By Talking With Us, Not at Us, Jackson Invites Masses Back Into Politics

Republicans and conservative Democrats, along with the Rev. Jesse Jackson himself, make a mistake when they tag him as the leader of the “progressive wing” of the party. The key to his success as a speaker is populism, which doesn’t fit left or right labels.

In a glitzy, high-tech age of media consultants and airbrushed personalities, public life usually seems like a faraway spectacle. We watch others on the political stage, analyzing events, making decisions. Jackson is a welcome contrast. He seems accessible and down to earth. Though he is emotional, he doesn’t talk at us. He talks with us.

“My children could be just like him,” said one black woman on the campaign trail, explaining his appeal. But Jackson’s appeal goes beyond race. White factory workers, farmers, small-business people, even an occasional former member of the Ku Klux Klan during the primaries remarked that Jackson seemed like a “human being,” not a corporate front or a prepackaged image. Polling after the Democratic primary in Wisconsin found that 22% of white voters who described themselves as conservative had voted for Jackson. On Tuesday we saw why.

The end of Jackson’s speech furnished its real beginning. When he said “I understand,” and went on to describe his own history, he did more than connect in personal terms with the people in his audience who have felt marginal, poor or without voice. Jackson also served notice of his credentials as a reporter. He has traveled for years now across the country.

Ronald Reagan’s great genius in politics is his storytelling. But Reagan’s stories are sentimental. And they privatize our politics. Reagan points to acts of individual heroism or charity that seem to say: Don’t worry about things; everything will work out if we “believe in America.”

Jackson believes in another America. Like Reagan, he has a lot of stories to pass on. But they are not prettified. He describes teen-age mothers--”babies having babies”--in Washington, kids in Watts who use drugs, factory workers in Michigan out of jobs, AIDS victims in Houston abandoned by their families, farmers in Minnesota about to lose their land.

But Jackson’s stories, like Bruce Springsteen’s songs, also convey optimism about America. They seem to say: We have difficulties that we have to look at, but they can’t defeat us. Populist reporting doesn’t ask for sympathy. Jackson’s view of the American Dream sees an ongoing struggle--what he called the “ancient and endless cause.” It has a legacy of those before--”the blood and sweat of innocents.” And it has a future. He challenged his listeners to make themselves part of the action. “Hold your head high,” he said. “You can make it.”

This kind of challenge formed the background for Jackson’s theme--a call to common ground, the title of his speech. It wasn’t an appeal for us to “come and reason together.” Jackson’s call involves conflict, anger and difference. One hundred years ago, Populist farmers struggling to keep their lands challenged railroad barons and industrial tycoons--”the masses against the classes.” Jackson portrayed the 1980s as a huge party given for the affluent, a party that left the rich richer and the poor behind. His image of a quilt of many different pieces conjured up a strategy as old as the Israelites in Egypt:If we don’t pull together, we’ll be defeated separately.

But Jackson imagery also transcended divisions of class and power. “We’re all in the same boat now,” he said, whether children of former slaves brought to America against their will or former immigrants, seeking freedom and opportunity. The lion and the lamb all are threatened by acid rain, drugs and decaying infrastructure. Thus his “common ground” brings back the first Populists’ vision of the “cooperative commonwealth,” a sense of shared responsibility for the foundations of America’s common life. It creates a potent set of symbols to counter the culture of “me first” and “greed is good.”

In the end, Jackson’s speech is a reminder of an older understanding of politics and public life that we have largely forgotten. He invites us to a public discussion that evokes town meetings, courthouse debates, street-corner talks and back-yard get-togethers. Jackson, in short, seeks to renew politics as discussion, not spectacle. My guess is that the idea might begin to catch on.