Kerry's reaching out to African-Americans

CLARENCE PAGE
Newsday.com


When presidential hopeful John Kerry's staff invited me and four other black columnists to a "get-acquainted" meeting, I bristled at the possibility of a pander-fest. Fortunately, it never got worse than pander-lite.

Pandering in politics can be like water to fish. On the same day that Kerry met with us, a friend called my attention to the "Compassion" page at the Web site for President George W. Bush's re-election campaign. Almost all of the pictures on the page's "photo album" showed Bush having a happy time with African-Americans.

"Compassion" appears to be a code word for "black people" in Bush-Cheney-land.

By contrast, Kerry's outreach to blacks calls itself precisely that. On the same day, April 7, that he delivered a major address on jobs and the economy at Georgetown University, Kerry's staff organized a "getting to know you" meeting with Gregory Kane of the Baltimore Sun, George Curry of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service, Deborah Mathis of Tribune Media Services, Richard Prince of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education Web site and me.

"You are the agenda setters; I'm the pinata," Kerry said, taking off his jacket to spend an hour with us in his Washington campaign headquarters. We cared less about beating him up than pinning him down, particularly on issues of concern to African-Americans. It turned out, I am happy to report, that he did not see such issues as much different from issues of concern to all Americans.

Kerry has been to dozens of black churches and black-oriented events on the campaign trail and it showed, particularly on what I call the obligatory litmus-test bromides of black Democrats: He unequivocally supported the "Mend it, don't end it" approach to affirmative action that was advocated by President Bill Clinton. He criticized President George W. Bush's judicial appointments. He noted that his own campaign staff has had the largest black staffing, 17 percent, of any presidential campaign this year except maybe the Rev. Al Sharpton's.

From memory, he cited "health and job disparities in our communities of color": "...African Americans have two and half times greater mortality rate ... twice as likely to have diabetes ... nine times more likely to have HIV AIDS ... Go to New York, 50 percent of African-American males are unemployed there. What's George Bush doing about it?"

But Kerry mostly practiced the politics of addition, not division.

Like a good Clinton-era centrist, he saved most of his passion for issues that the broadest number of Americans would care about, regardless of race or ethnicity.

He promised to "create 10 million new jobs," "restore fiscal responsibility to our budgeting process ... put health care number one on our agenda for Americans" and "attack this separate and unequal school system we have" by fully funding the Bush administration's controversial No Child Left Behind school reform program.

Critics, particularly in the Bush camp, have attacked Kerry's proposals as "class warfare" and the like. Frankly, I don't think his ideas sound any less plausible than Bush's campaign promise to create jobs by putting more money in people's pockets. Paul Glastris, editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly, writes in its April issue, "when you're running for office, even a dumb theory is better than no theory at all."

Glastris' article focuses on how Kerry can create jobs. The senator needs big themes like that to present to voters in the way that Clinton in 1992 used themes like economic-stimulation-through-deficit-reduction.

Conservatives like to say that government really doesn't have much of an impact on jobs. History shows otherwise. As far back as Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase, government has used its budget power to create new jobs and spur productivity. Abraham Lincoln's land-grant college system, the GI Bill, the interstate highway program and federally insured home loans are other examples. So is the Internet, created by the Defense Department and developed with the help of legislation promoted by then-Sen. Al Gore.

Kerry can connect with voters with rhetoric and passion, but he also needs to give them some ideas to take home as an alternative to the Bush vision, such as it is. Anger among Democrats against Bush is helping Kerry to clinch his party's nomination, but he also needs to offer a sense of hope for a better future. Clinton, like Ronald Reagan, understood the power of an optimistic vision. Kerry needs to make that power work for him.