VI

JESSE JACKSON, the charismatic "country preacher" who built SCLC's Operation Breadbasket and was until recently its Director, understands the importance of Brooke's position on Appropriations.

The day before I met with Brooke, Jackson was in the Old Senate Office Building suite talking with Brooke, Jackson, whose break with Abernathy and the rest of SCLC's Atlanta contingent specifically revolved around Jackson's independent production of the highly successful "Black Expo" in Chicago, understands the economic roots of the problems of blacks in America and throughout the Third World. Although his famous Saturday morning meetings at Breadbasket ran on his personal electricity and drew much of their appeal from his "I am Somebody" exhortations, their real goal was to sensitize blacks to economic issues and enlist foot-soldiers for the economic wars of attrition Jackson successfully waged against Red Rooster chain stores and other large commercial vipers in Chicago's black community.

When Brooke returned from the Senate chamber, he spoke of his meeting with Jackson the day before as the kind of session that occurs between independently powerful men and-or women who have a good complete understanding. Clearly, the two men disagree on some issues, particularly specific aspects of foreign policy, but the foundation of their fundamental accord is rooted in the bedrock of their agreement on two basic points.

The first point is that black people must get a larger share of the American pie, and that to do this, they must sophisticate internal political activity and make shrewd and well-defined alliances with various parts of the splintered white political configuration. As William Clay of the Black Caucus puts it, "We have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. Just permanent interests."

Such a system of finite and flexible couplings has already resulted in several peculiarly striking arrangements, such as the alliance between blacks and Birchers in Southern California to fight for community controlled public education. It has also produced the suggestion or the illusion of several other couplings, the most prominent of which has been the recent relationship between Brooke and Nixon.

NIXON'S STATEMENT that he considered the man who had been largely responsible for the Administration's two major domestic embarrassments as an asset to any political ticket dispatched several platoons of media men to find out if Brooke would run if Nixon offered him the Vice-Presidency.

Brooke played it coy. "As a Republican, I would be honored" by the offer, he told the press after a speech in Lynn. This statement was immediately interpreted to mean that Brooke would accept the nomination.