The Man Who Holds the Matches

An arson detective once told me his first move always was to photograph the gawkers and volunteer hose-handlers who gather at a fire’s edge. Often, the arsonist would turn up in the picture. In that spirit, I hooked up this week with Patrick Caddell. If the American political system is not fully engulfed, surely it is smoking. And standing at the edge, matches in his pocket and happy scowl on his face, is my friend Caddell.

I first met Patrick five years ago. He was the fallen angel of the Democratic Party, and I was assigned to profile him. He had just moved to Brentwood from Washington, where he once held court as a master strategist, the young phenom who played pivotal roles in George McGovern’s nomination and Jimmy Carter’s election.

Caddell left few friends behind. He had made a show of denouncing the Washington political Establishment as a bankrupt club of party operatives and supplicant journalists, and in turn he was dismissed as a crazed has-been. Caddell told me then he was in California to escape the insiders and find ways to push along what he saw as a coming political revolt among disenfranchised Americans.

“I know something will happen,” Caddell promised. Remember, this was years before The Angry Voter would become a dominant factor in the calculus of American politics, before Jerry Brown and the 800-candidacy, before Ross Perot.

In Los Angeles, most people know Caddell, if they know him at all, as a cable talk show regular. He’s the one with the streaked beard and the attitude. The show doesn’t air where I live, but some viewers have described Caddell to me as boorish, the town scold who blasts hapless local pols with broadsides.

That’s Patrick, I say. And smile.

Caddell can come across as extreme, self-righteous. He tends to express himself in single sentences--but those sentences can last an hour each. But what some people consider boorishness I regard as a logical passion. If you believe, as Caddell believes, that the nation has been betrayed by its political operatives, then it is no time for tepid rhetoric. It’s time to roar.

Caddell’s critics also overlook his patriotism. Democrats lately seem inclined to distance themselves from patriotic trappings. It’s as though they fear looking corny. While Republicans wrap themselves in Old Glory, Democrats play sax on Arsenio Hall. Caddell is different. He is steeped in lore of the American Revolution and Civil War, recites the language of Lincoln and Whitman, and believes--in his own, impassioned way--that the country’s worth saving.

Patrick didn’t like what I wrote about him the first time, but we became friends nonetheless. Over the years, he’s shown me his manifesto-in-progress, discussed his Capra-esque movie plot of political revolt, and talked excitedly about technology that, linking telephones with television, can allow for national town meetings--a tool to empower the outsiders.

This year, I watched as common political instincts and acquaintances drew Caddell to Brown’s campaign as an unpaid adviser. I was amused that, at the peak of Brown’s success, Washington-based reporters started to write about the “Caddell connection,” as if this link was all one needed to know about Brown. I also read about unofficial advice Caddell has lent Perot, and noted with interest Perot’s advocacy of electronic town meetings.

Like I said, Caddell can be placed at fire’s edges.

Over lunch Monday, I listened to Patrick be Patrick. In one unbroken passage, he railed about a cable program in which a gymnasium full of Washington insiders dismissed voter revolt as passing fancy, compared this to a wild reception for Ross Perot in Las Vegas he’d caught on another channel, recited from a new history of the Revolution, spoke, eyes welling with tears, of the power that will come from disaffected Americans discovering they are not alone, of the decline of the Whigs and its meaning for present-day Democrats, of George Washington’s winter soldiers and their ancestral connection to the “angry voters” of today.

When he paused for a bite of steak, I squeezed in my $64 question.

“So,” I asked, “how goes the revolution?”

“Oh,” he said, chewing. “I’d put it at about seven-and-a-half--not formed yet, not an ongoing force (swallow), but there to be seen: They can deny it all they want, but the people can see it. This is not about voter discontent; this is rebellion; this is people saying, ‘Give us back our country. . . .’ ”

He was on another roll, and I was happy. You see, another rap Caddell’s past political associates place on him is excessive pessimism. He’s a Cassandra, they say. Of course, it’s important to remember Caddell predicts their downfall, not ours. To some of us, Caddell is an optimist.