Posted by Roldo Bartimole
on December 9, 2007, 2:54 pm, in reply to "The Audaciousness of Dennis Kucinich"
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Forbes took the seat to his left. The seat to his right remained free as the room began to fill with council members, the press and others straining to see the celebrity of the 1984 presidential primary season.
Jackson looked out at the nearly full committee hearing room and spotted Dennis Kucinich sitting in the audience. “Come on up here, Dennis,” Jackson motioned to the city councilman and former mayor.
A smiling Dennis Kucinich literally hopped to Jackson’s right, sitting where TV and other cameras focused on him, Jesse and George.
Dennis then promised to help slice away at Jackson’s $1 million campaign debt; brother Gary Kucinich, also a councilman, offered Jackson help on a crusade to get food to those starving in Ethiopia.
“That won’t do much good for Dennis along Fleet and Broadway,” suggested a councilman, referring to Dennis’ strongest political base, which is primarily white, ethnic working-class.
But ironically, Jesse and Dennis have lots in common as politicians.
No local politician so touched the nerve of leadership-starved, left-leaning activists as did Dennis Kucinich when he became the youngest mayor of Cleveland in 1977. A willing symbol of anti-corporate resistance, he, not unlike Jackson, unabashedly pushed his way onto the front pages of the nation’s major newspapers and nudged his image onto national television, even luring the late night Tom Snyder television show to his then favorite working-class symbol, Tony’s Diner.
Kucinich attracted attention by doing the unexpected - mostly poking his finger into the belly and face of Cleveland’s strong, but stodgy, corporate leadership and getting the expected response – typical arrogance that plunged the city into default, giving Dennis the sympathetic underdog image of a national urban hero. That image may be cloudy at home, but Kucinich is counting on its being alive outside Cleveland.
“I’m a national politician,” says Kucinich, despite the fact that his comeback politically was as a councilman of Ward 12. He’s probably more right than wrong, however, because of his relentless persistence to advance toward a goal, regardless of the impediments.
“You wouldn’t run against an incumbent Democrat, would you?” Kucinich was asked. He’s rumored to be ready to challenge former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Glenn, whose Senate term expires in 1986.
“I don’t look at it that way,” he said.
But an incumbent is an incumbent, Dennis.
“I don’t look at it that way,” repeated Kucinich, who often speaks in riddles when he doesn’t want to answer.
There are some who believe Glenn will not run in 1986. A Republican political strategist says that Glenn’s biggest contributors seriously doubt that Glenn will run after clearing up his heavy debt from the presidential try.
Hardly a Kucinich supporter, he says the Senate would be a perfect spot for Kucinich, who, he predicts, would immediately begin establishing a national reputation for even higher office.
Kucinich is now traveling Ohio twice a week, speaking in places like Mingo Junction, making no pretense of not being interested in a statewide run. He could run against Glenn even as a dress rehearsal for a real run in 1988 when Sen. Howard Metzenbaum is expected to retire.
In any case, Kucinich has the uncanny ability to set his sights far into the future, meanwhile preserving his position at home where the demands are often different from a statewide campaign.
His appearance with Jackson symbolizes a problem Kucinich has had throughout his political career in Cleveland, a city drenched in racial politics. A solid base among white ethnic working-class people has often presented Kucinich with choices of using racial tactics or losing his iron grip on that constituency.
His hero status among activist and even many radicals nationally conflicts with his local Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde reputation, dividing on economic and social issues, particularly on racial matters.
The separation of economic vs. social issues was clearly enunciated by Kucinich in a speech he made as mayor. He outlined his philosophy to the National Press Club in Washington D. C.: “You may have noticed that I didn’t touch on any of the great debates over social issues. The basis of genuine reform is economic reform. We can solve economic problems if we refuse to be distracted. The failure of courage among reformers to attempt to mobilize popular support for basic economic issues, which challenge the economic interests of big business, dooms their efforts to failure.
“The substitution of social issues in place of economic issues trifles with people’s problems, offers false solutions such as integration of schools, which are so bad that you wouldn’t want your kids to go to schools in any case. Trifling with social issues evades our responsibilities to face economic issues. It diminishes the potential of economic issues to rally popular support.”
Kucinich apparently feels that he has the issue of the 1980s befitting his dependence upon economics. That issue is protectionism and has the America-First thrust that strongly appeals to many in Ohio. It offers to the Rust Bowl and offers to Kucinich that gut-feeling issue that rallies people – particularly his major constituency through the years - working-class, unionized people.
But despite his concentration upon economic issues, it’s been the social issues that have tripped Kucinich, particularly race. One simply can’t divorce moral issues from the economic, because of the deep emotional nature of those issues.
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