In 1959, when 20-year-old Jesse Jackson arrived at the University of Illinois campus in Champaign, he fully intended to become the Big Ten's first black quarterback. But he quickly learned that the leadership position on the team was reserved exclusively for whites. An assistant coach positioned him at left halfback, later at left end. He was told, Jackson later recalled, that "you people run better from the left side."

Photo copyright 1987 Marc PoKempner

So the strapping young athlete from Greensboro, S.C., rejected the football scholarship he had been given and went back to the South — to gritty old North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College. The school lacked the prestige and influence of the U of I, but at least he got to play quarterback. No supporting roles for Jesse Jackson. He wanted to be the leader. And he still does.

Only this time the stakes are a lot higher. He is shooting for the top leadership post in the United States. And the whole world has, in a sense, become his playing field. Like a canny quarterback, Jackson has learned to use every opportunity for advancing his plans and ambitions. As Bob Faw and Nancy Skelton observed in their book on the 1984 presidential campaign, Thunder in America, all contingencies somehow proved useful, in Jackson's view: "The congregations [he preached to] ... the bloodstained shirt he said he'd been wearing the day Dr. King was shot . . . Robert Goodman's captivity in Syria — each could be a backdrop, a setting. From Damascus to Harlem, from bayou parish to the embassy of South Africa, the world was a stage, and at any point he could give a performance, commanded only by himself."

Small wonder then that he attracts attention like a lightning rod. It is what makes him so fascinating and what distinguishes him from the other presidential candidates of 1988. Said Jon Margolis of the Chicago Tribune, "Jackson is cut from no pattern but his own. Perhaps one reason he evokes such passion, one reason so few are neutral about him, is that for all his political shrewdness and occasional duplicity, his basic character is less concealed than those of most other politicians. After all, almost everyone who runs for president is self-absorbed. Most of them hide it better. Jackson doesn't even try."

As he presses forward in the coming months, the man will be mightily helped by the same charismatic qualities of ego, personality and intelligence that have carried him thus far. By the same token, he will doubtless be hindered by the demons which have plagued him in the past.

"He really thinks he can win it this time," said a longtime campaign associate of Jackson's. "He really does. He's dead serious." The record from 1984 provides some justification for optimism. It is easy to forget that he was the last candidate to enter the race, that all the others had funds, staffs and campaign offices in many states before he had even hired a campaign manager. His ragtag, seat-of-the-pants operation was perhaps the most disorganized in American political history. Yet there is no denying the accomplishments.

His presence in the race was a major factor in an unprecedented rise in black voter registration. In 11 Southern states alone, the number of black voters soared from 4.3 million in 1980 to 5.5 million in 1984; in nine of those states, blacks registered at twice the rate of whites. Throughout the nation in 1984, more blacks voted in primaries and in the general election than ever before. To be sure, minority dissatisfaction with President Reagan's policies contributed to the turnout. But Jackson represented for many a concrete alternative to the president — or to the uninspiring array of approved contenders.

According to conservative sociologist Nathan Glazer, Jackson's campaign "did reach out to galvanize one very important part of the electorate ... he had an enormous impact in getting people to vote."

The 10 percent increase in the number of black elected mayors in 1984 was attributed by the Joint Center for Political Studies, in Washington, D.C., to "Jesse Jackson's coattails."

And Jackson himself did not do so badly when the smoke cleared. He garnered 18 percent of the primary vote and 12 percent of the delegate vote, while beating out well-known and well-financed opponents like John Glenn. Even more importantly, Jackson brought to the primary campaign almost all the excitement it had. He consistently raised issues like trade with South Africa, the rights of Palestinian refugees and famine in Africa — issues the other contenders would have preferred to skirt.

His leadership style was never more evident than in one memorable television debate when Walter Mondale and Gary Hart began bickering over which was using dirtier campaign tricks. "Please, please stop this!" interjected Jackson, the diplomat, ''because tomorrow the issue will be this rat-a-tat without dealing with direction." Then looking directly into the television camera, he added, by way of explanation to the American public, "The reason why they are having this kinship struggle is that there is such a similarity in their policies. It's a matter of both going in the same direction — just a little slower. That's all it is!"

That was a moment of singular achievement, when it was possible to believe one voice of sanity might someday prevail over all the babble. Another occurred during his stirring speech at the Democratic convention in San Francisco.

Yet the victories of 1984 fell short of Jackson's hopes — far short. For his presence in the race also created a sizable backlash. While black voter registration grew by leaps and bounds, so did white registration. In Georgia, for example, black voters increased by almost 16 percent from August 1983 to August 1984, and white voters rose by less than 10 percent. But in round, bottom-line figures, this meant 75,000 more black voters and 170,000 more whites.

White reaction to the Jackson candidacy is exemplified by the experience in Selma, Ala., the little, majority-black city Jackson once called ''the cradle of democracy." A popular black mayoral candidate was defeated there in 1984 by a white incumbent, largely due to an unexpected turnout of white voters.

