Democrat agony

It seems like an age, but it must have been six weeks ago, when correspondents from all over the world found themselves for the first time in their lives flocking into that Midwestern state whose official song goes, 'Iowa, Iowa, the land where the tall corn grows'. The song has long been in the public domain and no royalties may be claimed for my performance.

What the correspondents were doing, probably to their great surprise and bafflement, was reporting their first political caucus. We won't go into that again, except to say that a caucus is a one-time political get-together of party regulars and officials to vote for delegates to something or other, in this case, to pledge themselves at their party conventions in midsummer to vote for a particular candidate for president.

A primary is a much bigger thing and takes in as many of the registered voters who care to go to the polls on a given day and express their preference for president. Way back there in February, I didn't quite promise to say no more about the presidential campaigns until the primaries were all over in California in June. As I recall, I did leave myself an escape hatch from any such reckless promise. If something happened that was wholly unpredicted, I'd use the hatch. I'm already out of it and looking over a track with an outsider leading the field and with a whole bunch of near-favourites either scratched or down and out.

We all said back then that after Iowa and New Hampshire and the big sweep in the south of Super Tuesday, we did say that by the time the Democrats got to Atlanta this summer, whoever was the leading contender would have to sit down and be very nice and respectful to the Reverend Jesse Jackson because he was, even then, doing well enough to become the broker, the man whose delegates you would need to put you over.

What nobody, but nobody, then anticipated was that by April the Reverend Jackson would be himself the actual front runner, but to everybody's astonishment after Michigan, he was either one or two delegates ahead of everybody or just about tied with Mr Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts.

Is it possible that only 30-odd years after blacks were allowed to sit in the same restaurants as whites, to use the same lavatories and swimming pools, to go to the same schools, is it possible that a black boy, brought up in poverty, the grandson of a freed slave, might become the Democrat's choice for President of the United States? It is possible. The governor of New York state, Governor Cuomo, said on Tuesday, 'The Democrats' choice should be the man who receives the most votes in the primaries and,' he added, 'if that's Jesse Jackson, wonderful!'

Before we come to this rather dazzling prospect, let me just swivel and look at the race, or the runaway canter, on the other track. The Republicans, when they go to New Orleans, will have on hand over 2200 delegates. The winning candidate will need 1139 votes. So far, Vice President George Bush has 813 pledged votes. Breathing down his neck, about 20 laps behind is the evangelist, the Reverend Pat Robertson, with – wait for it! – 17 votes. Another 260 are not decided but will be in forthcoming primaries in New York, New Jersey and California.

If there is one absolutely sure thing in the two races it is that Mr Bush is going to be the Republicans' choice, unless there's some appalling scandal that touches him and hurts him. What could it be? The only plausible possibility is further damaging stuff to come out of the Iran-Contra Affair which the special prosecutor, Mr Walsh, is still investigating, still presenting masses of evidence before a grand jury in Washington. He's been at it for more than a year now and he's gone on so long because, well, in the first place, he couldn't get access to all the implicated Swiss bank accounts. He's had them and in spite of President Reagan's blithe remark that we don't know where the money went and who got it, we know exactly how much, how little, went to the Contras and how much went into the pockets of at least two individuals. And, the other week, as you saw, the grand jury handed down four criminal indictments against Colonel North, former National Security Adviser Mr Poindexter, Mr Secord and Mr Hakim.

Again, Mr Reagan set up some kind of a record for presidential cool in saying, about the defendants in a criminal case, not 'the people must decide through the courts', but he saw no wrongdoing and he still thought Colonel North was a national hero.

By the way, the top military man of the United States, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, was asked the same question. Was Colonel North a hero? 'I wouldn't say so,' he said.

