May Play Role of Kingmaker : The Big Question Now Is: What Does Jackson Want?

What does Jesse Jackson want?

A four-year lease on the White House with an option for renewal is the preferred answer of the Jackson campaign.

“Have you asked Dukakis that question?” snaps Bert Lance, former President Jimmy Carter’s one-time budget director, who is one of Jackson’s closest advisers and a main link to the Democratic Party power elite. “I think it would be a very good question for him.”

To wonder what Jackson wants, Lance insists, is an odd and presumptuous question to ask about the presidential candidate who won more votes on Super Tuesday than any other Democrat and is running a close second behind Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis in the Associated Press delegate count, with Sen. Albert Gore Jr. in third.

But in moments of candor, as the campaign turns north again, Jackson’s advisers seem to accept that the political and arithmetic realities are weighted against them.

Jackson has broadened his appeal considerably since 1984, now routinely capturing 8% to 12% of the white Democratic vote, and occasionally more than 20%, as in Maine, Vermont and Minnesota. But there is little evidence that Jackson can expand his national base far enough beyond the most liberal and disaffected elements of the party to win the nomination.

Moreover, the presence of 645 “super delegates” at the Democratic convention, drawn from the party elite and unencumbered with obligatory commitment to any candidate, will also dilute Jackson’s influence.

Thus, Jackson may arrive at the Atlanta convention in July with a large but insufficient block of delegates, perhaps 800 to as many as 1,200. Which is to say, too few to win but too many to ignore.

This could be enough to deny Gore and Dukakis the prize as well, making it possible that the Democratic nominee would emerge only after negotiations, probably before the convention in July. By this view, Jackson’s main tactical goal is probably to ensure sufficient clout, as measured by his delegate count, to give him a major voice in the negotiations.

Room Reserved

“There’s a room in Atlanta reserved for this meeting,” Jackson’s campaign manager, Gerald F. Austin, says metaphorically. “There’s one seat in this room with Jesse Jackson’s name on the chair.”

In this scenario, which is supported by some evidence from within the Jackson campaign, Jackson expects to play the role of kingmaker in the party. He would barter his support of a candidate for incorporation of his liberal, populist agenda in the general election campaign and perhaps for a role in choosing Cabinet members in a prospective Democratic Administration.

But some analysts contend that Jackson is playing a longer-term game. They see him seeking to solidify his newly won measure of acceptance by the Democratic Party in order to pursue his far-reaching ambitions, which could include another presidential race as well as the recognition that he is the legitimate leader of a significant segment of the party.

Thus Jackson, now as dependent on the party as it is on him, would likely moderate his demands on the party at the convention, and would seek to play the same conciliatory role in the post-July campaign that he has adopted in the primaries.

‘We Can Win’

Of his candidacy, Jackson says at every campaign stop now: “We can win.” But the populist phrasing of his larger message seems to imply a goal of influence over personal triumph, of power over victory.

“It’s not what I want, it’s what we want,” he says in reference to the “Rainbow Coalition” he has tried to forge from the poor and the disenchanted, from groups on the fringes of American politics ranging from peace activists to gays and lesbians.

Speaking to reporters aboard his plane on Super Tuesday morning, his analysis of his own prospects in the primaries was notably restrained:

“If, against the odds of culture, history and money, I defeat them, it clearly says that my message has won, that my direction ought to be adopted by a new and expanding Democratic Party.”

Jackson’s relatively modest horizons also seem reflected in recent remarks of his campaign manager:

“Would I bet on Jesse Jackson being the nominee? No, I wouldn’t,” Austin said in a recent conversation with reporters. He quickly added, however, that “I wouldn’t bet against him coming out of California,” which holds the last primary in June, with the most delegates. But the bargaining among Democratic front-runners will probably start immediately thereafter, Austin said, and he expects the other candidates to try to settle on a nominee without relying on Jackson.

“Michael Dukakis may not need Jesse Jackson to win this nomination . . . . He probably doesn’t want Jesse Jackson to help him win the nomination,” Austin said. But he added emphatically that Jackson “will not only be the person who will bring in the black vote, he will be the key to the Rainbow Coalition vote.”

It is that clout that will come to bear at the convention, said Texas Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower, one of the few white elected officials to endorse Jackson in the Southern primaries.

What Jackson really wants, Hightower said, begins with a commitment by the nominee to incorporate the Jackson agenda of economic populism in the Democratic national campaign and extends to a role in presidential appointments.

