Politics 1-800-Pound Guerrillas

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A Perot campaign would revolve more around person than policy and would test whether the American voters buy the notion of sending someone with no experience in national government or politics to shake up the way Washington works. (If Perot's candidacy were a movie, the title might be Daddy Warbucks Goes to Washington.) But such speculation is premature: Perot might not run, his record might not survive public scrutiny, he may prove a maladroit campaigner, and his damn-the-torpedoes style may not sit well with voters. Still, the Bush camp, having already survived third-party threats from Buchanan and hatemonger David Duke, is taking Perot very seriously indeed. "There is contingency planning going on," says a senior Bush campaign adviser. "In places we need to win, like Pennsylvania and Texas, he could be a pain in the butt."

In past political seasons, there have been moments when it looked as if the structure of traditional two-party politics would finally collapse under the weight of too many 30-second attack ads, too many sound bites, too many backroom handlers, too much voter apathy and too many dispiriting November choices between candidates who inspire more cynicism than commitment. These interludes pass, which is why it is tempting to dismiss the latest manifestations of anti-Establishment sentiment as a short-term aberration. The Connecticut Democratic primary, after all, was highly unrepresentative: the turnout was low, the voters were angry, and local favorite Paul Tsongas had just withdrawn from the race. (In a clear rebuff to Clinton, the former Massachusetts Senator received 20% of the vote.) Still, there are contrary signs that suggest that 1992 will be far from a normal political campaign. A Harris poll at the end of last year found that voter alienation was at a 25- year peak. Turnout in primaries is even lower than usual, and much of the stay-at-home electorate may be too bitter to bother to vote in November. The recession is seen as a talisman of America's long-term economic decline, rather than just as a cyclical downturn. The House-bank scandal underscores the impression that Congress is mired in corruption. "There's something out there of major significance," says University of Texas political scientist Walter Dean Burnham. "Thank God we're not a culture that produces Fuhrer figures very easily. Because the underlying conditions that do that are in the process of being formed."

Send-them-a-message candidates like Brown -- and Buchanan in the early going -- have found fertile soil in the primaries largely because there are legitimate reasons for public-spirited voters to protest. Bush may win re- election, but little in the campaign is likely to be an endorsement of his handling of domestic affairs. On the Democratic side, Clinton and Brown are the embodiment of the ancient Greek maxim of the fox and the hedgehog. Clinton, the fox, knows many things well: his policy positions on a wide range of issues are thoughtful and often innovative. But Brown, like the hedgehog, knows just one important thing: the current system of multimillion-dollar political fund raising is inherently corrupting to democracy. Brown -- who, even his fondest admirers admit, is a political changeling constantly taking on new personas -- has finally embraced a cause that returns him to his political roots as a post-Watergate clean-government crusader in California.