Let Dennis Menace The Establishment



First, I'm just tired of hearing the weary trope among the likeminded who may care about such matters when they say, "Dennis Kucinich is interesting, but he won't get nominated, and even if he did, he wouldn't win."

Second, let's acknowledge that pursuing an office on the level of the nation's Chief Executive is a vainglorious effort that means you're a wee bit "teched."

Conclusion: Dennis Kucinich is a little nuts. But he's my kind of nuts.






Besides, Elizabeth Harper would be First Lady. Tall redheads rule. I know, billion-eyed audience, what you see here. He's like the kid in "Animal House" when the girl falls through his bedroom ceiling, and he says, "Thanks, God!" And she could've have angled one those grabber arms and plucked him out of an assortment of plastic toys and teddy bears. However it worked, they found each other.

Kucinich is a fighter and a campaigner. He's smart, thinks well on his feet, and behind that grinning male cheerleader ebullience is some darkness and hurt. I mean, this guy lived in his car for a little while. He endured exile in his own nation. The City of Cleveland wouldn't even put his picture in their city hall, and he was their mayor. The Mob put out a hit on him, for criminy sake. And, wow, how cool would it be to have somebody with a name like his with "President" affixed to the front of it. He's not a Bush, a Clinton, or any other standard Anglo-Saxon derivative.

And I know what you're thinking: um, Barack Obama isn't quite the usual two scoops of vanilla, either. True that.

But here's my deal. I mean, what's so dreadful about sitting, and sometimes working, in Congress? Why do Hillary and Obama want to be President sooooo bad. I mean, they make the laws for crying out loud, they hold the purse strings, they get to tell the Prez what to do and how (except when they roll over and let him scratch their belly). It's not such a bad gig, all in all, and in all honesty, who needs the stress of sitting in the Oval Office? How did Truman describe it? -- "It's the crown jewel of the federal penal system."

So, I say, Hillary, Obama, stay in Congress, John Edwards go do a Jimmy Carter, or accept a Cabinet position should that come your way. And so on for the rest of them.

At bottom, full disclosure, I've thought since high school that the U.S. is too big of a nation to govern as one entity. Long ago it should've split up on regional lines in an autonomous relationship, and a governing constitution. I don't know where that puts me: an anarcho-syndicatist? A Kropotkinite? [Suggested reading: Dennis Danvers' The Watch. The novel is set in the city of my nativity, Richmond, Vee-a, and features Kropotkin as a time-shunted protagonist. Get it. Read it. ]


If this country possessed something other than a zero-sum political system that gets worse with each and every election cycle, and instead allowed minority parties to pick up seats in Congress, we'd all have reason to think somebody "down there in Warshington" supported our views. Instead, we're in the thrall of the few who bother to vote, and Diebold machines.

Barring some unthinkable, seismic, cataclysmic demolition of The World As We Know It that throws us into a world like The Postman, I don't see such a radical change occurring.

So, I support Kucinich. Think about it. Dennis as Prez, Obama Vice Prez, Wesley Clark at Defense, or State-or the new Secretary of Peace; Hillary running Health and Human Services or Education; Al Gore at Interior; John Edwards at Labor. Throw in some moderate, somewhat sane Repbulicans because even they, on a good day, can have some of those better ideas that Ford used to say it got. Congressman Ron Paul (really a Libertarian, by another name) at Commerce? Lincoln Chaffee needs a job and he's one of those people--seems from my glancing knowledge of him -- that people would want in public service.

So that's my fantasy.

Peace out, as the kids say in the skreet. Stay cool.


"Political rights do not originate in parliaments, they are, rather, forced upon them from without. And even their enactment into law has for a long time been no guarantee of their security. Just as the employers try to nullify every concession they had made to labour as soon as opportunity offered, as soon as any signs of weakness were observable in the workers' organizations, so governments are always inclined to restrict or to abbrogate completely rights and freedoms that have been achieved if they imagine that the people will put up no resistance. . . . Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace." -- Rudolph Rocker