The Democrats’ Irresponsible Rogue : Politics: No mainstream Republican is as far to the right as Jesse Jackson is to the left--and he’s the star of the Democratic Party.

Which aspiring Democratic presidential candidate compares the American military’s action in Panama with the massacre of defenseless protesters in Tian An Men Square by the loathsome Chinese 27th Army? The redoubtable Rev. Jesse Jackson.

When the average American is asked to name the most prominent Democrat in the country, whom do you suppose he names most frequently? Is it the benign Speaker of the House? You know, Congressman What’s-His-Name, the one who just had his dog, Alice, put to sleep? You know, the one who replaced that wheeler-dealer Texan, Jim Wright? No, he is not the most prominent Democrat. Well, would it be the congressman who had the homosexual prostitute staying in his home, or, perhaps, the recent House whip who absconded from Washington before the Ethics Committee sent a posse out to haul him in? No, again. The most prominent Democrat of all is either Sen. Edward Kennedy, the guy whose Oldsmobile could not swim, or, perhaps a point or two more frequently mentioned, Jesse Jackson.

Thus I think we can all see why, absent Jackson on the national scene, the Democrats would be in rather bad odor with the American people. With Jackson on the scene they are in worse odor. There are many nice, polite Democrats at all levels of American government. Their problem is that there are also many irresponsible rogues among the party’s eminences and Jackson is the most irresponsible of all. He is not just insufferable. He is a left-wing rigorist whose presence reminds ordinary Americans that not all anti-Americans live in Libya.

It is the misfortune of mainstream Democrats that about the time that former Sen. George McGovern won the Democratic presidential nomination, these left-wing anti-Americans gained a hoof-hold in the Democratic Party. They have not been dislodged. Many are as far to the left as various right-wing fringe groups are far to the right, but right-wing fringe groups are beyond the bounds of the Republican Party. Left-wing fringe groups, as alienated from America as are their right-wing equivalents, now figure prominently at every Democratic presidential convention, and their candidate is Jackson.

Comparing our invasion of Panama with the Chinese army’s slaughter of its fellow citizens in Tian An Men Square is as irrational a flight of malevolence as it would be to compare our invasion of Panama with the Soviets’ invasions of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Afghanistan. No normal mind would think of such a wild comparison, but Jackson’s did, and he is right now quite possibly the front-runner for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination. He said that our action was similar to those Soviet invasions. He said that we had lost our claim to moral high ground. He said that our troops were burying Panamanian civilians “in mass graves,” and that the corpses numbered more than 1,200. This he declared when most estimates settled on 300 civilians killed (the official U.S. government figure is now 220), and when there was relief on all sides that the tyrant Noriega was in irons.

These are not the statements of an ordinary Democrat, an ordinary black Democrat or even an ordinary liberal Democrat. They are the statements of a far-out left-wing zealot receiving ideas from fringe groups such as something called the Caribbean Action Lobby.

Jackson’s spokesman cites the Caribbean Action Lobby as his source of the intelligence on Panama. It is an organization that is very hard to track down. A Washington journalist tried and finally found a telephone number somewhere in Brooklyn, where a somewhat distracted woman, speaking over the din of noisy children, suggested calling back in a few days.

Now, that is the enlightened source of this prominent presidential candidate’s utterances, and he ventilates his extremist claptrap regularly, sometimes on national television, sometimes before distinguished Democratic audiences. Early this month at a prayer service honoring New York’s Mayor David Dinkins, he declared Christ’s birthplace “under occupation” by Israel. Well, those who now occupy Bethlehem are its original inhabitants, Christ’s fellow Jews. But that is not what Jackson meant. Once again he was making an extremist point from the swales of the far left.