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Charisma. That’s a word you don’t hear much lately, especially in connection with political candidates. Merriam-Webster offers two definitions: 

“1 : an extraordinary power …given…by the Holy Spirit…for good… 2 : a personal magic of leadership arousing…. enthusiasm for a  

…political leader.” 

Al Sharpton, who gave a sermon at Oakland’s Allen Temple Baptist Church yesterday, can lay claim to both meanings. In his youth he made a few mistakes, backed a few of the wrong horses, but in his maturity he seems to be one of the rather small number of political leaders who are now inspired, from whatever source, to make pretty good sense most of the time. 

Of course, that won’t get him much of anywhere in the presidential sweepstakes. When he appears on panels with the other candidates for the Democratic nomination for president, he usually gets off a few eminently quotable lines, but no one takes him seriously as a candidate. He deals with that, as he does many other things, with a quip: “They ask me why I’m running if I can’t win the nomination. Well, there are nine candidates, and eight of them are bound to lose, so ask the others why they’re running.” 

The theme of his sermon at Allen Temple was dealing with mockers like those he meets campaigning. The text was a passage from Matthew’s gospel in which Jesus, after he was captured by Roman soldiers, was crowned with thorns and hailed sarcastically as a king. 

Rev. Sharpton said that a lot of contemporary life seems to be a mockery of the accomplishments of the civil rights movement. He pointed out that George W. Bush’s whole career was an awful parody of the concept of affirmative action—admitted to college because of who his father was, ascending to the Presidency because of a “Supreme Court set-aside” instead of being elected. He took aim at Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly as examples of “negro amnesia,” a disease that causes you to forget how you got where you are. “Even our children,” he said, “sometimes mock us, when they say that thuggery is black culture.” 

It was, altogether, quite a fine sermon. Rev. Sharpton’s strategy for dealing with mockers is in the self-help tradition: “Even if you’re not responsible for being knocked down, you’re responsible for not getting up again.” 

He’s a realist, of course. At a press conference following the service he said that voters should vote no on recall, yes on Bustamante—standard pragmatic Democratic advice. He spoke of the urgent need for Blacks and Latinos to heal any rifts which may exist between them. No Democratic candidate for president, he pointed out, has gotten the majority of the white vote in a long time, so the Democrats need minority voters, who should insist on getting what they need in return. 

Everyone who cares about what is happening in the world today can use a little of Sharpton’s brand of inspirational talk, since world events often seem to be making a mockery of our efforts to achieve peace and justice in the forty years since the March on Washington. And if inspiration is needed, we’re going to have trouble getting it from most of the other Democratic candidates. 

Dr. Dean, by most accounts, gives a pretty good stump speech, but frankly, just for Berkeley consumption, his record on environment, gun control and capital punishment is less than inspiring. Kucinich is sincere, and right on most things, but his new-agey personal style is anti-charismatic for a lot of voters. And the rest of them are pretty indistinguishable from lots of other middle-aged white guys in suits, except for Lieberman, who’s dreadful. 

And Lieberman will campaign for Bustamante, his California chair. Now that’s really uninspiring, but we should probably take Rev. Sharpton’s advice and vote for Bustamante anyhow. So thanks, Reverend Al, for coming here to buck us up—we need all the inspiration we can get.