Is something out there in this election year, some surly transformation of the body politic marching grimly toward the polls?
If so, how big is it? Does it belong to a party, or is it bent on repudiating party and pol?
Those who say it's there call it angry, disaffected, perverse -- anti-everything that seems entrenched, Beltway-bound and clueless about the life in the real world. You could think of it as a form of instant term limitation, a fast-rolling skein of discontent that picks up every strand of societal unhappiness.
The talk show hosts feel it, hear it and try to keep it agitated. Politicians accuse them of creating it.
Yet this movement or mood or malaise may have been there all along. Not even apple pie and motherhood are more all-American values than throwing the bums out.
So, pollsters hover over it, try to measure its size, intensity and pace.
They talk to people like Jerry Howard, 78, the wife of a retired newspaper printer who lives on Susquehanna Avenue in
Towson.
"I'm not angry, I'm discouraged and disgusted," she says. "Everybody talks about what they're going to do, but when they get into office they don't do it."
She is tired, she said, of politicians "blowing smoke."
"I think we need a change," says Daisy Fields, 46, a state government employee from Baltimore. "A lot of things have been mixed up and misused. We need to find someone to get in there who we can trust."
A September survey by the Times Mirror Co., which publishes The Sun and other newspapers, found voters throughout the nation remarkably sour, self-absorbed and politically unmoored, ready for brand new parties, ready for radical solutions -- ready for anything but the brain-dead politics first condemned and now symbolized by Bill Clinton.
Never mind that the president was rebuffed in his exploration of new approaches to health care and campaign reform finance reform while barely winning passage of his budget and anti-crime bills.
What is regarded by some as a Clinton-driven mood of retribution was spotted in Oklahoma where eight-term Democrat Rep. Mike Synar, one of Mr. Clinton's best congressional friends, was defeated in the primary by a 70-year-old retired school principal. A term-limit measure passed by 67 percent to 33 percent.
In Maryland, the change bloc showed itself to be somewhat nonpartisan, unceremoniously retiring Republican Rep. Helen Delich Bentley, who wanted to be governor.
Now, the GOP's gubernatorial nominee, Del. Ellen R. Sauerbrey, hopes she can ride it to victory. She thinks it will neutralize her opponent's huge advantage in campaign funds, endorsements,
organizational support and voter registration.
Values are 'threatened'
Mrs. Sauerbrey, who fought what she regarded as a deaf Democratic majority in the House of Delegates, now finds an electorate potentially eager to hear. Whatever it is out there, she says, it is not necessarily perverse.
"People sense that the quality of life, the values they have cherished are very much threatened. I share the feeling that bad public policy is at the root of undermining the values," she says.
"Is it government's fault? I'm one of those who blame government. I think an awful lot of the random street violence comes from the breakdown of any sense of personal responsibility, that government has encouraged the belief that people aren't responsible for their actions. Government has created a permanent underclass of people who believe they're entitled to be taken care of by the government.
"It's a very short step from not getting what you're entitled to that you're going to take it away from someone else," she reasons.
She would, she says, look directly to entitlement programs for the cuts that would be needed to enact a 24 percent income tax cut. Millions can be saved, she says, by enforcing eligibility rules. Savings can be made also by limiting food stamps to their intended purpose, she thinks.
She gets her own sense of Maryland's mood in a local grocery store. One clerk told her: "I stand on my feet for eight hours, and I watch people with welfare checks buying steamed shrimp."
People still feel pinched
Some poll analyses have suggested that the public is perverse because, while the economy is officially out of recession, people are still pinched financially. Perhaps it is because American families have made little economic progress over at least a decade -- though husbands and wives work at least one job apiece. Too many children are in day care, too many teen-agers are flipping hamburgers while they should be studying -- and the tax bite "gets deeper and deeper."
It is here, in the soft soil of high taxes, that Mrs. Sauerbrey plants her flag. Her proposal for a 24 percent income tax cut over has drawn voters who still do not know her name and refer to her as "that woman."
