Spin Control: Jesse Jackson was the kind of orator America could use today

With the passing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson last week, the nation lost a civil rights icon, a champion of underdogs everywhere, a trail-blazing politician and an orator whose skills America’s political scene sorely needs these days.

All those qualities were on display in 1988, when Jackson ran in one of the most crowded fields the nation had seen for the Democratic nomination. While he wasn’t the first Black presidential candidate for a major party in the nation’s history – Shirley Chisholm ran in 1972 – Jackson was the first with a legitimate chance of getting the nomination.

The odds were long, because then, like now, the presidential winnowing process started in Iowa and New Hampshire, two states that were, at the time, more than 97% white. Jackson finished in the middle of the pack in snow-covered Iowa, but moved on to New Hampshire, where, as a fairly green political reporter covering the campaigns in advance of Washington’s impending precinct caucuses, I caught up with him in a packed Manchester union hall where he and a few of his staffers were the only Black faces in the crowd.

Jackson quickly had the crowd eating out of his hand, hoisting toddlers and high-fiving flannel-shirted workers. The meeting was a support rally for striking paper mill workers in Jay, Maine, whom Jackson had visited a few months earlier – the only candidate to respond to a request from the factory’s union. He launched into his stump speech in which he described the divisions in America as not being Black versus white but “barracudas versus small fish.” He also drew knowing nods from the crowd with his honed description of the American economy that would still resonate today.

“Raise your hands if you own a VCR,” Jackson said, and hands went up all over the hall, as he knew they would.

“Now,” he continued, “raise your hands if you own a cruise missile.” Naturally, none went up.

“That’s the problem. What we’re making, ain’t nobody buying.”

That first primary knocked three of the seven Democratic hopefuls out, but Jackson hung in. A week later, his campaign opened an office in Spokane with local civil rights icon Carl Maxey as his state co-chairman. On March 8, Jackson would finish a close second to Michael Dukakis in the Washington state caucuses, a respectable second in the Idaho caucuses and win five contests in the South.

It was a two-man race after that, and Washington’s convention delegates were about evenly split between them. Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor, had the money and the backing of the party’s establishment in his corner. Eventually, he amassed almost enough delegates from the primaries and caucuses to clinch the nomination, and the party’s rules that made high-ranking elected officials like governors and members of Congress automatic delegates, who were mostly Dukakis supporters, sealed the deal for him.

Jackson supporters thought he deserved a shot at the vice presidency, but Dukakis picked Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen the week before the Atlanta convention. Some Washington Jackson delegates arrived in Atlanta angry or disappointed, but others were hopeful they could make an impact on the platform on issues like a separate state for Palestine and a no-first-strike doctrine on nuclear weapons.

On the plane to Atlanta, photographer Chris Anderson and I sat next to a Jackson delegate, a young Japanese American from Seattle. The talk turned to politics, and at one point he reached into his carry-on, pulling out a string of origami cranes in multiple colors. He’d folded 1,000 of them – part of a Japanese tradition that can symbolize a gift for peace or good luck – that he planned to give to Jackson.

At the convention, Dukakis wisely agreed to a schedule that gave Jackson the primetime speech on Tuesday, after the platform had been settled. Leaving the hotel room for the convention, I bumped into Maxey, who was sporting a big smile and a lapel pin with “Jackson” in gold letters.

Isn’t that a different Jackson? I asked, recognizing it as a campaign pin for Sen. Henry Jackson, whom Maxey had challenged in the 1970 primary.

“It is,” replied Maxey, his smile getting bigger as he reached into his pocket and gave me a spare, “but hardly anybody’s going to know that but you.”

That night at the convention before Jackson took the stage, Dukakis delegates gave up their seats to Jackson alternates so they could be on the floor for Jackson’s speech. He brought them to their feet and tears to their eyes as he complimented Dukakis for a campaign that didn’t sink to demagoguery, then urged both sides to “keep hope alive” as they stood at a crossroads.

“Shall we expand, be inclusive, find unity and power, or suffer division and impotence?” he asked. “The only time we win is when we come together.”

The speech was so powerful, said longtime supporter Maxey, that he worried for Jackson’s safety. The political violence of 1968 was still fresh in many minds.

In some respects, Jackson’s speech was a high point for Democrats that year. A few weeks later, George H.W. Bush came out of the Republican convention with a head of steam, and Dukakis stumbled down the stretch. In November, neither the popular vote nor the Electoral College count was close.

One wonders if things would have been different if Dukakis had chosen Jackson as his running mate and turned him loose to energize college students, union members and disaffected minorities. As it is, Jackson’s work with his Rainbow Coalition for civil rights and equal justice continued long after that 1988 campaign, and perseveres in some surprising places.

On the day he died, the AFL-CIO of Maine issued a statement of tribute, recalling how Jackson came to support the 1,200 workers who were striking at the International Paper mill at Jay when others wouldn’t. The statement explained how Jackson had told the packed hall that he’d been to other such rallies, and when warned by organizers that the strikers were mostly white, as they were in Jay, he’d replied, “I’m coming anyway.” When told the scabs who were replacing them were Black, he’d replied, “I’m still coming.”

Jackson likened their struggle to that of the civil rights protesters in the South and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. He led them in singing “We Shall Overcome.” Some of the striking workers became Jackson delegates to the convention, the union statement said, and others ran and were elected to local or state office.