TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/042489/04248900.040

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.7 KB | 110 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 20

How to Make Boring Beautiful


Or, why California has such glitzy people and such dull pols


    The city that gave the country personal trainers, liver with
kiwi, and Cher ought to be more adventurous than to have a Mayor
for Life. But that's what Los Angeles' Tom Bradley is turning
out to be. The man the Wall Street Journal calls the "recumbent
incumbent" has just been elected to a fifth term, squeaking by
with a 52% majority against a weak field of opponents. With no
strong challenger to smoke him out, the tall, quiet Bradley got
away with something akin to a Rose Garden strategy. He granted
few interviews and ran in part on a platform of "the most
ambitious sewer-improvement project in the nation." On election
night, he talked about a new literacy program, public works
jobs, beautifying neighborhoods and household-trash separation.

    This in a city known for some of the country's worst air
pollution, traffic jams that last most of the day and more than
400 gang-related murders last year; a city where 60% of the
people polled said they thought the quality of life has become
worse and where half of 12,000 people polled said they had
considered moving away in the past year.

    "Stealth Mayor" Bradley keeps a low enough profile not to be
associated with the city's problems. Unlike New York City's
Mayor Ed Koch, who blurts out insults to someone nearly every
day, the resolutely dull Bradley has said hardly anything
memorable in almost 16 years in office. But the mayor is no
accident in California politics. Like most public officials in
this trend-making state, Bradley is part of a wave of
certifiably boring, aggressively bland politicians. How else to
account for Governor George Deukmejian, Senators Pete Wilson
and Alan Cranston and others too unrecognizable to mention?

    What happened to those glorious days of yesteryear, when
California produced Red-baiting Richard Nixon, tap-dancing
George Murphy, and the diminutive, tam-o'-shanter-wearing S.I.
Hayakawa, who said of the Panama Canal, "We should keep it; we
stole it fair and square"? Or, for that matter, the Gipper? On
the liberal side, there was Jerry Brown, promoter of Zen
politics and Spaceship Earth. Bill Schneider, political analyst
at the American Enterprise Institute, blames Governor Moonbeam
for starting the trend away from trendy. "Brown singlehandedly
is responsible for the election of at least two of the most
boring politicians the country has ever seen -- Deukmejian and
Wilson. Jerry made boring beautiful."

    But is fear of being parodied in Doonesbury enough to
account for a statewide charisma deficit? Deukmejian, who
established an organization called Citizens for Common Sense, is
so unadventurous that George Bush makes jokes about him. The
most exciting thing about Pete Wilson -- dubbed one of the more
anonymous people in American politics -- was his showing up on
the Senate floor straight from the hospital in his pajamas to
cast an important vote. Wilson was so unremarkable during his
first term that one-third of California voters were unable even
to rate his performance.

    Wilson makes the shy Alan Cranston seem positively
flamboyant. Cranston's greatest vice is jogging too much for a
man his age (74); the most colorful thing about him is his
hair, which he dyed an orange shade of red five years ago to
update his haggard look for a brief run for the presidency. For
a while it looked as if Cranston might lose his seat in 1986,
but that will take someone a lot duller than challenger Ed
Zschau, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who believes in memory
chips and the Pacific Rim.

    Part of the insouciance about local politics, according to
pollster Mervin Field, comes from sheer confusion. In a
metropolis where as many as 85 languages are spoken, that
extends from the perfumed hills of the Westside to the barrios
of East L.A. and the ghetto of Watts, where state, county and
regional authorities overlap one another, voters hardly know
who's in charge. Bradley and the business community, his
biggest supporter, seem to like it that way.

    Then there is the agenda-setting Hollywood elite and its
preoccupation with national affairs. Ronald Brownstein, who is
writing a book about Hollywood and politics, says most political
money for Democrats comes from California and about two-thirds
of that bankroll comes from Los Angeles. "Stars, though, don't
want to slum with the locals," says Brownstein. "They are at the
pinnacle of their profession and want to deal at the highest
levels. (Disney CEO) Michael Eisner wants to raise money for
Bill Bradley, not some city supervisor."

    So uninteresting have living, breathing candidates become
that California is leading the move to dispense with them. Last
fall 29 initiatives and referendums made it onto the state
ballot; voters were asked to decide everything from taxes to
bonds to insurance rates. The movie community also prefers
causes to people: the Hollywood Women's Political Committee
devoted most of its efforts this year to the April 9 abortion
march on Washington, with Morgan Fairchild, Jane Fonda, Whoopi
Goldberg, Cybill Shepherd and others leading the charge.

    But politics can become only so boring before it ceases to
exist at all. Last week Los Angeles held an election and almost
no one came -- only 23% of the voters turned out. Bradley does
not need charisma to attract money; the bankers and developers
in Los Angeles have wallets as fat as Michael J. Fox's. But
politicians do need to inspire people, or at least keep them
awake, if they are to lead as well as win.