The victorious mayor later declared, "Jackson helped me . . . because he inflamed whites ... he helped me raise funds and he got the whites registered."

There was certainly something about Jackson's Rainbow Coalition that turned off even more moderate whites. "He kept talking rainbow," said a disillusioned liberal quoted in the Faw-Skelton book, "but more and more he was embracing one color — black!"

When Jackson shouted at campaign speeches, "It's our turn now!" people got the distinct impression he wasn't talking about poor whites or poor browns but (his explanations notwithstanding) about blacks only. This perceived antagonism, even meanness toward whites, was further exacerbated by Jackson's dalliance with black separatist Lewis Farrakhan and his inimical attitude toward Jews — best illustrated by the infamous "Hymie" flap.

Some blacks too were inflamed by Jackson's tendency to usurp all the credit for the registration gains, while overlooking the grass-roots contributions of others. "You see Jackson there with about 100 people marching them up to register," complained NAACP official Joseph Madison after the primary. "Then by the time the evening news comes on . . . Jackson's getting on that ragged plane of his ... . No one hears about the 2,000 registered by the little old grandmothers and college students and church women and old people in senior citizens' centers."

At the convention, Jackson failed to get any of his issues on or even near the Democratic platform. And in the wake of the Reagan landslide, many tended to regard his effort as an exercise in futility. Columnist George Will saw Jackson as "a comet hitting the earth's atmosphere, burning brightly but fatally, and soon to be a small cinder."

Now the comet is back glowing brighter than ever, determined to avoid the mistakes of the past. The ragtag, catch-up effort has been replaced by the smoother; better coordinated and financed organization which shot Jesse Jackson out of the gate ahead of other Democratic candidates. Very early polls showed him running strong behind only Mario Cuomo and Gary Hart. Then Cuomo's decision not to run combined with Hart's dramatic withdrawal served to catapult Jackson into first place last spring. The media hardly knew what to make of it.

When a New York Times poll in May showed Jackson as the preferred candidate of 17 percent of Democrats nationwide (6 points ahead of Michael Dukakis, and even further ahead of the other six contenders), the paper headlined the story, "Jackson Tops Poll (Not Counting Cuomo)." Such gross belittling annoyed Alexander Cockburn of the Nation magazine who suggested satirically that the public might expect future news stories like this: "The Rev. Jesse Jackson today held a commanding lead in states participating in the crucial Tuesday primary contests, but when asked to state their preference if other, undeclared, candidates were included, a substantial number of those polled voiced enthusiasm for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and even for Jesus Christ, an evangelist popular across the South. . ."

Elsewhere, commentators had extreme difficulty regarding Jackson's lead as anything more than a curious, temporary phenomenon, the result of a rare, double-barrelled fluke. Columnist Richard Cohen of the Washington Post dismissed the candidacy, citing such alleged gaffes as Jackson's dash to Cuba, his affair with Yassir Arafat, and the fact that Operation PUSH is "hardly run with IBM-like efficiency." He added, by way of a clincher, "It is simply not likely that a black person will be elected president in 1988."

Cohen and his colleagues did not take into account the staying power of the new Jackson organization. Between May and September, a Time magazine poll showed, Jackson increased his preference rating among Democrats to 26 percent. Significantly, he led even among white Democrats, with 17 percent, to 13 percent for runner-up Dukakis. A Roper poll in October gave Jackson 27 percent of the Democratic vote in the South, more than twice that of any other candidate. Since then, the polls have been wavering like a seismograph during a mild earthquake, with most showing Jackson clinging stubbornly to his lead.

This time around, the emphasis on the Rainbow Coalition, which carried in 1984 some lingering overtones of racial animosity, has been tempered with a smoother and broader appeal aimed at accepting and even celebrating diversity. "America is not like a blanket," Jackson declares, "one piece of unbroken cloth — the same color, the same texture, the same size. It is more like a quilt — many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread."

Thus, Jackson is approaching myriad potential constituencies — farmers, organized labor, teachers, white collar workers, etc. — from a unique perspective. "There is a substantive difference between Jackson's social view and that of other politicians," wrote the Tribune's Margolis. "Where the others deal with the different groups as part of an interwoven fabric — a mosaic, if not a blanket — he institutionalizes the distinctions, planning to deal with the various groups separately, granting legitimacy to each."

Jackson chose Pittsburgh for one of his almost-ready-to- announce addresses last Labor Day because, he said, "the city symbolizes the kind of coalition I am trying to build.'' And this includes white workers stranded by the transition from steel and heavy industry to high technology. To turn America around, he thundered, we must have the four R's: "Reinvest in America; retain our workers; reindustrialize our nation; and research for commercial development!"

