Black In Business

This article was sent to me by my friend and US Representive Jesse Jackson Jr. It offers good insight to this complex relationship and speaks volumes regarding the support the Jesse Jacksons have provided Barack. I promise you, this is one article you will want to read. This is exciting, Barack can win this thing!

The New Republic
Operation Push
Obama’s artful corralling of the Jesse Jacksons.
Jason Zengerle, The New Republic
Wednesday, February 13, 2008

In 2002, Barack Obama was an unknown Illinois state senator with
long-shot ambitions of moving from the political backwater of
Springfield to the big-time of Washington, D.C. But, before he acted
on those ambitions, he wanted to get the blessing of another young,
black–and far more famous–Illinois politician, one whom he
essentially hoped to leapfrog on his way to the U.S. Senate. And so,
one morning that year, Obama had breakfast with U.S. Representative
Jesse Jackson Jr. “Barack asked if Jesse planned to run for the
Senate seat [in 2004], and, if Jesse did, then Barack said he
wouldn’t,” recalls Frank Watkins, a longtime political adviser to the
Jackson family who was the representative’s press secretary at the
time. “But Barack said that, if Jesse wasn’t planning to run, then he
intended to run. Jesse told him to go ahead and run for the Senate.
… The rest, as they say, is history.”

Of course, Jackson had good reason to forego a Senate campaign of his
own–a fact of which Obama was certainly aware. Although the
representative had built a biracial coalition in his Chicago-area
district, the Jackson name was still mud among many white voters in
other parts of Illinois–especially after 1999, when Jackson’s
father, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, was arrested for protesting the
expulsion of six black students from a Decatur high school. In other
words, the prospects of Representative Jackson winning a statewide
race were dim.

But Obama’s gratuitous display of deference paid off. Although the
younger Jackson and Obama had once been viewed as rivals, the former
now threw his full support behind Obama’s Senate candidacy–co-
chairing his campaign committee, doing a billboard ad on his behalf,
and even sharing a campaign office with him. Just as important,
Reverend Jackson followed his son’s lead and stumped for Obama,
touting him as “a black man of substance.” For a politician whose
mixed- race background had raised doubts among some African American
voters–in 2000, Illinois Representative Bobby Rush, a former Black
Panther, successfully fended off a primary challenge from Obama by
intimating that Obama wasn’t “black enough”–the backing of the
Jacksons in 2004 was crucial.

As that episode shows, Obama has been quite shrewd in managing his
relationship with the Jackson family. And now, in his presidential
campaign, Obama once again has endorsements from the two most
prominent Jacksons. But the elder Jackson has been far less
supportive of Obama than his son. And other members of the family are
actively opposing the first African American candidate with a
realistic shot of getting to the White House. The reverend’s wife,
Jacqueline, has done a radio ad for Hillary Clinton in South
Carolina, and Jesse Jr.’s brother Yusef helped organize a Hillary
fund-raiser in Chicago. The resulting drama has been seen as a sign
of an epic struggle over leadership of the country’s black community.
But, in reality, Obama’s complicated relationships with the Jacksons
have less to do with black politics than they do with Chicago
politics and the family politics of America’s most famous black
political clan. Unfortunately for Obama, that doesn’t make those
relationships any less significant–or potentially damaging–to his
presidential campaign.

As a young man, Obama considered Jesse Jackson Sr. a hero. In his
memoir, Dreams From My Father, Obama wrote of how, as a student at
Columbia in the early ’80s, he would go to Harlem to hear Jackson
speak. And, in a recent interview with New York, Jackson said Obama
once told him that it was his 1984 presidential bid that made the
young Obama believe his own dream of eventually running for the White
House “was really possible.”

But, after college, Obama tried and failed to get a job with a civil
rights organization and instead drifted toward the competing social
justice theories of the radical community organizer Saul Alinsky. In
1985, Obama found work as a community organizer on Jackson’s home
turf of Chicago, but it was another African American politician–
Harold Washington, who had been elected mayor in 1983–whose presence
lured him there. By the time Obama was president of the Harvard Law
Review in 1990, his opinion of Jackson had deflated enough that he
amused classmates with an impersonation of the reverend.

When Obama returned to Chicago after law school, however, he
presumably abandoned the Jackson jokes–in part to preserve domestic
tranquility. His wife, Michelle, grew up on Chicago’s South Side and
went to a magnet high school with Santita Jackson, the reverend’s
oldest child. Frank Watkins remembers frequently seeing Michelle at
the Jacksons’ house in the ’70s* when he’d go there to play
basketball with the reverend. “Michelle and Santita kind of babysat
for Junior and Yusef and Jonathan [the third Jackson son] and oversaw
the kids when the parents were gone,” Watkins says. When the Obamas
were married in 1992, Santita was a bridesmaid and Jesse Jr. (who
once half-jokingly confessed to having had a boyhood crush on
Michelle) was one of the only 100 or so guests at their wedding. In a
way, the Jacksons were now part of Obama’s family.

