A few months ago I asked Jesse Jackson what he would be doing at the Democratic National Convention. “Driving the congressman,” he said. “The congressman’s gonna need rides.”
He must like that line, because I hear he’s been using it around town. It conjures a pretty funny image: the great civil rights leader at the grand quadrennial gathering of Democrats, consigned to chauffeuring the congressman, who happens to be his kid, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.
But there’s something more to what he said, something that is at once pragmatic and winsome about Jesse Jackson.
What does Jesse want? That’s been one of the more intriguing questions at the last few Democratic conventions. In 1988, he wanted to be Michael Dukakis’ running mate. After he didn’t get it, he flew around the country alternately praising and damning the Democratic nominee. Four years ago, Jackson withheld an endorsement of Bill Clinton until the weekend before the Democratic convention and spent much of the convention sniping at the nominee. He also delivered a slam-bang great speech.
What does Jesse want this time? Not much, it seems, for himself, but the best for his kid. That means he has to play by somebody else’s rules for a change.
Jackson will speak Tuesday at the convention. He will speak five days after President Clinton signs the welfare bill that ends the economic safety net for the nation’s children that has been policy for more than half a century. He will speak in Chicago, the cradle of his political movement.
So it would hardly be surprising if Jackson got up there Tuesday and said something like this:
“Above all, Democrats, we must reach out to outr children. Our children are in trouble. They’re embittered. They were not born that way. We live amidst violence and rejection. They live in broken streets, broken glass, broken sidewalks, broken families, broken hearts, their music, their rap, their video, their art, reflects their broken world and yet these are our children.
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“Our children have been seduced and abandoned by our party and our president. By signing this horrendous welfare bill he has decided to cast 1 million children into the despair of poverty, to send them beneath the broken streets, the broken glass and the broken sidewalks.”
The first part of that is from the speech Jackson gave at the 1992 Democratic convention. The second part is just a notion of what Jackson could say at this Democratic convention . . . but probably won’t.
Notice that Jackson has protested against the welfare bill, but has largely given Clinton a pass. And next week, my bet is Jackson won’t be the one to make the Democratic convention any bumpier than the Republicans’ was.
That’s because priorities have changed for Jackson. At this convention, he’s going to be driving the congressman’s ambitions.
Jesse Jackson Jr. has been doing a pretty fair job in Congress. He’s been lobbying for a new airport that would bring local jobs, and he’s spoken out on national issues without stepping on the toes of his elders.
There is talk of an unspoken understanding between Jackson and Rep. Bobby Rush that Rush will get the first opportunity to run for mayor. Jackson has other plans, probably a run for the Senate. But he needs a bigger platform.
He wants a seat on a big-time committee, preferably Ways and Means, which would make him a hero in Chicago and a player in the House. The city has been shut out of Ways and Means since Mel Reynolds and Dan Rostenkowski left Congress.
Jackson has some local competition for the plum assignments, though, from Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who covets Appropriations, and state Rep. Rod Blagojevich, who wants Ways and Means. It might seem premature for Blagojevich, a state legislator, to be politicking for a committee before he’s elected to Congress, but it’s not when your father-in-law is a political broker like Ald. Richard Mell.
The senior Jackson also has something he didn’t have for 12 years of Republican rule: a sympathetic ear at the White House. In Jimmy Carter’s administration, Budget Director Bert Lance was Jackson’s confidante. In the Clinton administration, it is Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, whose father was Franklin Roosevelt’s Interior secretary and head of the Works Progress Administration (and has a South Side housing project named for him).
There was a time when Jesse Jackson Sr. could lob grenades at the Democrats and not worry about return fire. Not any more.
He has a stake in retaining Democratic control of the White House. He has an even greater stake in regaining Democratic control of the U.S. House. That’s where the future starts for the Jacksons.
Aside from his son’s election, these haven’t been the most fruitful of times for Jackson. His crusade to win statehood for Washington, D.C., has gone nowhere. Established black leaders in D.C. rebuffed his efforts to be the dominant political force there. Operation PUSH struggled for money and attention after he left town, and is just coming back.
But all those issues are competing for second place now. While Jackson was hardly a friend of Richard J. Daley, they would agree on one thing: If you can’t help your family, who can you help?