"Leave Him Alone!"

There was a moment during last week's emotion-filled White House reception for Nelson Mandela when I felt as if I had traveled back in time. It came when the Rev. Bernice King, who looks and sounds remarkably like her sainted father Martin Luther King Jr., likened Bill Clinton to the biblical King David, who kept his throne despite his sinful dalliance with Bathsheba because he atoned. Offering the President her understanding and her forgiveness, she intoned, "It's time, I think, for us to leave our President alone." The audience of African-American religious leaders broke into a chant, "Leave him alone! Leave him alone! Leave him alone!"

Flash back to 1984 and Jesse Jackson's first tumultuous presidential campaign. He had come under heavy fire from the press for privately referring to Jews by the insulting nickname "Hymie" and New York City as "Hymietown." And like the President, he had lied about it. The first black leader of any real weight to come to Jackson's defense was Louis Farrakhan, the Black Muslim leader. At a rally in Chicago, addressing the Jews he blamed for Jackson's problems, Farrakhan brayed, "I warn you in the name of Allah to leave this servant of God alone," and the audience of Black Muslims broke into a chant, "Leave him alone! Leave him alone! Leave him alone!"

What's striking is not the parallels between the events, but their enormous differences. Unlike Clinton, Jackson did not take months to come clean about his sin. Nor, in the end, did he try to hide behind semantic sophistry. After about a week of excruciating deliberation--made all the more painful because some of the black clergymen advising Jackson wanted him to continue lying in order to preserve his political viability--Jackson went into a synagogue in New Hampshire and delivered an abject apology. Later, at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco, he repeated his plea for forgiveness, insisting passionately that "God isn't finished with me yet." It may have been the best speech he has ever given.

Since the Hymietown episode, there has been a huge and heartening psychological shift in black America that is only now becoming evident. Paradoxically, the very belligerence of Farrakhan's defense of Jackson was proof of its futility. Farrakhan did not have a clue about how the power game is really played (and still does not), and so the best he could do was issue empty threats. In contrast, Bernice King's calm, stately defense of Clinton bespoke a newfound political self-confidence among African Americans. At some point during the past 14 years, many black Americans decided to stop acting like victims of oppression and more like full-fledged, bare-knuckles players in the power game. They have been at the table long enough now to understand how the game is played. Black members of Congress like Maxine Waters and John Conyers Jr. are acting as if they really believe they have the clout to thwart the Republicans' plans to cut short Clinton's presidency--and they may be right. Clinton's popularity among black voters is the cornerstone of his high approval ratings, his best defense against impeachment. If Clinton stays in power, he will owe the black community big time.