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Napoleon Bonaparte, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jordan: all brilliant at their craft, all guilty of at least one comeback too many.

Is it time to add Jerry Brown to that list? I know it sounds premature, what with Brown less than a year into his second turn as California's governor.

Nor do I write this with partisan glee, given that for months now I've irritated many a Republican by suggesting that a man who hadn't held the job for the better part of three decades – the unlikeliest of success models – just might be the right fit for the California of 2011.

At age 73 and no longer a player in national Democratic politics, Jerry Brown presumably would be immune to the same "Potomac Fever" that afflicted him throughout his earlier stay in the "Horseshoe." He sought California's top job not as a means of killing time between flights to early primary states, but instead to end his storied career on a high note.

Moreover, Brown campaigned on one issue – honestly addressing the $25 billion budget shortfall. To me, a no-excuses fiscal technocrat seemed like California's best hope of ending a decade of shoddy budgeting.

Again, that boded well for California.

And therein lies the problem.

Jerry Brown may have made sense in January 2011. But now it's August and the budget is settled (for now, at least). His one issue has come and gone.

What does he have to say for the bevy of other complications that make this arguably the second most difficult job in American politics, in terms of daily headaches?

Come January 2012, will Brown trot out a concrete, you-can-read-it-yourself-online course of action? Or will Californians be reduced to the "Jerryatrics" of the last eight months – waiting for a plan to materialize, and trusting the governor when he says it's all in his head?

Compared to the first-year agendas of Brown's most immediate predecessors, there's legitimate cause for concern.

Arnold Schwarzenegger steamrolled into Sacramento in November 2003 and promptly made good on his promises of undoing the vehicle license-fee increase and having the Legislature reverse an earlier bill granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, plus workers' compensation reform.

Gray Davis? Forget the recall. In 1999, his first year on the job, he called a special session of the Legislature to bull-rush education reform, signed a package of gun-control laws and instituted HMO reforms.

Like Brown, my former boss Pete Wilson inherited a fiscal train wreck that dominated his first year (a $14 billion hole in a $43 billion budget in 1991). Still, he found time to push for a "preventive government" agenda to help needy school kids.

Even the Jerry Brown of 1975 was a go-getter. He signed the California Agricultural Relations Act, giving farmworkers collective-bargaining rights. He fought for additional child care centers for working mothers – a novel concept in an America not far removed from Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs and "The Battle of the Sexes."

And the Jerry of 2011? Well, he did announce a green-energy jobs plan.

As did Arnold.

He signed a bill mandating the teaching of gay history.

He appointed Goodwin Liu to the California Supreme Court. But it's a refurbished choice at best, given that President Barack Obama failed to place Liu on the federal bench.

Maybe a little scandal will heat up things – and, it turns out, Linda Ronstadt is penning a tell-all memoir to be released in 2013.

But it if reveals that her ex-boyfriend, the governor, smoked marijuana in a hot tub 35 years ago? Yawn.

What seems apparent is Jerry Brown gambled – big – that he could quickly negotiate a budget deal with Republicans and place it on the ballot, then move in to business as usual.

Only, his hubris got the better of him and he lost the wager: Republicans wouldn't go along with the plan. A matter that should have been settled in March, in time for a June vote, instead dominated the first half of the year – and froze the governor in his tracks. By July, Brown had a budget to sign. He also had nothing to show in the way of momentum, other than a budget built on a very shaky foundation of dubious revenue estimates.

Collectively, it leads to a nagging sense that California is just neither cutting-edge nor compelling viewing these days. The idea of a caretaker governor just doesn't cut it for a nation-state with a cosmic-size ego – especially when we see what other big-state governors are achieving, while our guv seems stuck in neutral.

The natural parallel to Brown is New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Both preside over deep-blue Democratic states, are sons of former governors and are currently in their first gubernatorial year, having moved up from the attorney general's office.

The natural foil to Brown: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. He's a Republican, also in his first term, but prefers East Coast blunt talk and political brawling to the Brown 2011 school of gubernatorial transcendental mysticism.

What does the record show? Cuomo, in less than a year, has implemented ethics reform in Albany and legalized same-sex marriage. His second act, for 2012: pursuing tax reform, and picking a fight with his own party over "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing – extracting oil and gas from deep rock formations).

Christie, meanwhile, having managed to both wear down and win over legislative Democrats on pension reform, says education reform is Jersey's "big thing." The Republican governor is aiming for merit pay, expanding charter schools, private-school vouchers and stripping away rules that protect senior teachers during layoffs, regardless of merit.

Of course, there are two differences worth nothing. First, neither New Jersey nor New York has an initiative process. Big fights get settled under the Capitol dome, or in fall elections.

California, on the other hand, has an initiative process that serves as a magnet for political struggles – and a convenient excuse for Sacramento lawmakers to sidestep big problems. The coming year, for example, may see high-stakes fights over pension reform, spending caps, union dues and taxes – all matters, by the way, where Brown has to decide what side to take, and how strongly to personally engage.

Second, Christie and Cuomo represent their parties' future, whereas Brown is but one of several California Democratic septuagenarians in the final phase of a long political career. Assuming they earn second terms in 2013 and 2014, respectively, look for both East Coast governors to toy with the idea of running for president in 2016 (that's assuming Obama wins next year – not exactly a certainty). Not so with our Jerry.

Brown could take a page from his fellow governors' playbooks. After the failed experiment of quiet budget negotiations with Republicans lawmakers, he could try on a more bruising style of governing à la Christie. Given the atrocious approval ratings of the Democratic-held Legislature, he could pick a fight within his own party à la Cuomo.

Brown made a name for himself back in the 1970s by reaching out to Latino farmworkers. Earlier this summer, he angered the same constituency by vetoing a bill making it easier for farmworkers to join a union. Perhaps it's time for this governor to begin a dialogue about the "two" Californias – one of affluent Anglos, the other consisting of impoverished Latinos.

This seemed the ideal forum for Maria Shriver, niece of Bobby Kennedy. There's no reason why Jerry Brown, friend and ally of Cesar Chavez, cannot put a spotlight on those corners of our state stricken with 40 percent unemployment, underperforming schools, and a fear of everyday life – much less a brighter future.

For now, Brown deserves the benefit of the doubt – he never offered a vision, Californians voted for him anyway, so this is to be expected.

However, it's a temporary pass. The governor has the better part of five months to piece together an agenda and showcase it in a State of the State address and budget rollout.

It's a different California from the one Jerry Brown governed a generation ago – that $25 billion deficit he faced in January was one-fourth larger than the $20.5 billion budget he first encountered in 1975. Before long, California's population will be double the 21.2 million people who lived in the Golden State at the start of Brown's first term.

And it's a different Jerry: once the state's youngest 20th century governor, he's now the oldest in California's 160 years of statehood. Older and wiser? Perhaps. Older and as engaged as he was 36 years ago? He has until January to prove that.

Here's a thought – actually, it's a standing invitation for Gov. Brown to drop by the Hoover Institution. We can talk economy and education. We can walk the governor over to the Caltrain tracks and explain why it's maybe time to start exploring ways to disencumber the state of its high-speed rail obligation.

The goal would be to put ideas into play and get the ball rolling.

Not because California is too big to fail.

But because the Brown we elected last November is too colorful to be this drab.

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Bill Whalen is a Hoover Institution research fellow and a former speechwriter for Gov. Pete Wilson.

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