Jesse Jackson, Ever on the Move, Ends L.A. Visit With a Thumbs-Up

He hurries to his limo on Sunset Boulevard. Traffic slows, horns honk and admirers yell: “Hey, Jesse!” He shoots them a thumbs-up. He is driven across town to Burbank, hoists himself out of the car, and office workers materialize on the sidewalk to greet him. Up goes the thumb.

This is the evidence in the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s life that all is well.

And to those who claim otherwise, he is ready figuratively with his thumb at his nose.

To those who call him troubled, unfocused in these months since the 1988 presidential election, Jackson replies: “No, no. My mood is up. . . . I’m in stride.”

To those who say he is stubbornly polarizing Democrats with his recent confrontation with party moderates, Jackson snaps: “I’ve done more to heal the party, build the party than anyone.”

To those who call him disloyal for supporting a third-party black candidate over the white Democratic Party nominee in Chicago’s turbulent mayoral election, Jackson says the national press “has failed by reducing this thing to white and black.”

Television Role

Jackson was interviewed Friday during the windup of a Los Angeles visit. For two days he had been taping an episode of NBC’s sitcom, “A Different World,” in which he plays himself urging college students to vote. And along the way, he crammed in as many speeches, interviews and meetings as is humanly possible, for this is a man whose daily schedule still resembles that of a presidential contender in the autumn of an election year, not a defeated candidate in the spring of the year after.

“People say: ‘Jesse, you’re all over the place,’ ” he shrugged. “But that’s coalition building.”

In the four months since the Democratic presidential defeat, Jackson has traveled to Africa, is planning a trip to Japan, has flown coast-to-coast any number of times. He has walked the picket lines with Eastern Airlines workers in their strike against company chairman Frank Lorenzo. He has continued his crusade against drugs and gangs. He has helped mediate a potentially explosive student protest at mostly black Howard University. He has launched a campaign to replace the racial descriptive “black” with “African-American.” Now he’s doing TV.

Jackson said he finances his extensive travels by finding a sponsor for each trip--in this case a TV network. “We go places by invitation, and while there do other things,” he said. “We travel a lot of miles.”

The lion’s share of national news attention has focused recently on the two intertwined political events which speak to the mood and future intentions of this man who is now America’s most experienced presidential challenger: His maverick role in the upcoming Chicago mayor’s race and his contentious appearance earlier this month at a Philadelphia convention of party moderates called the Democratic Leadership Council.

In short, where is Jackson heading? Or leading?

In Philadelphia last week, he warned moderates not to sacrifice the traditional Democratic base of minorities and have-nots in trying to win the support of middle-class whites. “If we are all things to all people, we become rather ill-defined, indecisive--kind of like warm spit,” he said at the time.

Riding down the Hollywood Freeway behind the smoked glass of an NBC limousine, however, Jackson said he was willing to grant that Democrats cannot win elections with just the have-nots, either.

“That kind of polarization is not sound thinking,” he said.

Jackson suggested that he is not getting credit from the party for his efforts to reach the middle class through their pocketbooks.

“We can’t be for Lorenzo and be for 20,000 workers at the same time. A lot of these pilots, these $140,000-a-year pilots, have become Republicans because they’re settled in with prosperity. When they stand up with me and put their hats on my head, that’s a sign they will vote Democratic. That’s leadership. . . .

“Lorenzo doesn’t represent the middle class. He represents the very rich and the very greedy. The middle class that we’re looking for--those quote white males--they’re the pilots, they’re the machinists. They are the new middle class.”

The 1988 Democratic presidential runner-up is likewise on the spot about his party leadership in the racially charged April 4 Chicago mayor’s election.

Democrats chose State’s Atty. Richard M. Daley, who is white, as their nominee. Jackson has chosen instead to support city Alderman Tim Evans, who is black. For Jackson to desert his party in favor of Evans, some Democrats have argued, is an example of racial loyality and party disloyalty. And this mix is something that Jackson has railed against in his own political career.

Jackson said that news accounts have not been sufficiently sophisticated in presenting the context of long racial struggle in Chicago’s Democratic Party. He noted that at least twice in the 1980s, leading white figures in the party have bolted in favor of third-party white candidates when the Democrats chose a black nominee for mayor. And more personally, Jackson said, he twice endorsed Daley, the son of the former mayor, for state’s attorney.

“He’s never endorsed me. Reciprocity is a reasonable expectation. Reciprocity is an abiding principle with me. . . . There is something pernicious about that cabal in Chicago that is ugly.”

Some journalists who have watched Jackson closely through two presidential campaigns now are beginning to question his focus, although not his energy. Words like “troubled” and “adrift” creep into opinion columns and conversations.

Jackson insisted this is merely because reporters are no longer traveling with him every day to watch him stoke the fires, whether on a network comedy stage or at an angry picket line.

“I’m developing relationships that I never had access to before. . . . If one day I get a call from machinists, flight attendants and airline pilots, people who are former Democrats, and they say, Rev. Jackson will you support us? And I get there and they’re cheering, pilots putting their hats on my head. And they’re saying things like, where are the other Democrats now?

“Then that is the right place for me to be,” he said.

Political writer Keith Love contributed to this story.