Jerry Brown and His Vision

Jerry Brown believes he has found himself, but everyone else is having a little trouble. If he could only demonstrate that he's pulled himself together into one piece, everything might start falling into place. But for now, Brown is having his troubles on both sides of the country. Every time he flits off from Sacramento to join the pack rats in New Hampshire, the shit hits the fan. His lieutenant governor, Mike Curb, has developed a nasty habit of confirming federal judges and making policy decisions while Brown darts through the Concord mills. And, trailing badly, Brown cannot afford to stay at home.

In New Hampshire, Brown is skidding through a less-than-coordinated campaign. Once the 1976 wunderkind who humbled Jimmy Carter in several late primaries, the Brown caravan has attracted little interest this time around. Brown organizers had visions of college students abandoning their studies, boarding the buses and heading to Manchester for the winter. A nice dream, but it hasn't happened. Brown's late effort in the Maine caucuses brought him 13 per cent of the Democratic vote. Supporters say he's got to pull at least that much in tomorrow's contest. But the latest Boston Globe poll finds the California governor a distant third with a measly 6 per cent. It is time, as the Brown people will tell us Wednesday morning, to reassess the campaign: facing the inevitable might be a better description.

Brown's strategist thought they had it all figured out. Their candidate showed surprising strength in 1976, when he captured primaries in California and Maryland and performed in Oregon, proving he could take Carter's measure in a head-to-head contest. The president, the Brown scenario went, would take care of Ted Kennedy--if and when he ran--sometime in the early going. With Kennedy knocked out, Brown would step in as the only viable alternative to another four years of a Carter White House. No such luck. The Brown war chest, says press secretary Larry Powers, is "down to the bottom." But the candidate himself seems little concerned with such mundane matters when The Universe is waiting to be dealt with. "Right now," Powers concedes, "the campaign is sort of schizophrenic."

Like his campaign, Brown's stance on the issues strikes many as confusing. Leave aside the commitment to Zen and the "Linda Ronstadt number." Brown takes positions many label unusual. He advocates placing private citizens on the board of directors of the major oil companies and laying out billions for a new American space program. Although he opposes development of the MX missile, nobody can quite find a place for Brown on the foreign policy scale. For the record, he pictures himself a social liberal and fiscal conservative; he loudly supports a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget and favors tax-cutting schemes like Proposition 13. He figures to draw a lot of New Hampshire's seacoast votes with his strong and consistent opposition to nuclear power, resenting recent Kennedy efforts to "steal away the issue."

But Jerry Brown's vision of a "New Economic Order" does not seem to be drawing in the votes. His chief problem remains the "small is beautiful," save-the-whales and damn-the-torpedos image he has built for himself. "He's a man," says G.B. Trudeau's Rick Redfern in yesterday's Doonesbury, "who takes positions not because he believes in them, but because someone told him he had to have a few to run for president." What Democrats don't want is an easy target. And with that kind of sentiment prevailing, Jerry Brown isn't going anywhere but back to Sacramento.