After the Reagan Years, Freshets of Hope, Caring : By Standing for Those Who Are Left Behind, Jackson May Move Politics in New Direction

The speech was not new. Some sentences fell flat, and the metaphors were overabundant.

Cynical Democrats, and probably many Republicans as well, guffawed at the references to patched quilts, unheated homes and hard-working single women.

“I understand,” said Jesse Jackson, alluding to the quiet misery of quiet people. Only late at night, after they served turkey to their employers, did the moms wearily return to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for their children. “I understand,” said Jackson.

Even if planned for prime time, Jackson seems unpackaged, perhaps unbuttoned. In his address to the Democratic National Convention, Jackson evoked religion and spirit. He addressed the outcast and the forgotten. And for a moment, at least, he touched a chord.

After eight years of Ronald Reagan it is hard to remember why the President is (was?) known as the Great Communicator. He shuns news conferences and interviews. He forms sentences with difficulty. He reads speeches like a beginning student. Is this one of the many ironies of Jesse Jackson? In the high-tech age of video and slick commercials, it is neither the Hollywood actor nor the consummate manager who breaks through, drawing a response. Rather, it is the outsider, the black preacher educated in small towns and churches. The insiders are prepared and overprepared; their advisers and consultants advise and consult. They evaluate every factor, interest group, gesture, remark. But the meticulous script is surface, not soul. The audiences yawn.

On the campaign trail Jackson was known as regularly, wildly, sometimes uncontrollably late. He scheduled more events for one day than he could possibly complete. Even for a live television interview Jackson showed up when it was half over. This, too, hints of a spontaneous dimension that other Presidents and candidates have long-jumped; Jackson is tough to schedule. Once, already late, passing through a hospital he was beckoned by a man whose wife upstairs was deathly ill. Might Jackson make a quick visit and pray for her? No cameras. No votes. No reporters. Jackson went.

Yet it is not simply gestures or speeches that set Jackson apart. He explicitly appeals to the disfranchised, those who have been left out and those who have not voted. This is not a marginal group. A shrinking number of eligible voters cast ballots. That most popular President, Ronald Reagan, governs on the basis of a minority of eligible voters. Anyone who moves this vast army of non-voters to the polls reconstitutes American politics.

And no one can doubt that Jackson has begun to stir this army. He gained 6.7 million votes in the primaries and won in many cities--including New York, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia and San Francisco. He obtained these victories by provoking the inactive and the apathetic--those who never saw any reason to vote because government seemed so distant and indifferent. Not only among blacks and minorities, but also among the young, union members and even farmers, Jackson generated palpable enthusiasm.

Jackson is more than a preacher. After years of sneering Reaganite references to “welfare queens in designer jeans,” the language of care and concern sounds fresh. Jackson reminds us that the presence of the homeless in American cities is not a command of nature or God, but the result of bad policies--the absence of jobs and decent housing. We see the homeless and avert our eyes, but Jackson reminds us that a wealthy nation is devoted to the common good of all. He recalls that, of the advanced industrial countries, the United States alone has no national health care. For too many, sickness is not simply a tragedy but a family financial disaster.

Jackson looks back to the civil-rights movement when moralism also became political. The continuity and the change are remarkable. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech was delivered to a protest rally; Jackson invokes King’s dreams and hopes, but as a runner-up Democratic presidential candidate. For this reason he spurns talk of breaking rank and forming a new party. The millions whom he mobilized have a future not as a splinter but inside the Democratic Party. It is impossible to see how this will unfold. It has been remarked, however, that in 2008--five campaigns down the pike--the 46-year-old Jackson will be two years younger than Reagan was when he first took the presidential oath.

It is easy to dismiss Jackson--too much moralism, hope, dreaming and not enough specific policies. But it is harder to dismiss his appeal and his votes. We live in a cynical self-obsessed period. But even the toughest shudder, at least sometimes, at the poverty, pollution and sickness that is never far from the front door.

Jackson speaks to that perpetual pain, the realization that the United States excludes and damages too many. In galvanizing the disfranchised and in making respectable--once again--frank calls of moralism and concern, Jesse Jackson may be inching American politics in a new direction.