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March 24, 2005

Jerry Brown

Despite the fact that I am a Republican today, the progressive streak in all of my politics was a bit more pronounced a decade or so ago during the election that first put Bill Clinton on the map. I had recently moved to NY from LA roughly in the summer of 1992, pre-riot, pre-OJ. That fall, the man who had my attention was Jerry Brown.

In those days, I didn't have a good enough appreciation of chaos and morality. So I thought society should be run rather like science. The people who demonstrate their ability to best understand what was going on, should be the leaders. I essentially believed that government was a good thing, so long as enough meritorious, virtuous and intelligent people were running it. Nobody demonstrated those qualities better than Jerry Brown in 1992, and although I eventually voted for Harkin.

A big part of the reason the Brown appealed to me was his outsider status. I was still reeling over the raft of misperceptions and stereotypes applied to all Californians and I simply could not believe that such ideas had weight in, of all places, the NY Times. So when Brown showed up in NY wearing his signature leather jacket, I made a serious effort, despite the flack, to catch up to him.

I had been, immediately previous to my journey to NY, something of a devotee to Pacifica Radio. This to requires some explaining. You see during the 80s, I was something of a die hard conservative. I proudly wore the banner of black neocon and as you might expect, Thomas Sowell was my hero. But I was also a very strong black nationalist, and I remain a strong nationalist today. So I have never had any gripes with the US military. I've always wished more power to them and have always been glad they were on our side. However the invasion of Grenada tested my faith strongly, and the escapades of John Poindexter, Richard Secord, Oliver North and Country Two, broke it completely. So I veered left in order to try and understand the nature of the secrets that nobody in the MSM would dare speak of.

Yet in the days of Pacifica listening, there was only one or two voices that were consistently worth hearing out and one of them was Jerry Brown. (The other was Chomsky). Brown as a politician is cut out of a completely different kind of clothe. He never minces words and he really believes in politics as the art of the possible. So he spews forth all of his ideas, in public, no holds barred, and he sees how much of the electorate is going to buy it. The answer, of course, is few. That's one reason I voted for Harkin. But I think that Brown is a rare honest commodity in todays political market.

Now that he's got a blog, I think we may see from him the straight-talk that makes him a scary figure. This is a man, who better than anyone I've seen or heard, knows how to run a town hall meeting. With folks like Jerry Brown blogging, the future of politics is going to be a very scary prospect. Think of the blogosphere four years from now, when deposed and retired politicians who have no ambition left but citizenry, start elbowing out political science grad students and amateur pundits like myself. If you think Rathergate was charged, you aint seen nothing yet. I see the entrance of Jerry Brown into this realm as the beginning of those ends.

Posted by mbowen at March 24, 2005 03:08 PM

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