{"id":1312,"date":"2003-07-20T16:21:41","date_gmt":"2003-07-20T20:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2003\/07\/20\/1312.html"},"modified":"2019-01-02T08:35:26","modified_gmt":"2019-01-02T13:35:26","slug":"dennis-j-kucinich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2003\/07\/20\/dennis-j-kucinich\/","title":{"rendered":"Dennis J. Kucinich"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dennis J. Kucinich<\/a>\n
(Project Vote Smart<\/a>)\n\n

Qualifications<\/b>: Dennis Kucinich was a whiz kid, 30 years ago. He was elected to Cleveland's City Council in 1969, at the age of 23. He ran for Congress (and lost)as a Democrat in 1972, and as an Independent in 1974. He was Mayor of Cleveland for two turbulent years in the late seventies, and was tossed out in disgrace, his political future in ashes before he was old enough to qualify as President. And then, you know, the second act, which began slowly with a failed run for Congress in 1988 and another in 1992, and then (remember, he had been Mayor of Cleveland) finally winning an election as a State Senator<\/i> in 1995. Then he finally, on his fifth try, got into Congress in 1996, and has won reelection four times.\n

What that comes down to is (a) six years in the US House, which is not a lot, and one turn as Mayor of Cleveland in the 70s, and (b) an amazing quantity of experience losing elections, which I would think would be, you know, a learning experience.\n\n

Strengths<\/b>: Rep. Kucinich has the strength of his convictions. Not all of his convictions are coincident with those of the population at large, but they are, for the most part, seriously thought-out convictions stemming from a seriously thought-out philosophy. This gives him the advantage that serious thinking gives people: he can take issues as they come, compare the patterns with his philosophic structure, and make choices, not surely, because the universe is complex, but with conviction. He perceives both a resource-based and a morality-based frame, which allows him to keep his eye on the ball. More specifically, he has a good deal of knowledge and experience with what I think of as lefty issues: health care, energy, pensions, and human rights.\n\n

Weaknesses<\/b>: Rep. Kucinich does not appear to be very detail-oriented. He is a Big Idea man, not an execution man. Also, his relentless attention to the resource frame the moral frame appears to make it difficult for him to compromise. He isn't terribly charismatic, doesn't speak particularly well, and has a lousy singing voice. Also, he evidently is a terrific ventriloquist.\n\n

Priorities<\/b>: Rep. Kucinich has said, again and again, that his first priority is Guaranteed Single-Payer Universal Health Care. Now, how that would play out in a Kucinich White House isn't clear, but he does appear to be willing to put a lot of resources into it. His second priority is protecting Social Security, by which, by the way, he means protecting a retirement age of 65 as well as keeping the funds away from private investment brokers. He's a proud protectionist; he's against Free Trade in the NAFTA\/WTO sense. He appears to want to direct foreign policy by an emphasis on human rights, rather than either a power-structure emphasis or an economic emphasis.\n\n

Coalitions <\/b>: It's not clear to me that Dennis Kucinich has built lasting coalitions in the past, nor do I think he would be particularly good at it. I do think that he has the potential of actively leading those people who share his world-view, and persuading the persuadable to share his world-view. I don't know that he is capable of the compromise necessary to lead those with different world-views, who see their interests furthered by coming together on what common ground there is.\n\n

Legislative<\/b>: Rep. Kucinich has been associated largely with noble losing causes in his years in the House. Labelling Genetically modified foods, Kyoto, enforcing the War Powers Act, opposition to NAFTA and the WTO, and some sort of fuss about Myanmar appear prominently. It's an important valuable position, gadfly; but it's hard to see it working from outside. That said, he does have legislative experience, and knows how the process works.\n\n

Executive<\/b>: Rep. Kucinich has experience as a public executive, Mayor of Cleveland thirty years ago. Melvin G. Holli, in his book The American Mayor: The Best and the Worst Big-City Leaders<\/a><\/i> (University Park: Penn State University Press © 1999), surveys a group of historians, biographers and urban studies people, and Mayor Kucinich shows up on the list of 10 worst mayors in America since 1820. He's pretty much the only person on that list who wasn't corrupt; Prof. Holli describes him as \"abrasive, intemperate and confrontational\". Dennis Kucinich was young then, and besides, he turns out to have been on the right side of some of those confrontations. Still, it's easy to imagine a Kucinich White House full of anger and confrontation, and short on compromise and achievement.\n\n

Judicial<\/b>: In 1975, Dennis Kucinich was Clerk of the Courts for Cleveland. Seriously, he has no experience or track record here. He is not an attorney. There's no reason to think he would run into trouble here, but there's no pattern to spot, either.\n\n

Crisis<\/b>: This is for sure: in a crisis, Dennis Kucinich would stick to his proverbial guns. It's very hard to imagine him caving in under any sort of pressure to do something he thought was immoral or short-sighted. In an emergency, he would very quickly choose sides, and stick with the side he chose. Also, because he would act on principles which are known, he would be predictable; you would always know which way he would jump.\n\n

Day-to-day<\/b>: This is questionable. It's hard to know how much weight to give thirty-year-old complaints about abrasiveness and inability to compromise. We are none of us exactly who we used to be, and it is quite common for brashness to mellow with age. It is clear, though, that Dennis Kucinich is most comfortable when he's on a mission. I would expect him to have less control on the day-to-day matters outside the sights of those missions.\n\n

Leadership<\/b>: Dennis Kucinich is neither a hedgehog nor a fox; he is a battering ram, fearless, certain, and resolute. He isn't charismatic, nor is he good-looking, nor articulate, nor is his thumb on the pulse of the country. He is a fighter, and a hell of a fighter, at that. He is certainly not a follower.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dennis J. Kucinich (Project Vote Smart) Qualifications: Dennis Kucinich was a whiz kid, 30 years ago. He was elected to Cleveland’s City Council in 1969, at the age of 23. He ran for Congress (and lost)as a Democrat in 1972,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201,204],"tags":[213],"class_list":["post-1312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing","category-politics","tag-2004demprimarycandidates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16811,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions\/16811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}