Abstract

Who's Afraid of Dennis Kucinich?

The author profiles U.S. presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, and compares his campaign with that of John Edwards. In the epic novel of this election, whose tragic theme is the unavoidable humiliation of the sane in a kingdom of idiots, Edwards appears as Kucinich's foil, his Dostoyevskian opposite. For every step Kucinich takes, Edwards is seemingly there to remind him that a man cannot succeed in a world designed for children. John Edwards may be the "Youth" candidate, but it is the congressman from Ohio who is at home in front of college students. It is the other candidates who too often treat even grown-ups like babies, feeding them condescending platitudes and implying at every turn that we voters are simply not mature enough to handle anything beyond a flag, a photo op and a few vacuous paeans to "jobs" and "unity" and "leadership." Pundits and journalists talk a lot about Kucinich's height and his decidedly non-Hollywood looks as the main reasons he cannot be considered a contender, but on the campaign trail, it sure looks like Kucinich's chief "problem" is that when he talks, he means it. He is clearly an intellectual who is measuring himself against history, not the other candidates. And it is this disdain for the other kind of ambition that has led observers to describe him as unserious. The Kucinich platform is simple and unequivocal. Cancel NAFTA and the WTO. An immediate pullout from Iraq. Universal single-payer healthcare, a public program, everyone covered. His campaign literature is the size of a playing card. It is not all that unusual to find someone who seems willing to go to his death, or the political equivalent of it, for Dennis Kucinich. These people are older and tend to have a permanent interest in politics; this is not summer camp for them.