Lucas Brown

Lucas Brown
32nd President of Libertas Omnium Maximus
In office January 1, 2017 – January 1, 2025
Vice President	Howard Slater
Preceded by	Amanda Laine
Succeeded by	Collin Lestrange
Personal details
Born	(1963-09-17) September 17, 1963 Litudinem, Libertas Omnium Maximus
Nationality	Maximusian
Political party	Conservative
Residence	Wilusa Springs, Passarelle
Alma mater	University of Redbury Litudinem Legal Academy
Occupation	Politician, attorney

Lucas Brown (born September 17, 1963) is a statesman, attorney, and former President of Libertas Omnium Maximus. He was elected on September 7th, 2016 and served from 2017 to 2025. Brown was a successful lawyer and politician before running for president.

Early Life and Career

Brown was born on September 17, 1963 in Litudinem, Libertas Omnium Maximus to Andrew and Jane Brown. His father was a senior partner at Winslow & Brown, a personal injury law firm in Litudinem, while his mother worked as an administrative assistant at the firm. Brown attended the prestigious St. John's Academy boarding school for his primary education, where he played competitive tennis and racquetball. Brown attended the University of Redbury, graduating in 1985 with a degree in economics and political science. He went on to attend law school and joined the prestigious Madison, Smith, and Jacobs law firm as an associate in 1990, specializing in corporate regulatory law.

Political Career

In 1996, Brown ran for and was elected to the Passarelle Province provincial legislature. [...]

In 2000, Brown was elected to the Maximusian Senate, representing the Passarelle 18th Council, which comprised a portion of the Litudinem metropolitan area. [...] He served until he was unseated by Michael Laing in 2012.

Presidency

Brown announced that he would be running for president in 2014 and subsequently won the 2016 election by a thin but sufficient margin. During the first two years of his presidency, Brown presided over a rebounding economy and proudly signed a number of tax relief bills into law, a cause he had fought extensively for during his time in the Maximusian Senate. In 2018, Brown championed military intervention in Lauchenoiria during the nation's Civil War. Following the Maximusian declaration of war against and deployment of troops in Lauchenoiria in July of 2018, Maximusian forces were met with stiff resistance at Carville and Annatown, leading to a drop in domestic approval of the Brown administration. Following the brutal Maximusian assault on Carville, which resulted in Libertas Omnium Maximus being found guilty of war crimes during the 2019 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Brown issued a formal apology to the city's residents on behalf of the Maximusian government. Following the debacle in Lauchenoiria, Brown worked hard to mend fences with his political opposition and repair his public image abroad. In 2019, Brown sent a delegation led by his energy and infrastructure director, Alex Stadler, to the Tofino Summit in order to diffuse political tensions between former Coalition states and Kerlile. While the Maximusian-Kerlian relationship was repaired to some degree through negotiations, the conference failed to alleviate tensions and ultimately resulted in a three month trade war between several participating nations. During the period of economic turbulence, Brown maintained Maximusian neutrality and preserved commercial ties with three of the four involved nations, Zamastan, Trive, and Xiomera. This "business as usual" approach was generally well received.

Brown was reelected in 2020, though the Conservatives lost their coalition majority in the Senate, necessitating a new big-tent legislative coalition in which tremendous political power was ceded to the Progressives. Just hours after he was sworn in for a second term, Vulkarian terrorists attacked a concert in Lumeniola and assaulted the Maximusian embassy in Zamastan (along with a number of other sites across eight nations), necessitating a military response. Initially a champion of counterinsurgency in Vulkaria, Brown's stance on the conflict gradually soured, as did public support for the war in Libertas Omnium Maximus. Of the eleven nations involved in the military response, the Maximusian Republic was among the first to withdraw troops from Vulkaria in the late winter of 2020. After troops returned home, Brown publicly pivoted the nation's foreign policy away from direct intervention, while also expressing a disinclination toward tariffs as a means of economic protectionism. Domestically, Brown continued to push for deregulation in his second term, but was hampered by an increasingly hostile legislature.

Political Positions and Controversies

In a 2015 interview, Brown self-identified his political stance as "entirely consistent with a classical liberal social and economic worldview, informed by faith in God, family, and the combined strength of [his] countrymen." He has at times been characterized as a conservative nationalist, a reactionary anti-communist, and, frequently by members of his own party further to the right, as a neoliberal. Though some of his views, particularly on religion and foreign policy, have shifted over his nearly three decade political career, his ideology can reasonably be classified as center-right to right leaning.

Economy, Regulation, and Welfare

When Brown began his career as a legislator in Passarelle, he gained a reputation as a hardline proponent of fiscal austerity and budget cuts, but has relaxed his stance on these issues in recent years. Despite promises early on in the 2016 presidential campaign trail that he would never approve of a federal budget running a significant deficit, Brown has approved numerous omnibus spending bills since assuming the presidency, several of which relied on deficit spending. He remains a staunch proponent of tax cuts, but has actually rolled back certain corporate welfare subsidies enacted by his Conservative predecessors in the late 1990s. Citing the nation's shaky history with currency devaluation in the 1970s following massive inflation, Brown generally opposes further expansion to the Maximusian welfare state. In 2019, Brown supported legislation to expand healthcare opportunities for discharged Maximusian servicemen, calling post-traumatic stress disorder a "national health threat."

Foreign Policy and Trade

Brown's stance on foreign relations and interventionism has often been described as "fluctuating," and is difficult to pin down. Although, particularly early in his career, Brown took a highly nationalistic stance on foreign policy issues—at times supporting steep tariffs on imports from socialist, communist, and rival nations to protect nascent industries—he has generally rejected the long-term viability of trade wars. In recent years, Brown has found himself in the minority, even among fellow Conservatives, in opposing tariffs on Xiomera, given their recent belligerence towards neighboring nations.

Brown summarized his ardent support for military intervention abroad in a 2020 interview, declaring that, "[The Maximusian Republic] reserves the right to intervene for any reason, anywhere, anytime [her] interests are threatened." Many pundits have suggested that Brown's hawkish attitude represents the most pro-interventionist stance of any Maximusian president since the early Paterson administration. However, Brown did later caveat his cavalier assertion, vowing to not contribute troops to a foreign conflict unless overwhelming public support for the war existed. Over the course of his eight year presidency, Brown authorized military operations in two foreign states, Lauchenoiria (2018) and Vulkaria (2020), both times alongside international coalitions comprised of allies.

Personal Life

Brown married his high-school sweetheart in 1987 and has three children, two sons and one daughter. Brown owns a ranch outside of Litudinem in Wilusa Springs, which he purchased in 2014 for M$2.6 million, along with four thoroughbred racehorses and a 1968 Bailey Model 736 convertible (worth an estimated M$275,000). By his own account, Brown attends Catholic Mass weekly, making him the second Catholic president of Libertas Omnium Maximus in the nation's history. Brown enjoys pheasant and quail hunting.