A candid talk with Jesse Jackson Jr.

• Author: Nichols, John
• Position: Interview

U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., Democrat of Illinois, is one of the few leading Democrats who speaks bluntly about the divisions within his own party, about the troubling coziness of conservative Democrats with Republicans, and about the need for radical new approaches to political organizing and electioneering. His outspokenness has provoked serious discussion about how Jackson at the ripe, young age of thirty-six and a mere six years into a Congressional career that even his partisan foes admit has immense potential could well be a candidate for President, if not in 2004, then in some none-too-distant future. To be sure, some of that talk is rooted in the recognition that he possesses one of the most famous names in American public affairs. But Jesse Jackson Jr. is much more than just the son of the father whom he affectionately refers to as "too conservative."

Born and raised in the civil rights movement, the younger Jackson earned advanced degrees in theology and law while cutting his political teeth as an aide to his father's Presidential campaigns and as field director of the National Rainbow Coalition. In 1995, he won a hard-fought special election for a Congressional seat representing south Chicago industrial neighborhoods and the racially diverse communities surrounding them. Since arriving in the first year of the Newt Gingrich Republican Congress, Jackson has clashed not merely with conservative Republicans but also with members of his own party who stray from a progressive course. Along the way, he has earned the respect even of political foes who recognize his ideological and personal integrity. And though he is anything but a cookie-cutter Democrat, he is now one of the most sought-after advocates for party Congressional candidates.

This spring, Jackson sat down in Washington to talk With The Progressive about the meek initial response of Congressional Democrats to the Presidency of George W. Bush, about what progressives need to learn from Ralph Nader's 2000 Presidential candidacy, about the controversy surrounding his father's affair, about his own Presidential prospects, and, above all, about his belief that progressives need to borrow a page from conservatives and begin proposing constitutional amendments. Jackson's new book, A More Perfect Union (Welcome Rain, 2001), written along with aide Frank Watkins, spells out his theory on these amendments and calls for a defiant progressive patriotism.

Q:When the Supreme Court handed the Presidency to George W. Bush in December, the assumption was that he would have a very hard time of it. Yet, after his first 100 days, Bush had reasonably high approval ratings. He certainly hadn't crashed and burned. Why haven't Democrats been better at landing blows on him?

Jesse Jackson Jr.: To understand what's happened with Bush, you really have to look at what happened with Clinton's Presidency--at how his Presidency, in some ways, cleared the way for Bush by moving the Democratic Party to the right. When President Clinton ran in 1992, he ran as the Investment President--talking about getting government to invest in meeting the needs of the American people. But after his election, he became the Deficit Reduction President. That changed expectations about how a Democrat President governs, what a Democratic Party stands for.

President Clinton's selection in 1992 of a conservative running mate, Al Gore, who then selected an even more conservative running mate, Joe Lieberman, was a good indication of what was happening in the leadership of the Democratic Party in the 1990s. President Clinton essentially, used his eight years as President to move closer to Republicans and the right on a number of very important progressive fiscal issues. That meant that, when George Bush became President, he was able to look like a moderate. He was able to look like he was reaching out to the Democrats, when in reality he was merely capturing the localism, the decentralization, the diminishing of the federal government that President Clinton and Al Gore advanced for eight years.

Q: Didn't the Bush...