As an aspiring black politician in Chicago, though, Obama had more
pragmatic reasons for getting on Reverend Jackson’s good side. So
Obama worked to cultivate the relationship. After spearheading a
successful voter registration drive that added 150,000 Chicagoans to
the rolls in 1992, Obama made sure that Jackson got the glory. John
Schmidt, a Chicago lawyer who was a fund-raiser for the effort,
recalls, “I was struck when they announced the results that Barack
really did allow Jesse Sr. and some others to stand up and take
credit for it.” According to Dan Shomon, a Chicago political
consultant who managed Obama’s early campaigns, Obama also became a
regular presence at Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH organization, walking the
half-mile from his South Side home to the group’s offices on Saturday
mornings to hear Jackson give his weekly speech. “He went to so many
PUSH meetings,” Shomon says. “That’s the thing people don’t give
Barack credit for. He’s really a workmanlike politician.”

But Obama abandoned his workmanlike approach toward the elder Jackson
when it came to his presidential bid. “He didn’t work very hard to
get the endorsement,” says Ronald Walters, a University of Maryland
political science professor and Jackson confidant. “I know he didn’t
ask for it. … And Barack hasn’t acted like [Jackson's] endorsed him
in any way, acknowledging him publicly or having him on the trail.”
Jackson seems to have taken all of this as a slight, because, after
offering Obama his apparently unsolicited endorsement last March,
he’s repeatedly undercut it–complaining to a South Carolina
newspaper in September that Obama was “acting like he’s white” and
penning an op-ed for the Chicago Sun-Times in November that blasted
every Democratic presidential candidate save John Edwards for
“virtually ignor[ing] the plight of African Americans in this
country.” Even Jackson’s friend, Chicago political consultant Don
Rose, wonders “whether Jesse Sr. might harbor a little jealousy
because of where Barack has come from and sort of sees him as someone
who has, in many ways, surpassed him in politics.”

Jesse Jackson Jr. would seemingly have good reason to envy Obama,
too. Once considered one of the–if not the–most prominent young
black politician in the United States, Jackson now can’t even claim
that honor in his hometown. But, if Junior has any resentment toward
Obama, he’s hiding it well. He’s a national co-chair of Obama’s
presidential campaign and has stumped for him across the country.
“Jesse’s really helping him, because Barack doesn’t have time to
energize the black community in any of these states, because he’s got
to energize women, he’s got to energize independents,” says Shomon.
“Jesse Jr.’s playing the number-one role of energizer.”

He’s also Obama’s numberone defender against other Jacksons. The
radio ad Jacqueline Jackson cut for Clinton in South Carolina shared
airtime with one from Jesse Jr. singing Obama’s praises. He has
touted Obama’s fundraising success to reporters, perhaps as a way to
offset the $100,000 raised for Clinton by his brother Yusef (whose
support for Hillary presumably has something to do with his business
partner, California billionaire and Clinton pal Ron Burkle). And,
most notably, Junior responded to his father’s Sun-Times op-ed with a
letter to the editor that was headlined, “YOU’RE WRONG ON OBAMA,
DAD.” According to a Democratic strategist, that’s a message Jackson
has delivered privately–and more forcefully–as well. “The
congressman told me he had a few words with his dad,” the strategist
says. “He basically said, ‘I smacked him down.’”

Indeed, the younger Jackson seems to have realized that, by helping
Obama, he can help himself. While Junior may have once harbored
national ambitions, he’s recently begun building a political machine
in Chicago that many local observers believe he’ll ultimately use to
run for mayor. Obama has become an integral part of that machine. His
presence on the ballot in the February 5 Illinois primary will
undoubtedly boost black turnout in Chicago–which, in turn, should
help the candidates Jackson is backing in local races (including
Jackson’s wife, Sandi, who was elected to the city council last
year). Obama’s helping Jackson in more direct ways, too. In one hotly
contested state House race on Chicago’s South Side, a former Obama
aide is running against a Jackson-backed candidate. Although Obama
was expected to endorse his former staffer, he has so far remained
neutral. And, if Obama became president, some speculate Jackson would
be in line for a Cabinet post. At the very least, Obama would no
longer be a potential rival in Chicago.

But the alliance between Obama and Jesse Jr. may actually be too
successful. After receiving the smackdown from Junior, Reverend
Jackson has become much more on-message about Obama–praising him in
interviews and even inviting him on his radio show the day before the
Martin Luther King holiday. And that, in a way, could hurt Obama.
After all, there’s a reason Obama didn’t actively seek the elder
Jackson’s endorsement for his presidential bid. As Ronald Walters
sees it, “His campaign has tried to neutralize the issue of race.”
But, as the Clintons cynically try to marginalize Obama as the
“black” candidate, the support he receives from Jackson Sr. may only
serve to help them in those efforts. At the start of his campaign,
Obama presented himself as an antidote to Jesse Jackson Sr.–a black
presidential candidate who could actually win. His opponents hope
that, in defeat, he’ll wind up being Jackson’s heir.

Jason Zengerle is a senior editor of The New Republic.

* Clarification (1/31/08): After publication of this story, Frank
Watkins contacted us to say that he does not specifically remember
seeing Michelle Obama at the Jacksons’ house in the 1970s. Rather,
Watkins says that Jesse Jackson Jr. later told him that Michelle
Obama was frequently there.

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Jesse Jackson, Jr. - Congressman Second District of Illinois
http://www.jessejacksonjr.org

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