Clinton Endorsement Avoided by Jackson : Politics: Rather than express support for the presumptive Democratic nominee, he uses TV interview to praise Perot.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson kept alive his feud with presumptive Democratic nominee Bill Clinton on Sunday by refusing to say if he would endorse him, then made flattering references to independent candidate Ross Perot.

Asked during an interview on the CBS program “Face the Nation” if he would endorse Clinton, Jackson said, “Well, I certainly have had every intention to do so.”

But, he said, “Last Saturday we were extending a hand of friendship” and “as we reached out, Bill Clinton pushed off.”

Jackson and Clinton, two men of considerable ego each of whom has sought the leadership of their party, have quarreled on and off for well over a year. The ill will surfaced occasionally during the primary season, particularly when Clinton was told--erroneously--that Jackson was about to endorse a rival for the nomination, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin. Inadvertently speaking into an open microphone, Clinton raged that Jackson had stabbed him in the back--then was forced to apologize when his remarks were broadcast and the endorsement rumor turned out to be untrue.

Then, just over a week ago, Clinton appeared at a conference sponsored by Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and criticized a rap singer who had also appeared at the conference, Sister Souljah, for remarks appearing to advocate that blacks kill whites. Ever since, Jackson steadily has increased his criticism of Clinton while Clinton has stuck to his criticism of Souljah.

“I abhor violence,” Jackson said. “I’ve been a victim of it. We stand solidly against it wherever it occurs, and the suggestion of it, whether it is black on white or white on black or black on black, we stand solidly against violence, even the threat of it.”

But, he insisted, Clinton had been “unfair” to spring the criticism on him without warning, referring to Clinton’s actions as a “ploy to get a cheap headline.”

“We met for 30 minutes before he spoke. He never brought it up at that time,” Jackson said. “If he had brought this matter up to me, I could explain why she was there.”

Clinton responded Sunday while flying to Atlanta for a televised town meeting. “I think that we ought to be able to disagree with one another over all our ideas,” he said. “ . . . But it seems to me that the implication is that because of my race, and my candidacy for President, I can’t take a stand against ideas I find abhorrent. I just disagree with him about that. . . . I have to speak up for racial harmony.”

Jackson did praise Perot, who in the past has provided money to pay for some of Jackson’s foreign travels.

“I’ve known Ross across the years,” Jackson said, adding, “I have a high regard for Ross Perot--his commitment to equal funding for public education is perhaps the real key to desegregation, his support for choice for women, his obsession to bring Americans back home from foreign battlefields.”

Jackson has developed a plan to invest billions of dollars from public and private pension plans in domestic construction projects to boost employment in the United States. So far, Clinton has been unenthusiastic about Jackson’s plan, although he has advocated increased public spending on several of the same projects. Jackson has offered the same plan to Perot.

But although Jackson would like to hold the threat of an alliance with Perot over Clinton’s head, he may not have that opportunity. Perot campaign manager Ed Rollins said recently that Perot was not looking for a Jackson endorsement.

“We’re not really reaching out for Jesse Jackson’s endorsement,” Rollins said. “If he wants to endorse us, fine, but he creates controversy wherever he goes, and we’re a grass-roots campaign and we’re not looking for controversy.”