Pride and Prejudice

(8 of 10)

Jackson's foreign policies are radically non-interventionist, with a pro-Third World tilt. Like Hart and Mondale, he favors a freeze on building and deploying nuclear weapons. He would cut American military forces in Europe and Japan in half over five years, arguing that allies should pay for more of their own defense, which he says now costs the U.S. $150 billion a year. Critics note correctly that his defense planks would tempt Soviet adventurism, but Jackson dismisses such talk as alarmist. To ease cold war tensions and revive arms-control talks, he would "aggressively negotiate" with the Soviets.

A great believer in his own powers as a negotiator, especially after arranging the release of downed Navy Lieutenant Robert Goodman from Syria last January, Jackson wants to establish a "dialogue" with Palestinian leaders on the issue of an independent Palestinian state, which he advocates. "I've always supported Israel's right to exist with security," Jackson says. "But unless you can talk with adversaries, you cannot help the ally." He would try to curtail U.S. investments in South Africa, while increasing foreign aid to other African nations. Jackson is unconvinced that Cuba and Nicaragua are fomenting revolution in Central America. He favors "normalizing" relations with the Marxist-led Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, which he says is "on the right side of history," and withdrawing all troops from the region. On the other hand, he does not rule out sending U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf in the event of a Soviet invasion, and he favors covert U.S. support of Afghan rebels against the Soviets.

Jackson has a vastly different world view than his Democratic rivals. He says that he was "born in occupied territory, having lived all my developing years under apartheid." (He grew up in South Carolina.) His Third World sympathies make him highly skeptical of U.S. involvement abroad ("too often we are aligned with the landed gentry, the dictator, the oppressor"), and sometimes too forgiving of the excesses of revolutionary causes. He condemns U.S. covert operations in Central America as "a form of terrorism," but finds such lawless regimes as Muammar Gaddafi's Libya and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia merely "distasteful."

Jackson's real issue, the one he cares about most deeply, is voting rights. Although Southern states have long since stopped using literacy tests and police dogs to keep blacks from voting, Jackson claims that they have found more subtle methods of disenfranchisement. Most offensive to him is the "runoff primary" system used in ten Southern states. If no candidate wins a majority in a primary, the system forces a second, runoff primary between the two leaders. Blacks can sometimes win the first round, says Jackson, but usually not the second. Without second primaries, he claims, the South would send 15 more blacks to Congress, and elect scores of blacks to state and local offices. He has made abolishing dual primaries his "litmus test issue."