Though she offers herself as "new," she will encounter the very skepticism that has vaulted her into the role of formidable contender: Is she serious? Can she do it?
Democrat Charles Hopkins, a 68-year-old retiree from Rodgers Forge, would appreciate a tax cut, for example, but he's not expecting one.
"Being an adult and being able to vote for the last 30 years, I would say no way in this world is anybody going to reduce that much taxes."
Jack Meyers, 71, is a Sauerbrey man. He and his friend Gloria Bell chatted about her tax plan last week at Towson Town Center.
"She wants to let us keep more of our money," said Ms. Bell, 70. "Do you think she can do it? People say she can't."
"I think she can," Mr. Meyers said. "She knows her stuff."
Were they worried that tax cuts would result in cuts in seniors programs? They don't know, they said.
"You know we're genuinely interested," Ms. Bell said. "All seniors are. We need more discussion so we can be more knowledgeable. It's like that O. J. Simpson thing. You have to see all sides so you can really be in the know."
Mood hard to gauge
An imponderable of the election mood is the degree to which voters will analyze proposals such as Mrs. Sauerbrey's -- and their inclination to seize any sharply defined departure from the tired, the bland and the tepid.
The Times-Mirror survey found that fewer Americans are willing to dig deeper to help others. But don't count Jerry Howard in that number. Her disappointment, her impatience and desire for change is rooted in the failure of politicians to solve social and economic problems.
"You still have people without jobs," she says.
Yes, she would like to pay less in taxes, but she does not want less police and fire protection or an impoverished school system.
"If Ellen Sauerbrey does give a tax break, who's it going to hurt?"
she asks. "Somebody has to suffer."
The case for Glendening
Strategists for the Democratic candidate, Prince George's County Executive Parris N. Glendening, say they are certain Ms. Howard is not unique.
Even if something is out there, they say, their job is manageable because Maryland is too progressive, too historically attached to government-as-virtue and to the Democratic Party to be harboring a preternaturally anti-government majority.
"People want change." says Emily Smith, Mr. Glendening's campaign manager, "but not radical change. People want someone who will grab hold of state government and move us in the right direction. They don't want to cut education or jobs or job training. . . ."
Mr. Glendening has proposed a comprehensive plan under which business taxes would be cut, every state tax would be analyzed to determine its impact on economic growth. While Mrs. Sauerbrey is attempting to cut worker training and education programs, Mr. Glendening would make job training a priority because he believes new business can't be attracted without an educated labor force.
Apprentice electrician Thomas C. Wiggins, 32, of Prince George's County wants Mr. Glendening's experience. Government needs trimming, he says, by a practiced hand.
"I think this guy can do it."
Voters like this convince Ms. Smith that if there is an "out there" factor, it's a small one in Maryland.
Still, failure to recognize the potential of a runaway electorate could amount to an applying for membership in the political flat earth society.
"Right now," Brad Coker, head of Mason-Dixon Opinion Research, a polling firm in Columbia says, "people are in the mood to say, 'We'll give you a shot and not worry about the consequences.' Sauerbrey almost has to say, 'Yeah some things won't get cut.' "
If she starts backing away from her proposals, he said, she will lose credibility -- and begin to look like the sort of candidates this year's voter yearns to savage.
Mr. Glendening is equally stuck: His impressive coalition of labor, African-Americans and business interests probably would not stand for any movement toward Mrs. Sauerbrey's side of the spectrum. He must paint his opponent as a radical -- a tactic that risks turning into an advertisement for her.
Keith Haller, president of Potomac Survey Research Co., a polling firm based in Bethesda, says: "People discount Maryland because of its liberal posture on a variety of social issues. People dismiss the discontent glibly as a pocketbook issue, but I personally think there is something more profound happening even in a place like Maryland."
Then again, what's out there may be what's always been out there.
"We've heard this for 30 years," says Mr. Hopkins, the Democrat from Rodgers Forge. "It's same old singsong thing."
C. Fraser Smith is a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.