"What we need," Jerry Brown liked to say when he was young, "is a flexible plan for an ever-changing world."

Flexible he is. In fact, the former California governor who is now doggedly nipping at the heels of Bill Clinton, frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has been called downright elastic.

These days, Brown is the outsider--pitching himself as the vessel of the next great populist movement. He moralizes on the evils of monied interest and accepts no donation larger than $100.

And in his effort to stay close to the people, Brown repeatedly urges calls to his toll-free information number.

800-426-1112, Jerry Brown practically has it tattooed on his forehead.

But Brown hasn't always been a populist. Ever obedient to his creed of flexibility, he has at times defined himself as heir to his father's political throne, as dreamer, environmentalist, rock 'n' roller, pragmatist and technocrat.

In fact, those who know Brown best say the former governor has reinvented himself more times than any Californian politician since Richard Nixon.

THE BROWN PRINCE

Although his father, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, had been governor of California from 1959 to 1967, Edmund G. Brown Jr. had little inclination towards politics when he was young.

When he grew up, the young Brown wanted to be a Jesuit priest.

The religion thing at the Sacred Heart Novitiate, though, only lasted three years. At that point, Brown quit the seminary and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley.

There, he kept a low profile for three semesters. But the budding politician still had a sense of who he was.

Asked by a good friend how he was able to enroll in Berkeley so quickly, Brown answered, "Are you kidding? My father owns the university."

After graduating from college in 1961 and then Yale Law School three years later. Brown lived the life of a liberal activist. he traveled around the South observing the civil rights movement and helped organize the coalition of Vietnam doves that backed former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy in the 1968 presidential election.

But when he decided to run for public office, the idealistic Brown did not hesitate to trade on his father's established political name.