Jesse Jackson, Jr.

Book Review:
Jesse Jackson, Jr., A More Perfect Union

Jesse Jackson, Jr., presents a progressive political vision for a new century

[2-1-02]

Witherspoon Issues Analyst Gene TeSelle heard Jesse Jackson, Jr., address a large interracial crowd of progressives in Nashville in January, as he has doubtless been doing in other places. Jackson noted there that he is aware of the generational difference from his father, who, he says, is often taking his orientation from things that happened thirty-five years ago, about the time he was born (the Selma bridge incident).

Jesse Jackson's son, now serving in the House of Representatives, has written a big book offering a progressive program for the Democratic Party. Gene TeSelle, in reviewing the book, say this means, first, "a progressive agenda that unites working people around economic issues and gives them motivation to turn out to vote." And second, it involves a "new federalism" that affirms the good that can be accomplished with the use of federal power to improve the social and economic life of the nation.

A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights by Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., with Frank E. Watkins. 525 pp. $24.95. Welcome Rain Publishers. ISBN 1-56649-186-X.

Those who think that one Jesse Jackson is enough will not be pleased with this book from his oldest son, who, after receiving degrees in business (North Carolina A&T), divinity (Chicago Theological Seminary), and law (University of Illinois), was elected at the age of thirty to the House of Representatives from Illinois' Second District (South Chicago and farther south and west), with some of the poorest and most polluted communities in the country.

Southern Democrats will not be pleased with the book, either. An emphasis throughout is the difference between North and South, and the role of race and states' rights throughout U.S. history, starting with Jefferson and Jackson. (Whatever you may say about the Democratic Party since 1936 or 1948 or 1964, it remains true that it has sponsored some of the worst legislation on the racial front.)

Nor will Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore, all of whom came from "former Confederate States" and spent much of their energy triangulating and compromising on racial as well as economic issues. Jackson lists the particulars: Al Gore's putting Willie Horton on the political map in 1988, Bill Clinton's "lion's den" strategy of attacking Sister Souljah in Jesse Jackson's presence in 1992, and many more.

Nor will the "New Democrats" of the Democratic Leadership Council be pleased. The DLC was formed after the first Jesse Jackson campaign in 1984 to present an alternative, not simply to Jackson, but to his entire agenda, which had not only gotten African Americans to register and turn out but mobilized many white voters as well. Super Tuesday was invented to help Al Gore in the Southern primaries in 1988, but it boomeranged; Jesse Jackson carried the Democratic primaries in much of the South.

Jesse Jackson, Jr., has an ambitious program: to strengthen the role of the federal government by adding eight amendments to the Constitution, all of them guaranteeing "positive rights" based on the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. These are: voting rights, full employment, universal and comprehensive health care, affordable housing, quality public education, equality for women, a sustainable environment, and progressive taxation.

He knows that this program will be dismissed as idealistic and utopian. That's why this book, written with his press secretary (who also worked with his father), is as long as it is. Jackson points out that the first ten amendments to the Constitution were intended to set limits on government, at a time when Federalists were concerned to protect inequalities of property and Jeffersonians were concerned to protect states' rights. Since then the Constitution has been amended only seventeen times, mostly to include more and more of those excluded at the beginning. He's ready to start the ball rolling for positive rights, because he knows very well that the Supreme Court has too often interpreted the Constitution in ways that preserve racial and economic inequalities.

The story Jackson tells is a partisan one, but it is not amateurish, and his purpose is obviously to make the case for his own program. He is not naive about the realities of politics. He documents, for example, the way race had to be disguised on both sides during the Civil War, one side using the language of "states' rights" when it clearly meant ensuring permanent inferiority, the other side using the language of "saving the Union" because it knew it could not address race directly and win elections in the North. Jackson knows that Reconstruction was lost and the country went into a seventy-year "nadir" for African Americans (from 1890 to 1960) because of an alliance of business-oriented Republicans, race-oriented Southern Democrats, and big-city Democrats concerned about jobs for their white constituents. He knows, as LBJ knew, that the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act delivered the South into the hands of Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, and the Republican Party. The old pattern continues; "the Democrats' obvious nervousness [about anything having to do with race] is gleefully exploited by the Republicans" (467).

Let's continue to catalog the challenges. Jackson knows that the South is the poorest, least educated, most unhealthy region in the U.S., the one that should naturally be progressive, yet is still economically and culturally conservative. This does not add up for the majority of the South's people, he says. Rather than accept it passively, he points out that more than half of all African American citizens live in the eleven former Confederate states, and he is ready to mobilize them for a new coalition built around economic rights.

He even argues for the effectiveness of a progressive African-American vice-presidential candidate to balance a more moderate white presidential candidate. That may seem totally crazy, until he mentions the possibility that George W. Bush might ask Colin Powell (far from a progressive, of course) to be his vice- presidential candidate in 2004. Well, there you have most of the "discussion starters" that are scattered throughout this book.

To many political strategists the Democrats are in an impossible double bind. But that, Jackson thinks, is to continue playing the same political game that has been played since the writing of the Constitution, a fear of democracy and participation. How can that game be stopped? There are two essential components, I think, and they deserve at least careful examination.

First, Jackson, like many others, thinks the answer is a progressive agenda that unites working people around economic issues and gives them motivation to turn out to vote. The Democratic party knows this, at least during election campaigns, although the rest of the time it is busy seeking contributions from the wealthy. The question is how people can be united across racial and ethnic lines, and it is not an easy one to answer; most candidates have been all too eager to exploit group loyalties and hostilities, paying far too little attention to the possibilities for, and the necessity of, coalition politics.

Second, Jackson explicitly seeks a new kind of Federalism, one that will create the "more perfect Union" of the title. Several political writers have commented recently on the tension between Jeffersonianism and Federalism throughout U.S. history, reminding us that Jefferson's political philosophy, for all its virtues, was not entirely noble and certainly has limited relevance to the complexities of modern life. Perhaps the supreme irony is that FDR always called himself a Jeffersonian, but the New Deal program was Federalist at its core and became less efficacious whenever compromises had to be made with Southerners in Congress.

Dramatic advances in social and economic life have come from federal legislation. During the Civil War it was the Homestead Act, the Morrill Act, the Pacific Railroad Act, national paper currency. During the Progressive Era (not discussed by Jackson, because it did nothing against racism) it was antitrust legislation, food and drug regulation, workers' compensation, regulation of banks, the beginnings of labor laws. During the New Deal it was home mortgages, aid to dependent children, TVA, labor legislation, public housing, the WPA and the CCC. During the Great Society it was civil rights, Medicare and Medicaid, Head Start, Legal Services, food stamps, Section 8 and Section 235 housing support, aid to education, pollution laws, consumer protection, truth in lending, auto safety, privacy laws against wiretapping, the National Endowment for the Arts, public broadcasting. Most ofthese achievements could be, and in fact were, distorted by racism and balkanization among the states and "partnership" with big business. But when we consider the impact of federal legislation it is difficult to give credence to those who keep crying that "government is the problem."

So here are the outlines of at least one kind of progressive agenda, ambitious, to be sure, but with some realistic considerations of both the difficulties and the ways it might be carried out. In these post-Enron days it may look all the more needed - and all the more feasible. Let's hope that others beside Jackson will be thinking seriously about how to stop doing politics as usual and set things in motion for something better.