Dennis Is No Menace
MANGU-WARD, KATHERINE
Dennis Is No Menace At least not to the other Democratic candidates. BY KATHERINE MANGU-WARD PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE agrees that Dennis Kucinich is a long shot for the Democratic nomination for...
...He's a little odd...
...earned Kucinich a few moments in the difficult-to-grab wartime spotlight, but little support in a Democratic field crowded with antiwar candidates...
...Everyone, that is, but the man himself...
...One can't help but suspect Kucinich's reversal has more to do with politics than personal evolution, but with Kucinich it's hard to tell, since such flip-flops have characterized his public career, particularly on Iraq...
...The Nation has called Kucinich a "regressive progressive...
...BY KATHERINE MANGU-WARD PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE agrees that Dennis Kucinich is a long shot for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States...
...But Kucinich's biggest point of divergence from the Democratic party has been abortion...
...A self-described "dynamic, visionary leader . . . who combines powerful activism with a spiritual sense of the essential interconnectedness of all living things," Kucinich has recently become a vegan at the urging of his girlfriend, and is the leading opponent of genetically modified foods in Congress...
...Kucinich voted to disarm Iraq in 1998, but has since become a vehement advocate of peace at any price...
...Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction...
...So it is clear why few are optimistic about Kucinich's chances for the presidency...
...And he is confident about campaign number 19: "I fully expect to be the nominee of this party," said Kucinich earlier this month, "and I fully expect to be the president of the United States...
...Spirit merges with matter to sanctify the universe," he explained last summer at the Praxis Peace Institute Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia...
...It actually earned a frontpage story in the Washington Post...
...Such is the power of the prospective presidential candidate...
...Far worse than his personal quirks in the eyes of primary voters, however, are his unorthodox positions on some major issues...
...In 2001, he introduced a bill to ban space-based weapons...
...He called for lifting the sanctions on Iraq for years, but now says the sanctions would have worked in the absence of war, and that he always supported "smart sanctions...
...Kucinich's belief in the "intercon-nectedness of all living things" is central to his philosophy of governance...
...On Kucinich's watch, Cleveland became the only municipality to formally default on its debts since the Great Depression...
...Front page of the Style section, that is, below the fold, beaten out by an enormous photo of scruffy actor Colin Farrell...
...And his voting record shows more than the ordinary share of conservative moments for a Democrat, including his 1997 vote in favor of a constitutional amendment banning flag burning and his support for the impeachment of Bill Clinton...
...Activist and Kucinich adviser Carol Rosin, who helped send Timothy Leary's cremated remains into space, sees the situation in similarly apocalyptic terms...
...Still, it was coverage in a major paper for what had been previously dismissed as a "crackpot idea...
...He won a seat in the House and has held it for four terms after coming off one term in the Ohio Senate, 15 years in political exile, and a single term as mayor of Cleveland that even he described as "absolute chaos...
...Say it ain't so...
...Matter transcends to return to spirit...
...Let us support the troops by bringing them home alive and healthy...
...Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction...
...The interchangeabil-ity of matter and spirit means the starlit magic of the outermost life of our universe becomes the soul-light magic of the innermost life of our self...
...Hopelessness is a weapon of mass destruction...
...As the Cleveland Scene quipped, "Abortion, a wedge issue...
...for the purpose of information war, mood management, or mind control...
...The department, says Kucinich, would get at the "root causes" of violence and war...
...He led House Democratic opposition to the resolution authorizing force in late 2002...
...He got started with a petition to run for Cleveland city council as a college sophomore in 1967, before he was old enough to vote...
...Kucinich, who represents Ohio's 10 th District in Congress, has run for office 18 times in the last 35 years...
...During his tenure as mayor— Katherine Mangu-Ward is a reporter at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...The Department of Peace, which has 46 other sponsors in the House, would be responsible for developing policies to address all kinds of violence, domestic and international...
...Kucinich's thoughts often turn to the heavens, it seems...
...But he remains proud of his Cleveland ties, promising in an early campaign appearance to "replace Crawford, Texas's square dancing, tractor pulls, and pork rinds with Cleveland's polka, bowling, and kielbasa...
...which coincided with Jerry Springer's stint as mayor of Cincinnati and Jerry Brown's second term as "Governor Moonbeam" in California—Kucinich banned nuns from City Hall, held a press conference to fire a popular police chief on Good Friday, and was so hated that he had to wear a bulletproof vest when he threw out the first pitch of the 1978 Indians season...
...When Kucinich reintroduced a bill for the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Peace on April 8, the idea garnered more national attention than it had the first time around...
...But Kucinich has beaten long odds before...
...He would prefer, he says, to "go right for the ban," but last year he worked with Sen...
...When asked to explain this change of heart, Kucinich said, "It took a lot for me in the last Congress to recognize what I saw was an agenda being developed that would divide this nation...
...Barbara Boxer to introduce four bills targeted at crippling manufacturers of GM foods...
...Kucinich's election, she says, "is the only chance we have to get to enter into a new paradigm, or otherwise we are all going to die...
...The week he entered the presidential race, Kucinich, a Catholic, announced that his thinking on abortion had "evolved...
...The bill features plans to establish a Peace Academy offering a four-year program in "peace studies," followed by five years of mandatory service at home or abroad...
...His refusal to sell off the public utility Muny Light in order to avoid bankruptcy earned him a few dedicated supporters, but when the "boy mayor" came up for reelection in 1979, he was soundly defeated...
...Frequent statements like, "Let us support the troops, but not the administration...
...Despite consistently voting with pro-lifers on bills regarding RU-486, partial birth, and parental consent, he now says, "I believe in choice"—an abrupt about-face for a man who recently received a zero on the National Abortion Rights Action League scorecard...
...No health care is a weapon of mass destruction...
...Trailing major candidates by millions in campaign contributions, Kucinich, 56, has been surpassed by everyone but Carol Moseley Braun in fundraising, and is polling at less than 1 percent among voters nationally...
...He survived a recall vote by just 236 votes out of more than 120,000 votes cast...
...The bill would ban the use of "radiation, electromagnetic, psy-chotronic, sonic, laser, or other energies...
Vol. 8 • May 2003 • No. 33
