With Angry Voters in Populist Mood, Two Candidates Give Politics a Bad Name : Campaign: Two unlikely populists are feeding into the public’s frustration. The message is right for the times--but are the messengers?

A new brand of populism is gripping America. It’s political more than economic, a disgust not with business, but with business-as-usual politics. These days, Washington is the villain, not Wall Street.

Americans want their elected officials to work for them. As the reaction to the House bank scandal made clear, many Americans have come to the conclusion that they don’t. Incumbents are in trouble not just because they’ve written bad checks, but because they’ve lost the confidence of the people, who feel left out of the process.

Leading the attack on the political status quo are two unlikely populists. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., the voice of radical reform, is a two-term governor running for President the third time, a former Democratic Party money man who, only two years ago, orchestrated the attack on California’s campaign-finance law. But he’s no less likely a leader of a populist revolt than Texan billionaire H. Ross Perot, who must be the richest populist in America, and whose ascendancy proves this is a political, rather than economic, revolution.

For all their differences, Brown and Perot have this in common: They are not of the Washington Establishment. In political terms, they’re cowboys on horseback, saying things that good Democrats and Republicans, with their friends in Congress or the White House, and in the PACs and the law firms, would never say. And the people are listening.

While Brown won the Connecticut primary on Tuesday by only a point (what a difference a point makes), three out of four Connecticut voters, according to the exit polls, believe money has corrupted the political system. More than 40% described themselves as angry at Washington; many more said they were at least dissatisfied. And these are Democratic primary voters--people who participate in the system, while the majority stay home, disinterested or disgusted.

It’s true, as Brown skeptics point out so relentlessly, that people are more concerned about jobs and health care than about how campaigns are financed. But Brown has been highlighting the connection between elected officials and those who fund their campaigns--between PAC money and the health-insurance stalemate, between savings-and-loan contributions and S&L; failures.

No doubt, there are many more credible champions of reform than the former chair of the California Democratic Party. But anyone who thinks the anger can be quelled by informing the people that they don’t have the right champion is liable to find himself in the same boat as the representatives who thought it was OK as long as no public money was involved in the House bank. For all his flaws, Brown is at least voicing the anger and frustration so many people feel. In Brown’s case, the message is more powerful than the messenger.

That’s got to be good news for Perot. Right now, much of the enthusiasm for Perot is probably based more on who he isn’t than who he is. He’s not George Bush. He’s not Bill Clinton. He’s not even a politician.

In fact, Perot is more attractive, and probably more controversial, than that. He’s a businessman who’s taken on big business, a Texas tough guy who opposed the Gulf War, a billionaire who thinks CEOs get paid too much. He thinks Washington is out of control, and that too many people are out of work. He’s fiscally conservative and pro-choice. And, unlike Brown, he’s got enough money of his own to buy television time.

Perot has the potential to deliver the best of the Paul E. Tsongas message and the best of the Brown message. He can be pro-business, but also demand that business make better products and do better by its workers--things Tsongas should have said to expand his message beyond white-collar workers. He can give voice to Brown’s outrage at the corruption of the political system, without having to explain what he was doing in California two years ago. In short, he may be able to win the votes of people who are angry, want change and don’t want to vote for Bush. Those are precisely the people Clinton needs to attract in November.

The conventional wisdom is that, if Perot does run for President, he’ll hurt Bush more than Clinton. Like most conventional wisdom this year, it’s wrong.

It’s not easy to get on the ballot as an independent in 50 states: Democrats and Republicans have seen to that. And it’s certainly not easy to withstand the bright lights of presidential politics. Outsiders are appealing because they aren’t professional politicians; they also make mistakes, because they aren’t used to people with microphones following them around 18 hours a day. Just ask John R. Silber, the Boston University president who didn’t become governor of Massachusetts or Clayton W. Williams Jr., the businessman who didn’t become governor of Texas.

Nor is it unusual for voters to express dissatisfaction with the choice they’ll face in November--particularly when, as in California, the only people who got to choose were the big donors who voted early with their checkbooks. Moreover, negative campaigns leave even their winners scarred: Clinton and Bush have already become caricatures of themselves; Brown and Perot may be next.

Still, what we’re seeing in the polls, and hearing from voters, seems more than a bad case of spring fever. It’s real discontent with business-as-usual politics.

The challenge for Clinton, in dealing with both Brown and Perot, is to become the voice of the new populism and not, as he was in Connecticut, its victim. Clinton has character problems with many voters, less because of who he did or didn’t sleep with than because of what he’s come to look like--just another politician, and not a very trustworthy one at that.

What makes the challenge all the more difficult is that Clinton can hardly afford to look political in co-opting the Brown and Perot message. He can’t wake up tomorrow and announce he’s the anti-Establishment candidate--particularly since he’s spent so much time lately surrounded by elected officials. But he does need to persuade people that he’s not another Bush, not another politician who doesn’t stand for anything and will do anything to get elected. The only way to do that is to show voters what he cares about, to stand up for what he believes in even more than he believes in politics.

The day after he lost the Connecticut primary, Clinton said the message for him was that he had to get out there and fight. The next day, he attacked Brown’s flat tax. But people aren’t voting for Brown because of his tax plan. That’s not what this election is about.

Clinton is right that he needs to fight. The real question is: Who is he going to be fighting for--for himself and his political future, or for the people who are angry and legitimately worried about what’s happened to their government and what’s happening to them. If Clinton doesn’t speak for them, they’ll find somebody who will.