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We keep hearing one question about the 1988 campaign: What does Jesse Jackson want?
Just two years ago, state Senator Ted Strickland announced for governor. He assembled delegates and endorsements. He traversed the state, speaking at scores of Lincoln Day dinners.
Did anybody ask What does Strickland want?
Of course not. Nobody mentioned, out loud anyway, that Strickland had in 1978 already proved himself unelectable to statewide office. There weren't any speculations about what Strickland might be trying to prove with another quixotic candidacy. Ted Strickland was running for governor because he wanted to be the governor of Colorado.
Go back to 1976, when a Republican was already in the White House. Even so, Ronald Reagan tried to wrest the nomination from Gerald Ford. Granted, Reagan had an ideology to promote, but did anybody presume that he was running just so he could name a few cabinet members or have a say in the party platform?
Certainly Reagan's supporters influenced that platform; the Republican party abandoned its long-standing support of the Equal Rights Amendment. But that wasn't why Reagan was in the race. Ronald Reagan was running for president because he wanted to be the President of the United States.
Every other candidate in 1988, from Richard Gephardt to George Bush, can run for office simply because he wants the office, because he believes he can do a better job than the other candidates.
But not Jesse Jackson. He can stump across the continent
with his inspirational oratory, collect delegates, win
primaries, proceed with all the trappings of a genuine and
serious presidential campaign -- and people still ask
What does Jesse Jackson want?
The assumption behind that persistent question is that Jesse Jackson can't be elected president because Americans aren't ready for a black president. So Jesse Jackson must be running for some other reason.
But what could it be? To influence the party platform? Party platforms may be the only writings that get taken less seriously than newspaper columns. To name a few cabinet officials? Cabinet members come and go.
To demonstrate that the American myth has some element of truth, that a black kid from a single-parent home can grow up and run for president, just like George Bush, a white kid from a wealthy home? Jesse Jackson already did that, four years ago.
He has already proved whatever it is possible to prove by a symbolic candidacy. This time around, it isn't symbolism. He's going after the anger vote: people who feel disgusted by American foreign policy, abused by American domestic policies and betrayed by a system that offers high-sounding words but little else to people who weren't born into a comfortable wealthy WASP environment.
If Jesse Jackson finds enough of those votes, he could win the nomination, maybe even the presidency. That's very likely why he is running.
Suppose he wins. We'd have a president who makes stirring speeches, although he sometimes takes liberties with the facts in those speeches. Our president would represent a socio-economic class that is a minority, but he would have used his charm and persuasive powers to put those views into the mainstream of American thought. Our president might hold a simplistic view of the world that gets our nation into stupid, and dangerous, predicaments. As a newcomer to Washington, he might well surround himself with loyalists who turn out to be incompetent, even corrupt.
But so what? We've been through almost eight years of that, and we still manage. Can't we let Jesse Jackson run for president because he wants to be president?
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