(5 of 5)
Whether Jackson poses a threat or offers therapy to his party, he constitutes something of an intelligence test for America. With his unashamed assertion of who he is, he flirts with prejudice, daring it out of its cave. He is the only presidential candidate who can say ain't without being considered ignorant except by the ignorant: "We makin' what ain't nobody buyin'." More than most politicians, he has a sense of the absurd in a campaign, and cannot resist making jokes as well as history (as he proved during his surreal day with Silo Sam). Though he has resolved not to criticize other Democrats, an occasional mocking touch comes through. At last year's Congressional Black Caucus, the master of ceremonies did an elaborate dance to slip a little platform in front of the microphone each time Governor Dukakis came up to it to answer a question. Jackson eyed the platform quizzically, stepped onto it for a moment, towering above the adjusted microphone, and softly said, "I've waited years for equal standing."
George Will, in the spirit of old crackers giving voting quizzes to blacks when they tried to register, earlier this year asked Jackson on television, "As a President, would you support measures such as the G-7 measures and the Louvre Accords?" (Like the red-neck quizzers, Will got the trick question slightly wrong -- the Louvre Accord was a G-7 measure). Jackson has survived cleverer ploys of exclusion than that, but can the rest of the country continue to indulge them?
Jackson likes to end speeches with the story of his grandmother, who took odds and ends of cloth ("not hardly fit to wipe your shoes with, some of them") and stitched them into a quilt that kept him warm as a child. Then, referring to different minorities or excluded parts of his audience, he tells farmers, or strikers, or Hispanics, that "you're right, but your patch ain't big enough." The minorities must unite to extend their influence. He does not reach the real conclusion of his parable -- that the white patch ain't big enough either; the majority cannot solve the nation's problems. If blacks do not participate in the solution to this country's difficulties, there will be no solution. It is going to take a thorough interweaving of minorities within majorities and majorities within minorities to deal with crime and drugs and jobs and health. So far, the most energetic piecer-together of the component strips of such an electoral quilt is Jesse Jackson, rhetorical, ecumenical, opportunistic, making history, making jokes.