(4 of 5)
In 1986 young black voters reversed a historic pattern and turned out in greater numbers than young whites. When Jackson went to visit Alabama's Senator Howell Heflin on the Bork nomination, Heflin said he did not want to do anything to discourage the "new voters," and thus opposed Bork. Jackson, solemn in the meeting, chuckles afterward at the circumlocution: "The 'new votuhs'! Don't you just love it?" But it was more than black voters who stood in Bork's way. The combination that defeated him -- minorities, women's groups, civil liberties activists -- looked like the rainbow coalition.
Jackson sees his campaigns as part of an ongoing process that is changing American politics: "It is important to watch what happens in elections at the county level, all over the nation. The impact of this election is going to be felt in the elections of 1990, when the census is taken, and in 1991, when reapportionment takes place." He wants to build from the consensus established to defeat Bork: "There were fears about letting new people into the process, whether we could handle all these women, or 18-year-olds, or blacks, or homosexuals. But they have all proved to be just as American as earlier voters. We have to redefine 'we.' " Inclusively.
After his shadowboxing in the airplane's aisle, Jackson, still standing up during takeoff, told me, "President Reagan said something that should have got more attention from the press. He said the last 40 years had not been good for the West. These last 40 years have been the most exciting and liberating for the world. Whole empires have fallen, new nations been created, people taken charge of their own lives. What Reagan meant is that all those little ss in the U.N. have been beating up on us for 40 years -- us, Somoza, us, Batista, us, Marcos. We've got to redefine 'us.' "
When asked about his lack of experience in office, Jackson says, "I've dealt with more world leaders than any of the candidates, and I met them when they were living ((a dig at Bush's errands to funerals of foreign dignitaries)). Take all the Democratic candidates, blindfold us, drop us anywhere in the world with a dollar in our pockets, and who do you think would lead the others out?"
"If we can have relations with Russia and China, certainly we can expand our influence in Latin America by negotiating with Castro. The Israelis and the Palestinians are in a death grip. They have their arms around each other and a knife at each other's back. They are hollowing each other out, afraid to let go for fear of being knifed in the face. They must be pried a-loose." The week Jackson said this, the Israeli journalist Wolf Blitzer wrote a long article in the Jerusalem Post, concluding, "Israel and its friends in the American Jewish community clearly have an important self-interest in establishing as decent a relationship with him as possible."