Two Traditions in Search of a Mix : Jackson, Dukakis May Be Too Bound to Positions to Pull Off an F.D.R.

The 1988 Democratic nominating contest can be looked on as a kind of big-ticket scavenger hunt in which contestants race around the country picking up delegates and claiming that they have achieved some political state of grace like “inevitability” or “momentum.” The media, with their penchant for emphasizing novelty, reinforce in the mind of the public the seeming randomness of the process by dwelling on the unusual: Jackson’s race, Dukakis’ ethnicity or Gore’s family background. In fact, in a mature system like ours, there are few political novelties. Indeed, the messages, styles and constituencies of all major candidates on the Democratic side are remarkably familiar. They draw, to varying degrees, on two durable party traditions: They are either Establishment Democrat or Populist Democrat.

The fact of Jesse Jackson’s race has caused most people to look on him as a kind of political oddity. Given the melancholy history of race relations in this country, a black presidential candidate who achieves the success that Jackson has enjoyed so far is indeed big news. But Jackson’s message, far from being novel or exotic, is a remarkably durable one that has surfaced many times in this nation’s oldest political party.

Symbolically enough, the message now being sounded by Jesse Jackson was first articulated by Andrew Jackson. It is the manifesto of the outsider. In Andrew Jackson’s day the outsiders were the farmers of the Western frontier who felt ignored by the great financial and governmental institutions of the Eastern Seaboard. Jesse Jackson is a voice of contemporary America’s outsiders--racial and sexual minorities and those who have been swept outside by the massive economic dislocations of the Reagan era.

From Andrew Jackson onward, Populist Democrats have been inspirational rather than programmatic. William Jennings Bryan’s speech to the 1896 Democratic National Convention may not have been good economics, but it was electrifying oratory. And reading a Bryan diatribe against “dollar diplomacy” in Latin America is like scanning a Jesse Jackson press release.

Jackson is unusual in the history of Populist Democrats in so far as many of his forebears were deeply tinged with racism. Ironically, Jesse Jackson’s most immediate Populist ancestor was former segregationist George C. Wallace, whose crusade on behalf of America’s outsiders was contaminated by racist appeals. In 1988 both Richard A. Gephardt and Albert Gore Jr. have flirted with Populism, but Jackson has simply proved to be a more forceful exponent of this message.

While appeals of this kind are inherently more exciting than more conventional political messages, Populism in this country tends to get you only a second-place finish. Americans may love the catharsis that Populist orators dish up, but, when all the flashy egalitarian speeches are over, they tend to go home with the well-groomed guy in the business suit.

Gov. Michael S. Dukakis is such a well-groomed and earnest guy. If the Democratic Populists are windy and passionate, the Establishment Democrats are urbane, rationalistic and cool.

The Establishment tradition of the Democratic Party has been far more successful in gaining nominations and winning elections than have the Populists, who seem fated to develop the themes that Establishment candidates later commandeer. The Establishment Democrats have given us Presidents like Cleveland, Wilson, Kennedy and Carter, and candidates like Stevenson and Mondale. The messages of these candidates, of whom Dukakis is one, are cerebral as opposed to the glandular quality of the Populist messages. In the extreme case they come across sounding like policy nerds. Earnest, airless and even a little pious, Establishment Democrats dwell on the workability of the programs that they offer. Populist Democrats are not so constrained by the dictates of accuracy. They opt for resonance over reason, and concentrate more on delivery than on detail.

If the Populists scare us to death and the Establishment Democrats bore us to death, is there any hope that the strengths of both traditions can be merged in a single candidate? It seems unlikely. Jackson is a hyperkinetic tub-thumper who summons up strong feelings in voters but is cheerfully cavalier about his facts and figures. Dukakis is the dreary logothete who thinks that voters can be dazzled by a jete of public administration.

The Democrats were actually able to find someone to combine these two traditions. He was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was able to pull off the remarkable feat of smiting the “economic royalists” in sonorous prep-school tones. Both Jackson and Dukakis may be too wedded to their own distinctive styles to emulate one another. But the Populist and Establishment style that each man so well represents just might influence the late campaign strategy of Al Gore.