Kucinich to enter White House race Tuesday
CLEVELAND, Ohio (AP) — Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2004, said Monday he is planning another bid because his party isn’t pushing hard enough to end the Iraq war. In a statement, Kucinich said he plans to formally announce his candidacy on Tuesday at Cleveland’s City Hall, where he served as mayor of his hometown in the 1970s. The liberal, anti-war Ohio congressman said he was inspired to run because he disagrees with the way some of his fellow Democrats are handling the war, including approval of a proposal to spend $160 billion more on the conflict.
Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich only seems like a perennial Presidential candidate. The news that he’s running for President again will elicit yawns and snickers, because no serious political observer will deign to take Kucinich seriously. That’s too bad, really, because though Kucinich may be seen as an iconoclast in the mold of the late Paul Wellstone, he actually has some interesting ideas. Not that they’ll ever get any seriously consideration in a political culture steeped in the ethos of war. As a man who advocates for peace above all else, he’s generally seen by most pundits as soft, a man clearly too weak to effectively and decisively prosecute the war against terror (think Ramsey Clark without the raving dementia and embracing of thugs and war criminals).
Kucinich has unfortunately been tagged with the political reputation of a modern-day “Governor Moonbeam”, the label that followed former California Governor and outgoing Oakland mayor Jerry Brown- a well-meaning but “out there” Democrat perceived by the mainstream media to possess a tenuous grip on politcal reality and a pronounced lack of political gravitas.
Kucinich’s campaign will undoubtedly be something similar to what it was in 2004- long on passion and commitment, but short of money, ultimately dying an inevitable and underfunded death. He’ll have trouble attracting media attention, because no mainstream political pundit will see him as anything but a political gadfly good for a bit of comic relief- a curiosity good for entertainment value, but certainly not a candidate of serious Presidential timbre.
I don’t know that I could support Kucinich (I’m still a strong advocate for Wesley Clark), though he does have some interesting ideas. Nonetheless, he deserves better than to be treated as a political freak show. He deserves to be able to present his ideas and have them considered seriously. Hey, it’s not as if the current occupant of the White House has been an unqualified success. Dennis Kucinich may not be a taste most Americans would be willing to acquire, but we do ourselves a great disservice by not listening to what he has to say.
