Candidate offers best of the past

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

A man phones and says, "What's with this Jerry Brown, anyway? I'd never vote for a man who wears a turtleneck."

Truth. What can I say? There's nothing wrong with wearing a turtleneck? He looks great in a turtleneck? What's the hang-up with the turtleneck anyway?

I say all these things. The man insists the tur-tleneck looks stupid. "Don't you care about the issues?" I ask.

"I care about how the president of the United States looks. That guy looks like a dippy hippy."

How do you reason with this?

"The experts say I cannot win," Jerry Brown said five months ago when he announced his candidacy for president of the United States. Few people back then bothered to give Brown the right time of day. He was a leftover flower child.

He was out of touch with today. How did he think he was going to conduct a campaign without all the political posturing, pandering and promising? How did he expect to reach the people if he didn't have the special-interest dollars for expensive newspaper and television ads? Integrity wouldn't pay his bills. Working to change the common good would bring him not a bit of personal good. Let him try to run a campaign without the support of the big boys. Let him try to exist on measly $100 contributions.

Exist he has, which is testament to the people of this country who have had to seek out what Jerry Brown has had to say, because the press certainly hasn't been dogging him, and paid air time IS expensive. It's been Kerry and Harkin and Clinton and Tsongas right from the start, and whatever coverage Brown has received has been laden with references to Mr. Moonbeam and tinged with the spectre of the 1960s, which is meant to denigrate him. He hasn't been an easy sell.

But why, I wonder. What was wrong with the '60s?

Young, idealistic people dropped the conventional wisdom of the time because they didn't want to go where their parents were going. They didn't want to end up surrounded by things that didn't make them happy, things that didn't count, because they knew what DID count. For a while an entire generation knew that what kind of a car you drove, where you lived, what you wore, what color your skin was didn't matter.

An entire generation was certain life wasn't about getting and hoarding and getting more and hoarding more, but about getting along, about brotherhood and sharing and understanding and loving and living in peace.

If people got carried away it's because that's what happens. Causes are taken to their limits before the pendulum swings back. Vietnam pushed the love generation to its limit, and put an end to all the lofty ideals that it had embraced. The generation grew up and gave up, and the people turned into their parents. Then came the '80s, and they became the antithesis of all they once were.

But a few didn't give up their ideals. Jerry Brown is one of them. He's never veered from his belief that we are connected to one another and that we have to look out for one another. He isn't saying anything revolutionary in his campaign. He's saying all the things we used to know, before the world taught us the psychology of winning through intimidation and looking out for No. 1.

"You and I, each in our small way, must stand up to forces that overwhelm us. We must change and move beyond inwardly, turning self-interest to interest in the greater good. We must see one another as brothers and sisters," Brown continues to say.

Brothers and sisters. Each man has intrinsic worth. No one is better than anyone else. Every person should be treated with dignity, paid a fair wage, afforded an equal education, have a place to live. The earth must be respected.

Everyone must be respected.

This is a philosophy all people should have but most especially it should be the creed of a world leader.

As for the turtleneck. Brown says he wears them because they take less time to put on than a shirt and a tie.