Becoming Somebody

Dennis Kucinich read thirty-five lengthy, detailed articles of impeachment against President Bush on the House floor Tuesday night (video below), a move that proves once again that he is a total political badass. The balls it took for Kucinich to introduce those charges into the Congressional record have made me stand by my assessment of Dennis Kucinich as the most important political figure in the United States.

When I made the claim the first time, most people laughed. However, to all those who mock the Ohio Congressman and former presidential candidate, Denny K once again did the country proud by taking this symbolic, yet likely fruitless, stand against the president. It’s his overriding courage, though, that I envy most. He stands up there and does what is right, even as his colleagues jeer and openly mock him. Way to be, Denny. Way to be.

Kucinich introduces Bush impeachment resolution, from CNN.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic presidential candidate from Ohio, introduced a resolution to impeach President Bush into the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

Kucinich announced his intention to seek Bush’s impeachment Monday night, when he read the lengthy document into the record.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said she would not support a resolution calling for Bush’s impeachment, saying such a move was unlikely to succeed and would be divisive.

Most of the congressman’s resolution deals with the Iraq war, contending that the president manufactured a false case for the war, violated U.S. and international law to invade Iraq, failed to provide troops with proper equipment and falsified casualty reports for political purposes.

Kucinich also charges that Bush has illegally detained without charge both U.S. citizens and “foreign captives” and violated numerous U.S. laws through the use of “signing statements” declaring his intention to do so. … Read more

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No, it’s not because his wife is smoking hot. She is, though not in a traditional, 21st century pop-culture sense, but in the way a high school English teacher could be under the right circumstances. It’s not because he looks like a kind of rat-elf hybrid yet still managed to score his aforementioned smoking-hot wife. It’s not because he unapologetically stands on stage with cowardly politicos and says, Yes, this country needs universal, government-funded health care, and, War should never be an instrument of foreign policy. It’s not even because he’s a vegan in a country of meat-eating savages, BBQ pulled-pork slaughterhouse axmen, Texas longhorn cattle ranchers, and buckshot-toting Bambi hunters.

Sure, these things make him a badass and kind of unintuitively hip. But they also dominate the discussion and cloud the real truth: that Dennis Kucinich is, without a doubt, for numerous reasons that too often go ignored, one of the most vital elements in the American political crucible, even though most people think he’s a joke.

I followed pretty closely Kucinich’s legal battle to get himself into last night’s MSNBC Democratic debate in Nevada, and I was pretty pissed off when he lost that fight in the courts. His argument is entirely correct, though. By not allowing him to debate alongside the race’s Big Three, NBC and General Electric, its parent company, robbed the American people of the ability to hear the points of view of all candidates still running for office and, instead of providing fair and unbiased news coverage, gave Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton a de facto endorsement. It is not up to NBC to decide which candidates are viable, regardless of where they finished in recent caucuses and primaries.

Kucinich is absolutely right in saying his exclusion from the debate, and the court’s decision that it was essentially a private matter, goes against every value a democracy should hold during an election cycle, not to mention our most basic journalistic principles. To see the stage without Kucinich and to not hear his opinion on matters of grave importance is an outrage and a critical blow to an already floundering media that has long been accused of coddling politicians and those in power and of putting corporate interests ahead of public service. It isn’t like Kucinich is some crackpot who spews hateful, divisive rhetoric, laughs in the face of reason and scientific advancement, says Americans will remain an invading force in another nation for a century, or positions himself as a saccharine poser with a grimy patina usually reserved for corporate lawyers and child pornographers.

OK. I know what everyone is thinking. The UFO thing during the Philadelphia debate. I admit that was a little odd for anyone to admit to, let alone someone running for president. But claiming a belief in aliens is absolutely no different than claiming a belief in god. Both are crazy. But if I had to choose one to label as more crazy than the other, I’d say god is a lot less likely than intelligent life somewhere in an infinitely expanding universe. So if politicians get a pass for going to church, Kucinich gets a pass for going to space.

Kucinich’s importance to the political system is reflected in more than just a refusal to take it in the ass from NBC and his standing up to a dipshit morning-show host (read: Hannah Storm) who spent an entire interview talking about his wife’s tongue ring (see what I mean about that one?) instead of asking him real questions. It comes through in his courage to be the guy everyone laughs at for pointing out the absurd and borderline-criminal aspects in American politics. He stands up and tells people what they need to hear, even if “the mainstream” thinks it’s crazy.

Let’s face it. There’s no way Kucinich enters the race and realistically expects to win. Facing this, most people would probably sit down and do their jobs, or bow out of the race after a poor showing or two. But Kucinich keeps going, and he does so for the sake of the American people and its democracy, not his own. I find it telling that he was the candidate who demanded and paid for a full recount of the New Hampshire primary votes because something seemed a little off between all the polling data and the final results. All this from a man who will likely go unaffected by the recount. But he fights for it anyway. He understands that transparency in government and fairness in elections is more important than winning or losing a primary. He understands that a functioning democracy is more than just a dog-and-pony show for those people with enough celebrity to carry the masses. It’s about the dissemination of information and a variety of views made available, uncensored, to the public. And unlike most people in government, Kucinich seems willing to fight for that ideal, even though he knows going in that he’s up against something too strong to stop. That, to me, sounds like someone who should be taken seriously.