Thanks, Jerry, for Four More Years of Hell

Watching Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. is a trip. His campaign for the Democratic nomination looks like no other. It takes me back to ‘60s revolutionary theater: It’s a little like a populist insurgency against wealth and privilege, a little like a student movement to take back the government from the entrenched powers.

But mostly, it’s a messed-up crusade, marching in the wrong direction against the wrong enemy, led by a resurrected Pied Piper who is busily dashing the hopes of the people he claims to be saving.

Let’s give Jerry his due. His message is a legitimate one. The people voting for him are not mistaken that political life in this country all too often follows its own Golden Rule: Those with the gold rule. Politics in Washington, especially in the last dozen years, has turned around Winston Churchill’s remarks about the Royal Air Force in World War II: Never have so many served so few for so much.

But the message is being delivered by a flawed messenger. This former governor’s son, former governor, former presidential candidate and former state party chairman is disregarding his own experience, as well as any realistic grasp of electoral politics, in order to promote himself into the national limelight he apparently craves.

He’s singing to the choir while changing hymns he used in previous incarnations:

-- Brown has stridently denounced campaign contributions from wealthy patrons as entrenching a political elite. Yet, as chairman of the California Democratic Party, he testified for repeal of Proposition 73, which limited contributions. He also raised a record $2 million in one year as party chair.

-- Brown is for a women’s freedom of choice. Yet he has called abortion “the killing of the unborn.”

-- Brown supports a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Yet, as governor, he inherited a $500-million budget surplus and left a $1.5-billion deficit.

-- He denounced the politicians who deregulated savings and loans for opening the door to the plunder of these thrifts. Yet, when governor, he signed into law the deregulation of California’s S&L; industry, which contributed to Charles H. Keating Jr.’s Lincoln Savings debacle.

--Brown has attacked the proposed Mexico free-trade agreement as a jobs program for Mexico. Yet, as governor, Brown proposed creation of a common market between the two countries to speed up the development of Mexico.

--Brown is fighting for the working class. Yet the cornerstone of his economic recovery plan--a 13% flat tax rate--goes against working people’s interests with the most regressive, and unworkable, tax proposal to date.

By aiming his message at his own party and its leading candidate, Brown is playing the Republican game. By delivering a vicious attack against the Democratic Party that he has long worked for and with, Brown is doing George Bush’s dirty work for him. Pursuing national prominence, he is undercutting the Democrats’ chances for recapturing the White House this November.

Worse yet, he is also throwing dirt in the face of his own people. Those who Brown now claims to speak for are those most hurt by the gang in the White House. These are the folks needing unemployment compensation, affordable health care, a decent education for their kids and a tax system in which the rich pay their share.

Hey, Jer, these are not just cosmic needs going unmet. These are real problems hurting defenseless people.

By declaring there is no difference between the two parties and their candidates, Brown suggests that a Democratic President would treat these problems the same way George has. Give me a break!

By charging that Bill Clinton is a pawn of the big-money boys, and implying that his presidency would be no different from that of Bush, he is telling voters to disregard the Democrat. By saying a vote for Clinton is a vote for politics-as-usual, he is undercutting him in the worst way to a public that clearly doesn’t want politics-as-usual.

If Brown is the only chance for progress and if Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, wins at the convention, why should supporters of Brown bother to vote for him in November? Brown’s call to arms in the spring becomes a reason to stay home in the fall.

This short-sighted demagoguery works against the very people Brown claims to speak for. And if the Democrats lose the election to Bush by a small margin, I want to be among the first to thank Jerry Brown for four more years of hell.