The Democrats have been screening and filtering and combing the many charges of these indictments in the hope of finding something damaging to Mr Bush. They haven't found it. They would love to pin on him any one of the dozens of charges of corruption that have assailed the inmates of the White House in the past seven years, but while Mr Bush professes steady loyalty to the Reagan administration, he has managed to evade all guilt by association. He has, in fact, done a shrewd thing that more or less disarms in advance any Democratic attack on him. When it became clear a fortnight ago that he was going to be the Republican choice, he said the first thing he'd do when he got to the White House would be to set up an ethics committee, which implies that he recognises the chronic White House problem without pointing the finger at any of the 59 Reagan appointees who have left under indictment or under a cloud or otherwise decided not to face their accusers.

George Bush, it's just about as certain as anything can be, is going to be the man the Democrats have to beat.

The Democrats – they are bewitched, bothered and bewildered. I was going to blurt out, if the Reverend Jackson were a white man, they'd be in ecstasy. That's something that no Democratic leader will say today. It's all the truer because it's never said.

In the many television debates we've seen, it's been more and more noticeable that while Mr Gephardt would attack Mr Simon, Mr Hart would go after Governor Dukakis, ultimately six of them would take pot-shots at each other, I can't remember a time when anybody attacked the proposed policies or positions of the Reverend Jackson. They made fun of each other but not of the Reverend Jackson. They didn't dare. It could be interpreted, however unfairly, as a racial slur and bang would go the black vote, though to be truthful, the Reverend had the black vote locked up in every state he campaigned in.

What the party never anticipated would be that the Reverend would, in industrial states, take away from Mr Gephardt and, in Michigan, from Governor Dukakis, a very sizeable proportion of the white vote. To be exact, the blue-collar vote and the white liberal vote, so that suddenly we had the astonishing figure of over 620 pledged votes at the convention, exactly like Governor Dukakis. Why?

The answer's not difficult and the Democratic leaders know it. All the other candidates, including of course the ones who've dropped out, had put together earnest, humdrum policies, talked about a trade bill to resist Japanese competition, about the deficit, promised to do something about housing, were all for education, meant to keep social security intact, would look into fairer welfare, would keep the country strong, talk tough but fairly with the Russians, and so on and so on.

The Reverend Jackson, by contrast, sounded about as humdrum as John the Baptist or Savonarola. He talked all the time with flowing passion about drugs and jobs and race and the homeless. He is agile and he has a position on all the standard concerns and abstractions, but he touched people where American society today hurts most and even though more people are at work than ever before, even though drugs affect five per cent of Americans, even though the other candidates politely applaud how far the minorities have come, the Reverend Jackson trumpets, 'It is not far enough!'. And he speaks for the Hispanics and the Asians here as well as the blacks.

If the Reverend Jackson had been white, he would have been vigorously attacked for many things – for his glib lamentations for all the Third World countries as helpless serfs of the West, for blaming society for the plight of any downcast individual, for his slick, dubious figures on the economy, for his wholesale condemnation of big corporations, for his scorn of right-wing dictators and his complimentary tolerance of left-wing dictators – for, in short, his radical, over-simple populism.

Stealthily, and behind the palm of the hand, the Democratic leaders will whisper their conviction that a black nominee would go down to thunderous defeat before Mr Bush. But, at the moment, in public, they have to say that the whole primary system is a wonderful democratic design to reward the man who wins the most delegates.

For myself, I suspect that the agony of the Democrats will not last into the summer. Ahead are four primaries, in Wisconsin and then in three states with lashings of votes – New York, New Jersey and California. I should guess that while the minorities will of course go on voting for the Reverend and a lot of white liberals, the middle classes, the great majority, will close ranks behind some man of the centre, behind, probably, Governor Dukakis with his balanced budget, his high industrial employment, what they call the Massachusetts miracle. And the fearful people, too, of all classes, will quietly think of voting not for the governor, but against the Reverend.

Now these motives would not necessarily combine to give Governor Dukakis the nomination, only to produce a deadlock in Atlanta, to break through which, some dynamic office holder who has stayed in the wings – I wonder who? – would be dragged out on to centre stage.

We shall see.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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