When the Clock Broke by John Ganz

Author:John Ganz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

9

“WE’RE AT WAR”

What was to be done about Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition? Although the reverend chose not to run in ’92, that was more a sign of the widespread belief among Democrats that it was a “bad year” than any real decline in his political career.

Jackson retained his position as the major broker for two key centers of Democratic power: Black voters and unreconstructed New Deal liberals. The candidates in the race did a complicated dance around Jackson, approaching and avoiding as their political needs required. An approach could be hazardous: Jerry Brown found that out in New York when—to Howard Stern’s disgust—he floated Jackson as a vice presidential candidate. But there were risks in keeping one’s distance as well.

Clinton had kept a degree of remove from Jackson, but when he was told—erroneously, in fact—that Jackson had endorsed Tom Harkin during a February TV interview, he had one of his tantrums. “It’s an outrage. It’s a dirty double-crossing, back-stabbing thing to do,” Clinton exploded to his aides, thinking he was off the air. “There’s only one person can be hurt by this … I mean, I want you to say, listen, I came to that guy’s house at midnight. I have called him, I’ve done everything I could. For him to do this … For me to hear this on a television program is an act of absolute dishonor.” But the most revealing comment perhaps was “That is not what we want. We want him not involved at all.” Clinton was trying to arrange a non-endorsement from Jackson, with the understanding that he also would not endorse anyone else.

The press lapped up the gaffe. Columnists even celebrated the outburst. Bill Thompson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram applauded Clinton’s “spontaneity,” “honest emotion,” “impromptu anger.” Thompson wrote that the affair really reflected more on Jackson than on Clinton: “If this was Clinton’s immediate reaction to what he thought was a double-cross by Jackson, perhaps we could draw a conclusion: Perhaps Bill Clinton knows, or at least suspects, that Jesse Jackson is a double-crossing backstabber. Clinton seemed angry. He didn’t seem surprised.” There were gains to be had in attacking Jackson: an appreciative audience in the press. Inside the Democratic Party, especially in the South, other voices were urging Clinton to go after Jackson. A party activist and fundraiser told Clinton that he could benefit by “telling old Jesse where to stuff it.”

From a certain perspective, the Democratic Leadership Council was a coalition of anti-Jackson Democrats. It was founded in 1985, right after Mondale’s general election loss and Jackson’s surprisingly strong primary campaign and keynote speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention. The New Democrats, as the DLC members came to be known, blamed Jackson and the liberals for the catastrophic losses by Mondale and then Dukakis. William Galston’s postmortem identified the Democrats’ “liberal fundamentalism” and catering to minority groups as their fatal flaw. Jackson quickly understood the nature of the group and returned the favor, calling them “Democrats for the Leisure Class.

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