MR JACKSON'S MARBLES
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard predicts that Jesse Jackson will decide whether George Bush becomes President
Washington JEWS are convinced that Jesse Jackson is anti-semitic. If other Americans had better antennae they would realise that he is anti-Caucasian as well. When he was work- ing as a waiter in the 1960s he used to spit in the food of white customers, an attitude that prompted Martin Luther King to say that Jesse 'didn't have enough love in him'. He has outgrown the rage, but a smoulder- ing resentment remains. Gil Kulick, who worked for Jackson's 1984 campaign, voted for Mondale in the end. 'You almost had to be a self-hating white to vote for Jesse Jackson.' If members of his staff thwarted him he would accuse them of being racist.
He has done better in 1988. He has won accolades for his serenity and ecumenism. But that does not make him any more than a brilliant performer playing on the symbo- lic appeal of his colour. Geraldine Ferraro, who knows the difference betwen authen- ticity and tokenism, said bluntly: 'If he wasn't black he wouldn't be in the cam- paign.' His only executive experience is as chairman of 'Operation Push', a black lobby known best for making a lot of noise but not following through on its commit- ments, and which has no records of what happened to $1.2 million of government funds paid to a subsidiary. He has never held elected office. The harsh truth is that the scattered geography and the radical bias of the democratic nominating process make it easier for him to make a splash running for the presidency, than actually to become governor of his home state of Illinois, where he is not particularly popu- lar.
Americans have been reluctant to admit that Jesse is a 'black' candidate, not a candidate who happens to be black. New York has put an end to that. New Yorkers are unapologetic about tribal loyalties. The Jews in particular, a quarter of the state's Democratic primary voters, have shown scant confidence in Jackson's freshly minted moderation. Their instinctive hos- tility was expressed through a partly vica- rious quarrel over the establishment of a Palestinian state and an Arab-Israeli con- dominium in Jerusalem, both of which he
favours. But the excitable mayor, Ed Koch, went straight to the point, bluntly saying and repeating at every opportunity on television, that Jackson was way out on the hard left, would disarm America in three weeks and bankrupt it in six. With relish he also called Jackson a liar: 'Under stress he'll do what's convenient, and if lying is convenient, that's what he'll do.' This will not make life easier in New York. Norman Mailer wrote an angry piece in the New York Times saying Koch's antics were unforgiveable; 'He may have succeeded in blasting the last rickety catwalk of com- munication between Jews and blacks in this city.' But the mayor did a service for the country. The white vote took refuge in Michael Dukakis, who beat Jackson 51 per cent to 37 per cent. As an ethnic candidate with a Jewish wife, Dukakis probably had enough support from Jews and white Catholics — Poles, Italians, Irish — to win anyway, but the margin of victory gives him an insurmountable lead, convincing enough to take the momentum out of Jackson's challenge.
Unsuitable though he is, Jesse Jackson would not necessarily be a disastrous presi- dent. His ambition is his redeeming quali- ty. Although he talks of freezing defence spending for five years and supporting liberation movements in the Third World, an international crisis would sober him quickly. Once he had felt American milit- ary power in his hands, and realised exactly what he needed it for, one can imagine him rethinking his opposition to the F-15 fight- er, for instance, or the Stealth bomber. Foreign powers might take advantage of his dovish positions once, perhaps, but not twice. He is a touchy, vindictive man. Dukakis, on the other hand, is smug and self-righteous. He likes legal formulas, holding that the Rio Treaty has superseded the Monroe Doctrine in Latin America paper over power. He might sit back and let Nicaragua subvert Costa Rica, or let Iran annex Kuwait, secure in the thought that he had not broken international law. This is arguably more dangerous than JackSon's half-baked socialism.
Nor is Jackson as statist as he looks. His message as he visits schools around the country is one of individual will and self-help. 'I ain somebody,' he tells inner- city children. 'I was born in the slum but the slum wasn't born in me.' Dukakis, while less enthusiastic about new deal spending, is a compulsive, nit-picking reg- ulator. As a state legislator in Brookline, Massachusetts, he used to jog around the city, checking mail boxes to see if more people were living in each building than the zoning rules allowed. He reported culprits to the zoning board. The trouble with his bloodless style of government is that it only works in times of prosperity. When he was confronted with a fiscal crisis during his first year as governor in 1975 he was unable to rally people to accept tough measures. He cut welfare sharply without creating a consensus first that it had to be done. The result was deadlock in the legislature, a prolonged crisis, and a rebel- lion by the party which stripped him of the nomination at the end of his first term. If there is a recession in 1989 Washington's permanent government will push more or less the same medicine on whomever is in office. The difference is that Jackson would try to talk America into accepting it.
The New York primary has more or less secured the nomination for Dukakis. His last white rival, Senator Albert Gore, is crippled. Unless Dukakis stumbles badly he is certain to win most of the delegates in the big industrial states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey, and finally California, which do not have big black populations. Jesse Jackson's upset victory in the Michigan caucus last month is coming into perspective. He can win cau- cuses where voter turnout is tiny -- in Michigan he got only 35,000 white votes, a third of them Arab-American — but he cannot win northern primaries unless the white vote is split several ways.
Robert Beckel, a Democratic adviser, says that Dukakis should be able to put together a majority before the convention by drawing on the party's 'superdelegates' and some of those committed to Gephardt, Simon and Gore. Jesse Jackson remains the unknown factor, not because his dele- gates will hold the balance of power but because he can determine, by his attitude, whether or not a huge block of loyal Democrats will support the party next November or stay at home and let Bush win. 'I won't take my marbles and go home,' hinted Jesse shortly before the primary. In 1984 he played on the suspense right up until the last moment before rallying round the nominee. This time he will have even more power. The question is whether he will acquiesce if Dukakis chooses a conservative, military-minded southerner like Senator Sam Nunn to be the vice-presidential nominee, or force Dukakis to choose another liberal, himself conceivably, and doom the ticket?
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