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Inside the Foley Cultural Center in Vallejo, Calif., the mood was festive even though the star attraction, Governor Jerry Brown, was late arriving. The ebullient Democrats of Solano County were celebrating, and the Governor seemed almost incidental. When Brown finally showed up, he was affectionately surrounded, cheered and heckled. If he has made an art of not taking himself too seriously, the audience had much the same attitude. Introducing the Governor, State Assemblyman Mike Gage asked, "Is there anyone in the audience who Jerry Brown has not irritated over the last four years?" All roared in agreement that they had been sufficiently irritated. Off to one side, a group began to chant, "Rome in '78! Rome in '78!" as though Brown might be a dark horse for the papacy. "You know he has an advanceman in Rome?" remarked a supporter.
The night was an illustration of the current politics of irreverence. Though Brown stands to win re-election by as many as a million votes, enough to launch his shot at the White House in 1980, he is tolerated rather than adulated in today's political climate. The public, in fact, seems to be suspicious of politicians of all kinds. "This is the strangest political mood I have ever encountered," says Mike Bakalis, the hard-driving Democratic candidate who faces an uphill battle for the Illinois governorship against the popular incumbent, Jim Thompson. "I've never seen an electorate more apathetic, more cynical and more unbelieving than this one." The same lament is made by the ever cheerful Republican Senator from Tennessee, Howard Baker, who is running far ahead of Democrat Jane Eskind. "There is anxiety, even animosity out there," he muses, sounding as if he were talking about a strange foreign land. "They tend to bite the first ankle that walks by them." Trying to explain how he came from practically nowhere to win an upset victory in the G.O.P. primary for Governor of Wisconsin, Lee Dreyfus declares, "Something is happening. It's that antiparty, anti-politician feeling."