“This has gone far beyond platform planks. They’re going to have to embrace some of his message. This isn’t just that they have to keep Jesse happy. We’re going to need Jesse,” Hightower said. “He’s a big-time player. . . . He’s going to have a big-time say, not only on who the nominee is, but who the vice presidential nominee is. Not only who the Cabinet officers are, but who the sub-Cabinet officers are.

“We’re talking about how the Democratic Party is going to present itself to the people and what sort of people are going to be invited to serve in a Democratic Administration.”

Jackson eschews such boastful depictions of himself as a force to be reckoned with--”just talk to fill up empty space,” he says. Sometimes the subject brings a bristling response: “The question of my brokering role is an insult to the integrity of this campaign,” Jackson said in an interview on Friday. “I’m running for the nomination. . . . I’m not gathering up delegates to take them to the big guys.”

On several occasions he has nevertheless mentioned the names of those who, as he puts it, should be “on anyone’s short list” for the party’s vice presidential nomination. These include House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas; Rep. Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, who briefly considered running for President; Rep. William H. Gray III of Pennsylvania, chairman of the House Budget Committee; Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa; Sen. Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, and Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn.

Jackson also says he will resist efforts by the Democratic chairman, Paul G. Kirk Jr., to reduce the traditional party platform this year to a letter to voters in order to avoid the appearance of catering to a multitude of special interests. “The platform is not the chairman’s role,” he said. “It’s the delegates’, right?”

Rules Changes Possible

Ambiguous remarks Jackson has made during the campaign have also fed speculation that he will seek rules changes in the Democratic Party, beyond those made since 1984, to make delegate counts more closely reflect the popular vote in primaries.

In the Friday interview, however, he said he was not interested “at this point” in changing party rules. “The issue now,” he said, “is changing the direction of the party and the country, and expanding it to include more people.”

Stephen Hess, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington, contends that Jackson’s hand would be stronger if he could show after November that he played a key role in a Democratic victory.

“You don’t buy and sell people in this day and age. What you really do is operate on faith,” Hess said. “If Jackson can make the argument that ‘I got you nominated,’ that’s one thing. If he can say, ‘I got you elected,’ that’s something else again.”

Populist Agenda

Moreover, Hess and others note, the question of weaving Jackson’s populist agenda into the national Democratic campaign raises an awkward dilemma both for Jackson and the party. His emphasis on new and expanded social programs to cope with “economic violence,” and his calls for higher taxes on the affluent, a “corporate code of conduct” and reductions of U.S. military forces in Europe, define a political stance that is well to the left of the Democratic center and still further left of the American electoral center. The more Jackson insists on its adoption by the party’s nominee, Hess says, “the more likely the Democrats are to be defeated.”

But to back away from his own positions risks disillusioning his constituency, which includes not only a solid majority of black voters but many disenchanted, “stay-away” whites who, if they feel Jackson has been co-opted by the party Establishment, will revert to traditional behavior and simply not vote. In a close election, the Jackson amalgam of blacks and alienated whites could make the difference.

In the end, what Jackson wants depends on his long-term motivation, suggests Robert Beckel, who as Vice President Walter F. Mondale’s campaign manager in 1984 horse-traded a settlement that left Jackson with a prime-time convention speech in recognition of his 465 delegates.

Beckel’s view of Jackson this time around is a generous one: “Asking what Jesse wants is reliving the last war. The notion of some deal is demeaning to Jackson. . . . He’s bigger than that now. He’s building a national political base” for a future candidacy.

Interested in Aiding Party

“He doesn’t want to alienate the party. He’s not going to throw it all away for some ridiculous Cabinet appointments, over some platform fight,” Beckel contends. “He’s got as much or more interest than anyone else in seeing the Democratic Party win. . . . He’s not going to let a loss be hung around his neck.”

Jackson has said as much during the primaries, in lamenting the venomous character of the Democratic campaign so far. In remarks to reporters he hints often about the closed-door bargaining that many believe will be necessary if Democrats are to unite behind a nominee. He has also said that the party’s failure to curb the open hostility between President Jimmy Carter’s camp and Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s forces in 1980 cost the party the election that year.

“We could have won in 1980,” Jackson said a few days ago aboard his campaign plane, “if the wisdom of hard internal negotiations had taken place over very public confrontation.”

Hard Bargaining

Before those talks take place, however, Jackson faces what may be equally hard bargaining within his own campaign, between advisers who insist that he hold faithful to his populist message and the constituency it has drawn, and those who fear that demanding too radical a turn by the party would guarantee its defeat and sacrifice Jackson’s own long-term political future.

“The real negotiations,” says a part-time Jackson consultant who asked not to be identified, “will take place among the Jackson people, not at the convention.”

Robert Gillette reported from Washington and Douglas Jehl from the Jackson campaign in Chicago.