Pride and Prejudice

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Such a backlash would confirm the worst fears of many mainstream black leaders, who feel that Jackson is ill-versed in the delicate art of building interracial coalitions. Jackson has never held an elected office. Whereas mayors like Young and Bradley needed to court white votes to win elections, Jackson has opted for confrontation, forging all-black protest blocs to demand concessions. At Operation PUSH, he organized boycotts of white businesses in order to win more contracts and jobs for minorities. In the process he was able to wring concessions from such companies as Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Another group under the PUSH umbrella is proving to be a political liability in quite a different way. Last month federal auditors demanded that PUSH-EXCEL return $708,431 of over $3 million in U.S. Department of Education grants awarded between 1978 and 1981. The Government claims that PUSH authorities have failed to account for the money properly. Says Jackson casually: "It's really a dispute between auditors and accountants."

By personality and disposition, Jackson is not a perfect choice to make the first significant black bid for the presidency.* He is frequently blustery, volatile and egotistical. But he is the only black leader with the drive and audacity to mount such an extraordinary political campaign. Revolutions of all kinds—political, economic, social—are often led by rough-edged men, and Jackson is unexceptional in their company. The established order is invariably unnerved by firebrands with fiercely held views, especially if those views stir the masses. The press is equally "traumatized," says Jackson, who has grown cool to even the black reporters who trail him. No longer does he indulge in "Let's talk black talk" off-the-record sessions. "I don't trust you all on that level," he tells black reporters he once confided in.

Jackson is better at inspiring hopes and dreams than he is at designing specific programs to help the poor. His critics are biting on this score. Says Elections Expert Richard Scammon, a conservative Democrat: "Jesse Jackson is a black George Wallace—a Rodney Dangerfield. He wants respect. It's a scream for attention. He has no real program. He doesn't know what he's doing." In private, one of Jackson's Democratic rivals is almost as caustic. "There's still one speech Jackson hasn't given yet," he says. "We still haven't seen his agenda."

Jackson does have an agenda, which, like those of his Democratic opponents, is constrained by the federal budget deficit. He would raise $50 billion from a one-or two-year surtax ranging from 1% on incomes of $25,000 to 10% on incomes over $90,000. He would save another $80 billion by cutting defense outlays by 20%. But if Jackson reduces the deficit by $70 billion, as he proposes, and fulfills his intention to spend $50 billion to rebuild the nation's infrastructure (roads, bridges, water systems, mass transit), he would have only $10 billion left to fight poverty. That amount would not come close to restoring the $25 billion cut from programs affecting the poor by the Reagan Administration in 1981.