[NYTr] Dennis Kucinich: A peace-seeking idealist to the core

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[This is pretty condescending stuff. The Xtian Sci Monitor apparently
thinks Kucinich is marginalized well enough to write about him.
Unlike Ron Paul. Anyone who's turned off by Ron Paul refusal to
"accept" Darwin's work will probably be equally nauseated by all
the new-age "spiritual" nonsense here.  However, to give him
credit, Kucinich has reversed his previous fetus-fanaticism to leave
the Right-to-Control-Women's-Bodies crown and recognize that
reproductive freedom is a civil right, and that includes abortion.-NYTr]

sent by tsimonds - activ-l


Christian Science Monitor - Dec 31, 2007
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1231/p01s02-uspo.html

Dennis Kucinich: A peace-seeking idealist to the core

The congressman from Ohio makes his second run for the White House,
wanting healthcare for all Americans and peace for the world.

By Amanda Paulson
Washington

To understand the importance Dennis Kucinich places on spirituality,
scan his generally spare Capitol Hill office: a white cloth from the
Dalai Lama, a bust of Gandhi, and a picture representing "conscious
light"  a gift from Brahma Kumaris nuns.

There's a Tibetan dragon washbowl and, on his desk, two heavy crucifixes
once worn by Catholic nuns who taught him and who, he says, "saved my
life."

"Obviously, I connect with all religions," says Representative Kucinich
(D) of Ohio, in the midst of his second presidential campaign. "All
manners of belief and even non-belief come from a common font, and that
is the transcendent power of the human heart.... All those things that
would separate us are based on misunderstandings of our nature."

They're somewhat unusual religious views for someone who still considers
himself essentially Roman Catholic. But then, little about Kucinich is
orthodox.

While his colleagues in Congress recently voted for more military funds
for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he is pushing for immediate
withdrawal from Iraq and advocates cutting money from the defense
budget. In the middle of the war on terror, he wants to establish a
Department of Peace. He's the only Democratic presidential candidate
who wants a Medicare system for all Americans, supports gay marriage,
and advocates repealing the North American Free Trade Agreement and
withdrawing from the World Trade Organization.

The congressman is also, by all reckonings, a long shot for the
nomination. The latest national polls have him hovering around 1
percent. (He often wins online polls with strong liberal leanings.)

But Kucinich, who projects supreme confidence in both his views and his
abilities, is anything but discouraged.

Another item he keeps in his congressional office is an original script
from "The Man of La Mancha," a gift from a cast member. It's an apt
memento, since Kucinich has been tilting at windmills and dreaming
impossible dreams most of his life.

Quoting the romantic poets

The eldest of seven children, he grew up in a household that was
chronically short of money and often had trouble finding an apartment
that would accept so many children. The family moved more than 20 times
and, at one point, lived out of their 1948 Dodge. Kucinich worked to
pay his tuition to the Catholic schools he attended and was one of the
first in his family to graduate from high school. A sports lover
despite his 5-foot, 7-inch frame, he played football and basketball
and endured brutal hazing from teammates  until he was diagnosed with a
heart murmur and told to stop.

>From the time he was young, Kucinich has been reading the likes of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Robert Browning, and the Romantic poets. He still quotes
them and considers many of their ideas part of his broader sense of
faith. A particular favorite is Percy Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound"
whose final lines mirror Kucinich's own belief that love and hope must
challenge oppression. "Tennyson  'Come, My friends, 'Tis not too late
to seek a newer world.' Browning  'A man's reach should exceed his
grasp,' " Kucinich says. "The romantic poets had this understanding of
the power of the human spirit. That to me corresponds to religion, and
to me the power of the human heart is an article of faith."

Those sentiments  that one should strive for the impossible, and try to
create something better  were also drilled into him by the nuns in
Kucinich's high school, St. John Cantius. Those ideas influenced his
desire to be a politician  and to start young. Kucinich first ran for
political office when he was 20 and nearly defeated a longtime city
council incumbent in Cleveland. He looked even younger than he was, and
news stories at the time referred to him as "Dennis the Menace" and
"Alfalfa." Two years later he ran again and won.

In his 2007 memoir, "The Courage to Survive," Kucinich writes of
telling a high school friend that he would be mayor of Cleveland by the
time he was 30. He wasn't far off; in fact, he was elected mayor in
1977 at age 31, the youngest mayor of a major American city.

His term lasted just two years, and it was, by all accounts, tumultuous.
"He gave the town a nervous breakdown and he wore them out," says Brent
Larkin, editorial page editor at The Cleveland Plain Dealer. "It was
unlike anything I've seen in my rather long career of paying attention
to things that happen in this city. He was a different Dennis then. He
was extraordinarily combative."

Kucinich was always at odds with the city council, vetoing dozens of
bills it sent to him, which councilors then overrode. He plunged the
city into fiscal default when he refused to sell Muny Light, the
city-owned electric utility, despite extraordinary pressure from
business and a hit placed on him by organized crime, according to
police.

"It wasn't mine to sell. It belonged to the people," Kucinich says,
explaining a decision that he credits with saving citizens hundreds of
millions of dollars in utility rates. Others say it's more complicated 
that the city is still paying for the decision with a poor bond rating.
One panel of experts included Kucinich in its list of the 10 worst
big-city mayors of all time.

