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Ever since, Jackson has tried in vain to win back the approval of his old associates in the movement, by then his extended family. It was another massive rejection. His half brother Noah says of the Memphis incident, "Now Jesse was zero for two. He's still begging for their acceptance." Only a few months ago, Coretta King turned down a request for support, as did Atlanta ^ Mayor Andrew Young, who was one of King's aides. The Atlanta team still distrusts Jackson, though they are unwilling to criticize him publicly. Says one of Jesse's colleagues who knows the story of the assassination: "They have no idea how much it haunts him. It's a drop of poison in his glass." Jackson shrugs off the animosity and explains it away with a religious reference. "Everybody wanted a piece of the cloth," he says.
Over the years, Jackson's motives have been difficult to fathom. He works out his anxieties alone. He is a masterly manipulator and loves to turn people on and off. One minute he melts listeners with his charm, the next he withdraws. He describes himself as bicultural. He grew up on the black side of the tracks, but worked across town for whites. His language can change rapidly from moralizing preacher to street hustler. He lets no one too close. Most white political leaders have little confidence in his word. No matter what the brooding preacher promises, no one is ever certain that he will deliver.
Jackson has his own quick method of detecting motives in others. "I can look into a person's eyes," he says, almost preening, "and tell what he's really up to." His jousting manner intimidates people, and Jackson swiftly spots the signs. In 1984, by Candidate Walter Mondale's wandering eyes and hurried speech, Jackson knew that Mondale was afraid of him.
Jackson's message may be less immediately threatening this time, but the candidate himself is much the same. Still hopelessly disorganized, he drives himself to exhaustion seven days a week. Jackson gets constant reinforcement. Crowds swiftly collect around him. He is treated like a monarch. A snap of the finger brings him a newspaper. A nod of the head brings a glass of lemonade. Oblivious of the hour, he rouses people with phone calls from 6 in the morning to long after midnight. Often he holds planes until the last minute before he arrives to take his first-class seat. He neither drinks nor smokes and customarily requests nearby passengers to put out their cigarettes. He takes pleasure in mimicking aides. When one of them recently kidded about wanting a salary increase, the needling Jackson pretended he had heard the word celery and promised more carrots and greens.
He is prickly about his family's privacy -- he got hundreds of death threats in 1984 -- as is his wife Jackie, 43. A strong and opinionated woman and mother of their five children, she challenged reporters, during the recent upset over candidates' privacy, to leave her husband alone. "If my husband has committed adultery," she said, "you better not tell me, and you better not go digging into it. I'm trying to raise a family and won't let you destroy it."