Campaign of ideas
A top-notch editorial from the Capital Times
Editorial: Campaign of ideas
An editorial
October 13, 2003
Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-chair Dennis Kucinich is visiting Madison tonight as part of a national tour to officially announce his candidacy for president. He deserves a warm welcome, a big "thank you" and serious consideration.
Some skeptics ask why Kucinich is bothering to announce. After actively campaigning for nine months, Kucinich is still stuck in the low single digits in the polls, his campaign is volunteer rich but cash poor, and he gets little notice from major media. There is no way he can win the Democratic nomination, the skeptics say, let alone the presidency.
But that cheap punditry demeans a good man, cheapens an already disappointing process and entirely misses the point of democracy.
To be sure, Kucinich faces an uphill race. Even Democrats who like him question whether he would be the right challenger for George W. Bush. But, win or lose, Kucinich will raise the quality of the discourse, and Americans of every political bent ought to welcome his formal announcement as a signal that this year's contest for the Democratic nomination will be a real contest of ideas.
Kucinich brings to the race a track record of consistent progressivism on foreign policy and economic issues. He led congressional opposition to the shameful October 2002 resolution that authorized the Bush administration to launch an unwise and unnecessary war against Iraq. Alone among this year's candidates for the Democratic nomination, Kucinich has voted against the war and against the draconian Patriot Act. None of the other candidates has so consistent a record of speaking out against war profiteering by corporations linked to the Bush administration.
While most of the other Democratic candidates waffle around the question of whether to authorize the spending of an additional $87 billion on a war that has already cost America far too much in the way of lives, resources and international esteem, Kucinich says he will vote "no" on the spending authorization and declares, "It is time for the United States to get out of Iraq. It is time to get the United Nations in and the United States out. It is time to bring our troops home and end this sorry exercise in pre-emption and unilateralism."
For this, Kucinich deserves a "thank you" from every American who understands that Congress should not authorize the expenditure of another $87 billion on a fool's mission. His participation in the Democratic presidential debates will make it harder for candidates Howard Dean, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, John Edwards and Joe Lieberman to fuzz the debate about this war and the broader issue of the damage this administration has done to America's credibility and security.
But Kucinich deserves serious consideration for another reason. His policies on the two most critical domestic issues - addressing the health care crisis and changing U.S. trade policies that have devastated manufacturing - are the most evolved of any of the candidates. His detailed proposals for developing a single-payer national health care system and for implementing trade policies that benefit workers, farmers and the environment - as opposed to multinational corporations - are sound and exciting.
Author Studs Terkel says Kucinich carries the message "of all working men and women, of all small farmers, of all who believe in a better life and a safer world, for their children and others' children." Whether Kucinich is the nominee or not, that is a message that Democrats need to take up if they intend to win in 2004.
Published: 7:48 AM 10/13/03
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