Photo copyright 1987 Marc PoKempner

In his energetic, wide-ranging appearances, Jackson makes it very clear to middle-class audiences that he is not a wild-eyed revolutionary as he has often been portrayed; he intends to keep America militarily strong, he is wary of the Soviet Union, he advocates free enterprise, individual responsibility and old-fashioned family-oriented moral values. In short, he is trying to transform his image from that of Jesse Jetstream, the strident, high-flying egoist, to that of Jesse Mainstream, the thoughtful, peace-making populist. If all this works, Jackson hopes that by convention time in Atlanta, he will have a massive array of minorities, old-style Democrats, disgruntled workers and assorted movement activists — an army of delegates larger than that of any other candidate.

Those who take the time to look behind the catchy alliterations and homely metaphors which stud his speech can discern a more consistent, better developed view of history in the 1988 Model Jackson. In a recently published collection of his speeches called Straight from the Heart, Jackson revealed how deeply his racial and religious identity shape his thoughts. For Jackson, said noted syndicated columnist David Broder in a review of the book, "the crucial American experience was not the American Revolution or the frontier, not the Constitution or the New Deal. It was slavery. The crucial test of our current values and policies, he asserted repeatedly, lies in dealing with the heritage of slavery — discrimination and racism .... While most politicians of both parties see the world in terms of great-power relations, emphasizing the Soviet Union, Japan and Western Europe, Jackson focuses on the struggle of the nations emerging from colonialism and the peoples still denied self-determination. Whether the issue is South Africa or corporate power, Jackson's religious philosophy and his interpretation of history both impel him to urge a reversal of power: majority rule in South Africa and employee influence in the boardrooms..."

The trick here, of course, is interpreting the "slavery" of farmers, steel workers and white collar workers in ways that do not rely excessively on the black cultural and religious experience. Whether or not one agrees with Jackson, concluded Broder, "the man has a political base; he has a strategy; he has ideas. And that combination should never be ignored."

Far from being ignored this time, Jackson is being courted in some of the most unlikely places. Earlier this year, he strode into the Louisiana House of Representatives to address a joint session of the legislature called in his honor. Afterwards, he and Gov. Edwin Edwards, a fossilized embodiment of the old South, clasped hands and grinned into the cameras. "I don't want to hurt his candidacy by endorsing him," said Edwards. "But he could sure help me more than I could help him."

Is there then anything that can derail the Jesse Jackson express? Indeed there is.

First, there is the bitterness and self-pity that creep so subtly into even his most exalted rhetorical moments. Jackson is hard put to long hide that us-against-them approach that alienates many listeners, however understandable the attitude may be. He is, after all, the illegitimate son, the outcast, who always had to fight for respect and recognition. Yet, this recurring obsession with his own innate worthiness tends to have, in the end, a self-defeating impact. Second, Jackson must continually battle his image as a rogue. His incredible ability to weave words certainly stirs the sympathetic audience. But it can, among others, project the image of the carnival barker, the used car salesman who manipulates for his own self-serving ends. Third, he is weighed down by his Baptist ministerial robes. Though he assuredly does not proclaim the sort of fundamentalist Bible party line that will dearly cost someone like Pat Robertson, he is, nevertheless, a clergyman, the official representative of a sectarian view. As such, he will lose countless votes of those who might otherwise find common cause with his coalition.

Fourth, he has no political experience and has never been elected to even the most menial office. No matter that he negotiated the release of international captives, spearheaded scores of successful affirmative action campaigns directed at major corporations, inspired black Americans with a sense of their self-worth. He is perceived by many as out of his depth in the political world.

Fifth, his strategy is suspect. All the racial minorities and all the liberal activists and all the disenchanted white Democrats put together may not be enough to make him a mainstream candidate. He is still perceived as following the instructions of his old football coach at the University of Illinois and moving too predictably to "the left." No matter how he modulates his positions, Jackson's emphasis on "self-determination" and "economic justice," especially toward Third World countries, makes him far more liberal than other Democratic candidates.

Finally, the problem of racism in America remains. Despite the progress of the 1960s and 1970s, many white Americans regard the prospect of a black president as almost more menacing than that of a nuclear war or a takeover by the Soviet Union. If the Jackson bandwagon appears to be really on a roll, the old racist fears and slogans will surely echo far and wide.

According to Clarence Page, a Chicago Tribune columnist who deals with interracial issues, Jackson will have a profound influence on Democratic politics in 1988. This time he will have to be reckoned with at the convention. But, predicted Page, Jackson will not be the party's candidate for president or for vice president because "he cannot energize enough white voters .. . he is viewed as too radical on politics and economics and ... he carries too much baggage" from his previous forays.

Thus, Jackson may be reduced to the role of a John the Baptist, preparing the way for a truly viable black candidate in 1992 or beyond. Yet, that is not the role Jesse Jackson ever envisioned for himself. He did not go into politics to prepare the way, but to take charge, to become the champion of the "damned, the disinherited and the despised." What all this means for the destiny of America will work itself out in the months ahead. Only one thing is certain: like any born quarterback, he will not accept defeat nor will he willingly submit to a subsidiary role.

Robert J. McClory writes regularly for the Chicago Reader, the National Catholic Reporter and other publications. He first wrote in Illinois Issues on Jesse Jackson in May 1978.