Tabloid revelations about the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “love child” are devastating to everyone who ever had faith in him, including, undoubtedly, his wife.
Many wonder whether Jackson can recover from the National Enquirer’s scoop that he fathered a child, now 20 months old, whose mother, Karin Stanford, was a Washington official in his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.
Even more tantalizing for the media and Jackson’s foes is that his affair was going on while he was praying with then-President Clinton as a “spiritual advisor” during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Anticipating the story, Jackson acknowledged the child and retreated from public view for the time being, at least.
Can he recover? Maybe. But after covering Jackson off and on for about 30 years I think these wounds look permanent. If this is not the end of the rainbow for the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition leader, you can at least begin to see the beginning of the end from here.
Like Clinton, Jackson might recover enough to resume some of his eloquent role as a “voice for the voiceless,” as he puts it. But, also like Clinton, his stature probably will never be the same.
First to evaporate is his credibility as a moral icon and role model for young people. School principals, for example, will think twice before inviting him to address their students.
Second, while others have recovered from scandals as embarrassing as Jackson’s, they do not recover well.
Clinton held onto his presidency, despite impeachment. Economic prosperity continued on his watch and so did most of the public’s confidence in the nation’s health. But his effectiveness was largely muted during his final two years by his scandals, which eventually undermined presidential electoral support for his chosen successor, Vice President Al Gore.
Jackson, too, may hang on. After a temporary withdrawal from public view, he can re-emerge, perhaps in the way a good spin doctor might suggest: After a tearful apology to his flock, he might go on “60 Minutes” or some other national confessional. For maximum effectiveness, he should be accompanied by his wronged wife, who could clutch his hand while he tearfully lays his burdens on the public altar and ask for our forgiveness.
Of course, he will be forgiven by many, particularly those who fear that the loss of Jackson damages everything he stood for.
Jackson doesn’t even have to worry about getting re-elected, since he was never elected in the first place. That has worked for him and against him. As a freelance activist, he has depended on his rock-starlike charisma to define his leadership abilities. But as a credible political leader–beyond his immediate and mostly black supporters–the baby scandal has accelerated a loss of stature that already had begun.
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Jackson hit the peak of his crossover appeal to mainstream America during his 1988 presidential campaign. In the face of the “Reagan Revolution,” he moved from being “president of black America,” in some commentators’ eyes, to principal advocate for what remained of left-progressive politics across racial lines. Many have forgotten how it was his idea, for example, to have a “drug czar” and to put a priority on programs for poor children.
But his subsequent decisions to consider and then reject attempts to run for mayor of the District of Columbia or for any other office left him politically adrift–an eloquent gadfly on the liberal wing of America’s political scene. Long before the tabloid revelations, Jackson appeared to be tangled in an endless “battle against invisibility,” in the words of a 1996 Jackson biography by Marshall Frady.
Clinton appointed Jackson to be an envoy to Africa, where his legendary popularity there rivals that of Muhammad Ali, but hardly anyone here noticed. Ralph Nader replaced him in 2000 as the highest-profile left-wing populist voice during the presidential campaign. Among black activists, younger voices like the Rev. Al Sharpton have begun to crowd him from center stage.
Jackson deserves a credit for his past successes. He may yet score new ones. He’s hard to beat as an activist for voter registration, a negotiator of strikes and other disputes and a motivator for young people.
As some raise the question of whether Jackson can recover, another question comes to my mind: Why should we care? Whether Jackson’s profile is high or low, the issues he addresses live on. Leaders tend to appear out of the masses when they are needed most. Leaders come in all colors and black America certainly has no shortage of them these days; we have leaders in walks of life where we could not even find employment opportunities a few short decades ago.
Some of these leaders catch the attention of the media and achieve a certain greatness in the minds of the public. Then they are faced with a new challenge: how to hold onto it. Whether Jackson regains his greatness or not, he can only blame himself for losing it.
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