Jesse Jackson Is Too Far Left for ’88 : Party’s Move to the Center Leaves Little Room for His Ideas in ’88 By JOHN B. ANDERSON

In the stirring peroration to his speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, Jesse Jackson sounded a battle cry, “Our time has come! Our faith, hope and dreams have prevailed America, our time has come!”

In 1988, Jackson will seek to prove that his time has come for the Democratic presidential nomination. Although listed as a front-runner in the polls, he complains that it is always with an asterisk. The asterisk refers to a notation: “without Cuomo.” Nevertheless his putative candidacy should be judged on the basis of whether the Democratic Party is prepared to nominate someone with Jackson’s views.

This is an effort to analyze it in terms of his stand on the issues, not on the basis of race or who else may enter the contest. In April, 1986, 765 delegates to the founding conference of the National Rainbow Coalition included labor leaders, farmers and some prominent black leaders who did not support Jackson’s candidacy in 1984. The flavor of many of the speeches during the two-day meeting was to promote a significant Democratic left.

In conceding himself that “y’all is some strange combination of folks,” Jackson outlined a program that included: a “quality of life budget,” repeal of the Gramm-Rudman budget law, an end to labor give-backs and plant closings, a non-interventionist foreign policy with an end to the arms buildup and a ban on all nuclear testing along with measures to achieve a nuclear-free world.

On domestic issues, Jackson’s views are closely aligned with what he said about People United to Save Humanity, or PUSH, when he founded it in 1971. Jackson said it would “push for a greater share of economic and political power for poor people in America in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” In 1983 when he entered the race for the 1984 presidential nomination, he attacked the leaders of his own party for being too silent and too passive in opposing Ronald Reagan’s economic and social policies. He professed then as now to speak for the “damned, the desperate, and the dispossessed.” In his last campaign he called for a 20% reduction in defense outlays and made it clear these savings should be earmarked for programs to solve human problems.

As the Democratic Party cautiously seeks to position itself in a more centrist mold, Jackson’s ideas seem clearly in conflict with that objective. Democratic centrists place a premium on a government that works--a principle that is in implicit tension with the idea of risking new, untried and experimental approaches as Jackson does. No one would make the mistake of calling Jesse Jackson a centrist. He has an economic message that is clearly attractive to blacks, who have an unemployment rate for prime age adult males that is double that for whites. Even with some signs of a slow recovery in farming areas, his populism finds a ready audience among those who still fear the auctioneer’s hammer.

However, in the total universe of Democratic voters who participate in the nominating process, blacks and farmers are only a small fraction. As he prods his fellow Democrats to redeem the party’s pledge to stand for social justice, he preaches an economic philosophy that is essentially redistributive in character. In 1984 and again with the campaign now under way, his fellow candidates talk instead in terms of enlarging the pie.

In the field of national security policy, Jackson seems to be clearly at odds with opinions voiced by many of the leading Democarts who make up the Democratic Leadership Council, some of whom, like Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia and former Gov. Charles Robb of Virginia, are possible candidates themselves. He does not believe that the Democratic Party should simply debate the merits of the Midgetman missile as compared to the MX. Where others talk of arms control, Jackson speaks of disarmament.

In the area of foreign policy, Jackson stands virtually alone, certainly among other possible Democratic candidates, on the question of both Israel and a Palestinian state. His rebuff to Zionism is not just linked to his controversial association in 1984 with Louis Farrakhan, leader of a Black Muslim sect.

In a 1979 visit to the West Bank, his speeches to Arab audiences were interrupted with cries of “Jackson, Arafat, Down with Zionism.” On his visit to Lebanon he was photographed embracing Yasir Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Even though he has called on the Arabs to recognize Israel and in 1985 appealed to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on behalf of Soviet Jewry, traditionally liberal Democratic Jewish voters have not had their fears assuaged.

While most Democratic candidates for their party’s nomination will oppose President Reagan’s Central American policies, Jackson has already far outpaced them. Almost three years ago, when Walter Mondale’s nomination seemed assured, Jackson abruptly left the campaign trail to visit Central America. He met with the leftist guerrillas in El Salvador and with both Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Fidel Castro of Cuba.

He made it clear that his policies toward all three of these countries, and others as well, would go beyond a passive one of non-intervention. He believes in actively succoring those regimes in the Third World that assert the right of self-determination and where the cause of human rights would be advanced. Roger Wilkins has described Jackson as “a politician of values.” He would extend them to his policies both at home and abroad.

In 1984 Jackson complained, not without justification, that his program for economic reform as well as his basic foreign policy views were often inadequately reported. If that deficiency is redressed in the coming campaign, it will not aid him in his quest for the nomination. As a candidate who got 19.6% of the vote in Alabama, 21% in Georgia and who won Louisiana with 42.9%, his advantages in a widely splintered race in the South on “Super Tuesday” next March make it possible for him to achieve something approaching a home run.

Nevertheless, as the Democrats in convention contemplate how they can win back the White House, even liberals who now call themselves progressives, and sometimes even pragmatists, will conclude that the country is not yet ready for a man of Jackson’s views. His time has not yet come. The party will not move to the left but try the center of the line in its effort to score a victory.