But Kucinich came back from the political wasteland  he barely survived
a recall election and lost reelection in 1979  in part based on new
evidence that his stand on Muny Light was not only courageous, but, in
hindsight, the best decision. "Because he was right" was the slogan that
helped him win his 1994 election to the Ohio legislature. Two years
later, he was elected to Congress.

"He is the most resilient political figure I have ever met," says Mr.
Larkin. "I cannot overstate enough how dead he was politically in 1979.
He really is a tenacious guy."

Against the mainstream

Kucinich has a less combative style these days, but he still relishes
standing alone against the political mainstream. He was the only member
of Congress to vote against a bill this fall to establish Sept. 11 as a
day of remembrance for those who died in the terrorist attacks and who
have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Because the resolution didn't make reference to "the lies that took us
into Iraq, the lies that keep us there, the lies that are being used to
set the stage for war against Iran, and the lies that have undermined
our basic civil liberties here at home," he chose not to support it,
Kucinich said in a statement at the time.

In presidential debates, he calls attention to his solo positions  as
the only Democratic candidate supporting a nonprofit single-payer
healthcare system, the only one calling for immediate withdrawal from
Iraq, the only one who supports gay marriage and who voted against
funding the war in Iraq.

This fall he introduced a bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. In
one debate, Kucinich whipped out his pocket-size copy of the
Constitution when questioned about his efforts.

"A lot of people don't agree with Dennis on specific issues, but nobody
ever doubts where he stands," says Andy Juniewicz, Kucinich's press
secretary and a friend who worked as a copy boy with him at the Plain
Dealer and has known him for more than 40 years. "He's probably the most
courageous elected official I've ever known. Whatever the odds, if he
believes he's right, he'll buck those odds and push for what he believes
is right."

Kucinich himself explains those positions, which often go against the
political mainstream, as simply coming from his internal convictions.
"Emerson once wrote, 'Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron
string.' I've been reading that essay since I was 10 years old."

Still, Kucinich's critics often question whether his views are too
extreme, too lacking in nuance and understanding of complexities, or so
politically unpalatable as to make his election or the success of his
proposals impossible.

"You have to mix the idealism with the practicality or you're foolish,"
says Timothy Hagen, president of Cleveland's Board of County
Commissioners and chairman of the local Democratic Party when Kucinich
was mayor. "The question becomes, can you convince enough people that
what you're saying has validity and you can make it a reality. He
hasn't been able to do that."

It's a criticism that Kucinich is used to, and one he bristles at. A
traditional politician who, colleagues say, has probably met everyone in
his district three times and is effective at delivering services to his
constituents, he believes his ideas are practical  even if they're
sometimes ahead of their time.

"I'm grounded in the practical everyday experience of people," he says.
"I see paths toward civic health that are practical. I feel I'm a
candidate of the mainstream because I'm not hobbled by those who would
purchase or rent my opinion."

Kucinich still lives in the same small house he bought more than 30
years ago and still carries a union membership card  for the stagehand
union in his pocket.

His roots have helped him stay connected to the people he serves, he
says.

And he credits the education he received from the Catholic nuns, and the
sense of discipline his coach, Peter Pucher, instilled in him, with
creating many of the bedrock values that inform his views today.

"He sincerely believes in the kinds of things he's saying and stands
for," says Alexander Lamis, a political scientist at Case Western
University in Cleveland. Professor Lamis remembers going out to lunch
with Kucinich and Carl Stokes, the first African-American mayor of a
big city and a friend of Kucinich's until his death. The conversation
turned to Tom Johnson, a Cleveland mayor at the turn of the 20th
century and a leader of the Progressive movement. "They talked about
how they considered themselves the only two Cleveland mayors to follow
in the Tom Johnson mayoral tradition," says Lamis. "Coming with that
tradition is fighting against the well-to-do special interests. It's
just what Dennis believes."

A transformational love

But if Kucinich believes he's a candidate of the mainstream, he's rarely
treated that way by the media, which tend to highlight some of his
wackier moments  his close friendship with actress Shirley MacLaine, for
instance, and the fact that he says he has seen a UFO over her house,
the subject of a question Tim Russert asked in a Democratic debate this
fall.

These days, his marriage is also getting as much attention as his
political views. After two failed marriages, Kucinich met Elizabeth
Harper, a striking British beauty more than 30 years his junior, in 2005
when she visited his congressional office to talk about monetary policy.
He fell instantly in love. They were married less than four months
later.

Kucinich explains their meeting and their courtship in near-mystical
terms, and says it has transformed his life.

"When you're in a profound loving relationship, that's when the heart
has wings and the spirit soars and there's a feeling of everything
being right with the world," he says. "It's almost a fulfillment of
Spirit and some of St. Paul's epistles when he writes about love." The
couple recited the Prayer of Saint Francis at their wedding  the
well-known verse that begins, "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy
peace." He still hopes that his political career can be a way to work
toward a larger world peace. But is this idealistic view of human
nature at odds with the realities of a world in which peace often seems
impossibly distant?

"It's possible to have your feet on the ground and your eyes looking
toward the stars," Kucinich says, in a car rushing to an interview on
Fox News to discuss his anger at being excluded from the final
Democratic debate in Iowa. "There was a time when the sailors of old
sailed by the stars. It's our obligation to each other to catch the
rhythms of the unfolding future which exist in present time, and to
call forth, to name it, to set it in motion, to be as architects of new
worlds."