Should Jerry Brown marry Linda Ronstadt? We now feel that he should, although not for the reason advanced by Evelle Younger, Brown's Republican opponent in the California gubernatorial race. (Several weeks before his Election Day burial, Younger opined that Jerry would benefit from the experience of changing diapers.) We also feel that the issue is somewhat more important than the people of California perceive it to be. When they were polled by the Los Angeles Times during the campaign, 88 percent said that their voting would not be affected one way or the other if Jerry and Linda got hitched. Offhand, we can't recall another poll in which "Who cares?" scored such a land- slide victory.

Our basic reason for being in favor of the marriage is that Linda could help Jerry to straighten out his thinking. There is much evidence that he needs to be straightened out. One day, he's against economic growth, the next day he's crusading for it. One day, he's against big government, the next day he wants to push business through the wringer. He started out against Proposition 13 and ended up talking as though he'd invented it. Jerry has been completely consistent only in his basic antiestablishment posture- and in his heartfelt view that our country needs him to straighten things out.

Linda, on the other hand, knows her own mind and tends to have sound positions on the issues to which she addresses herself. She is possibly the only rock singer in the land whose basic attitudes have never been antiestablishment. At the moment, she has a hot new number called Back in the U.S.A. It's the lead item on a Platinum Record (i.e., more than a million have been sold), and its lyrics seriously maintain that the U.S.A. is a great place to live, e.g.:

     I'm so glad I'm
          living in the U.S.A.
     Yes, I'm so glad I'm
          living in the U.S.A.
     Anything you want we got it
          right here in the U.S.A.

You could argue, of course, that getting married might lead Linda to adopt Jerry's basic perspectives, rather than the reverse. But we just can't believe that she'd ever be so confused.

                                                     -D a n i e l   S e l i g m a n-