in March. “But I think it divides at a time we need to unify. It’s very short term. You want to push, but you also have to include.” As he has gone from lawmaker to lawmaker making his case, he has avoided ultimatums and threats, remaining calm if unwavering. “He has made it very clear, ‘If you don’t like elements to my program, you can’t just say no to them,’ ” Pérez, the Assembly speaker, told me. “ ‘You have to come up with an alternative that creates comparable savings.’ ”

At first, Brown’s style raised hope that he might defy the understandably jaded expectations in Sacramento. Yet by the end of March, Brown gloomily called an end to his talks with Republican lawmakers, frustrated — mystified, really — that he was not able to close a deal.

There may be no better prism to view what is happening to the left during this era of the Tea Party than through Brown’s difficulties this spring. Although Brown may never have been the liberal that many took him for, he falls on the left on any conventional political spectrum. In the midst of his bracing talk about the need to change the way business is done in Sacramento, he came under fire for negotiating agreements with California unions — including some big supporters of his campaign — that fell short of winning the concessions he had promised and that fiscal analysts say are critical for his state’s long-term health. Yet at the same time, the argument playing out in this most Democratic of states is not whether there should be cuts in spending on social programs but whether the cuts should be very deep or very, very, very deep. Brown’s budget is hardly the kind of proposal a governor like Brown’s father would have championed.

For all that, it does not appear to be giving him any huge problems with his liberal supporters. Part of that is because this state is coming off almost eight years of Republican rule, which makes Brown seem much more acceptable by contrast. It is also a sign of just how anxious Californians are about the state’s fiscal and political path and how few choices there really are. David Geffen said Brown has shifted because that is the only way to get anything accomplished. “You’d have to call him a centrist — more of a centrist than he was 30 years ago,” Geffen said. “You can only solve problems in the middle. I don’t think you can solve problems from the left or the right.” Most of all, Brown has been around a long time: His supporters trust him, and they know who they voted for. “Jerry and I don’t agree on many issues,” said Jodie Evans, a longtime aide to Brown who today runs Code Pink, the antiwar group. “But I don’t believe there is anybody better to do this job right now. I might be outside the university protesting what he’s doing, but there isn’t anybody I trust the way I trust him.”

A few weeks after introducing his budget proposal, Brown met privately with Democratic legislators. The spending cuts were, as expected, causing distress among Democrats, though they were going to pass them. The tax extensions were even more of a problem; the Republican votes were still not there. When he was done making his presentation, according to people in the room, someone asked: “What happens if Plan A fails? What is your Plan B?” Brown didn’t flinch. “I believe in the Hernando Cortes approach,” he said, invoking the Spanish conqueror. “When you hit the shore, burn the ships. There is no Plan B.” The lawmakers sat in disbelieving silence. But that remark was borne out after the collapse of the budget talks; it was not clear that Brown knew what to do next.

Unless Plan B really is to do precisely what he said he would do: cut billions more from the state’s budget. The governor may be crafty — he is very much a politician — but on this point he seems utterly transparent. “He is what he is, and he’s been it for a long time,” Beatty, who has been a friend of Brown’s for 30 years, told me. “After a few decades of skepticism about him, you can now see he really means what he says.”