Sharpton Talks Tough Game

Democratic hopeful and grass-roots firebrand Rev. Al Sharpton left neither the Bush administration nor his own party untouched during a feisty free-for-all with “Hardball” host Chris Matthews last night, at the MSNBC show’s third taping at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

Sharpton, whose spontaneous, prophetic style has distinguished him from the candidate pack as much as his resume and swept-back perm, lashed out against a continuing United States presence in Iraq and reiterated his goal of engaging youth and minorities in politics.

After deftly parrying on a question about his ill-defined foreign policy, Sharpton launched into an attack on Washington’s unilateral approach toward Iraq, its progress in rebuilding the country and its capacity to fight a war on terrorism.

“In the first debate between Sharpton and Bush, I’ll be wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Where Is bin Laden?’” the Reverend proclaimed to raucous applause from a full-house of students, faculty and community members.

His famous flair for amusing metaphor and clever one-liners—the legacy of decades leading church sermons, protest marches and political campaigns—kept Sharpton agile during a barrage of tough questions from his equally brash interviewer, with whom he joked during commercial breaks.

At one point while the cameras weren’t rolling, Matthews asked the Reverend if he was being fed his lines through an ear piece.

“He that speaketh to me doesn’t need to use an earpiece,” Sharpton retorted.

Sharpton began his Republican lashing early in the evening during a question and answer session in the Kirkland House Junior Common Room, where he lambasted Bush’s “whodo voodoo economics” and “ridiculous” emphasis on moral education in schools.

He also criticized Bush’s drug policy, which he claimed is inconsistent and unfair.

“With the PATRIOT Act, [the government] can find out what book you took out of the library, but they can’t find drugs on the street,” Sharpton said.

At times, Sharpton was as critical of the Democratic leadership—whom he called “elephants in donkey jackets”—as he was of Republicans.

“I think there is a battle for the direction of the party,” Sharpton said. “Young Americans are not registered and are not voting because many of them have not seen much difference between the parties.”

Sharpton’s catchy rhetoric has earned him as many skeptics from both parties as has his controversial past, which is tainted by missing financial records, sketchy political donors and claims of anti-white racism. Sharpton has still not apologized for his 1988 rape accusations against a New York prosecutor, even after the accuser, Tawana Brawley, was found to be lying.

But pundits agree that Sharpton, who heads the civil rights group National Action Network, has in recent years adopted a more serious platform in the hopes of strengthening his credibility with voters outside his long-held black audience.

To the diverse crowd in attendance, his “Hardball” appearance was a sign that Sharpton, on his first presidential run, is making sure that substance won’t get lost under style.

“He’s much more serious than he once was,” said David L. Evans, a senior admissions officer. “He has used his campaign as a forum to get his views out. He could never have done that had he always been a local New York radical. This is a different side of him than I’ve seen on TV.”

At Kirkland, Sharpton, who’s long been critical of corporate media, asked his audience to beware of popular misconceptions of him.

Sharpton also underscored that, despite lackluster poll standings, his hopes of winning are serious, and emphasized that voters should support the best candidate for the presidency, not the one with the best chances of winning.

“If I’m gonna bet on a winner, I’m gonna go to the race track and bet on a horse, and hope to win some money...” he said.

When one student in the “Hardball” audience asked why he should vote for the candidate with the least political experience, Sharpton quickly replied that voters should focus on candidates’ overall experience—and that he had more of that than any other candidate.

“Don’t confuse holding a position for having experience,” Sharpton said in reference to his rivals, who have all held public office. “The President of the United States is a case in point.”

But Sharpton’s claim that his campaign is more than symbolic seemed to falter at times.

When Matthews asked the Reverend how he would pay for his nationalized health care plan, Sharpton slammed the Bush tax cut and promised to rescind it—but offered no tangible proposal for a funding source.

After the speech Andy Litinsky ’04 criticized Sharpton’s Iraq policy, which calls for the complete removal of U.S. forces from the country.

“It’s hard to take him seriously, he’s more in for making a statement than he is for being correct,” Litinsky said.

But others said the campaign could make major contributions to American politics, even if it is symbolic.

“I think being a black candidate is difficult,” said Dan McKee, the mayor of Cumberland, RI, who is currently studying at the Kennedy School of Government. “But I think that in a lot of ways he’s paying the price that’s necessary for other black candidates to be more successful.”

—Staff writer Alex L. Pasternack can be reached at apastern@fas.harvard.edu.