Scenario for the Victory of Jerry Brown

After Jerry Brown wins the Democratic presidential nomination, reporters will begin an intensive search for the intellectual origins of his latest incarnation.

The more enterprising members of the pack will find their way to a spartan television studio located in the heart of a light industrial area on Nebraska Avenue in West Los Angeles. There, in the tape archives of Century Cable, is the record of how it all began.

I realize that the idea of looking for intellectual roots at a cable television station seems as crazy as the thought of Jerry winning his party’s nomination.

But actually, it’s only crazy if you’re not from L.A.

You’ll find the beginnings of the most recent Brown phenomenon in the ideas of a famous pollster and campaign adviser, Pat Cadell, as they were expressed between 1989 and 1991. Cadell’s forum was a Century Cable discussion show--”Week In Review,” where political consultants, politicians and reporters, including myself, pontificate at each other.

I had known Cadell in the ‘70s when he was a pollster and adviser for Jimmy Carter. He was an intense young man, dedicated to his boss’ success. When we met again on the Century Cable show, I saw that he had turned against the system he’d once manipulated.

Seldom have I seen a worse case of sinner’s remorse. Cadell had compiled a hate list of establishment politicians who included Mayor Tom Bradley, Congress, the City Council, the Board of Supervisors, the Keating Five, big campaign contributors, lobbyists, each more despicable than the other in Cadell’s eyes.

When he talked about them, you could see the fury in his blazing eyes and unsmiling mouth surrounded by a thick black and grey beard. When I appeared on the show, I always thought it was a shame that Cadell’s fury hadn’t more of an outlet.

Finally, he found a way to properly vent his rage--through Jerry Brown. He became an adviser to the former governor, who’d just left his own life of sin.

Brown had been bag man, or chairman, of the California Democratic Party, soliciting campaign contributions for the party from fat cats looking for influence. Brown was recovering from that unsavory experience, pondering lessons of humility and helpfulness he’d learned a few years before from Mother Theresa in India.

Before Cadell found him, Brown had been a cool, composed man, the controlled product of a highly rigorous and intellectual Jesuit education. After his consultations with Cadell, the Brown that emerged was as irate as the late Howard Jarvis, the loudmouth leader of the California taxpayer revolt. Like Jarvis, Brown began calling almost any politician a crook if the cameras were around.

On Sept. 5, 1991, when Brown was interviewed for an hour by Century Vice President Bill Rosendahl, the ex-governor’s new political persona was unveiled.

He laid it all out , with the phrases that are now shaking up the Democrats: The political system is “corrupt, broken down,” is a captive of “PAC money and special interest lobbying.” Politics is trapped in a “vortex of distraction, irrelevance and corruption.” He’d limit contributions to $100.

The message was not interrupted by questions from Brown’s many critics in the California press, who were not part of the show. Rosendahl, like the good interviewer he is, just let him talk, asking a minimum of questions. It was pure Brown, for a solid hour, speaking to a prime audience, the Westside political contributors and junkies who watch Century’s many public affairs shows.

Those were the basic ingredients of the current Brown campaign--the angry message and the ability to dominate, to manipulate the media without spending a dime.

Now, after his surprising victory in Connecticut on Tuesday, Brown takes his show to New York, where tabloids and television and radio stations are waiting.

The Brown message has been honed for the Broadway opening. The boring parts have been discarded. It’s now a slashing attack on the man he calls “Slick Willie,” Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Go-easy pleas from Democratic bigwigs have only increased Brown’s self-rightous fury. He is ready for the cameras. He can already see the tabloid headlines.

This is Brown’s kind of game now. Leave Clinton wounded for the final battle in California, to be fought primarily in the Southland, in L.A. This is where Brown understands the workings of the press--of radio, TV, the newspapers, cable--much better than his foe.

See, it doesn’t sound so crazy after all.