The Case for Kucinich

The Case for Kucinich

By Max B. Sawicky



http://www.populist.com/03.15.sawicky.html



I detect a consensus that Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Rev. Al Sharpton
are focused like laser beams on core progressive principles, compared
to what are considered the more pragmatic choices of Dean, Kerry,
Gephardt and Edwards. On this account they should enjoy the bulk of
progressive support, but they don't. Of course, there is doubt that
such principles would aid a Democrat bucking our emerging one-party
state. So we have the old pragmatism vs. idealism quandary. Or do we?

I suggest not. I stipulate the obvious, that in a head-to-head
election with George Bush today, a progressive would get slaughtered.
But the election is not today. The primaries are six months or more
away. The candidates thought to have a realistic chance against Bush
maneuver as if everything they say will cause them to be held up to
withering scorn by the Bush machine, and no one can blame them for
such caution.

Some are driven to emulate many of Bush's positions, a different
matter. They are driven by presumptions about what the public thinks,
by calculations of popularity. Perfectly understandable, but
fundamentally wrong-headed in another sense.

The problem right now is not the president's popularity. It's what
most Americans think. I don't mean they are stupid, or even
misinformed. I mean they have come to unwarranted conclusions,
sometimes with the benefit of great sophistication, sometimes not. In
either case, these conclusions are subject to change.

The job of an opposition is to challenge those conclusions on the most
fundamental level possible -- to unravel the intellectual logic of
Republican ideological supremacy, such as it is.

The potential of a "radical" candidate is not to run against Bush or
the pragmatic candidates. It is to run against the zeitgeist. The
conventional wisdom is a moving target. We can see it changing now
with respect to the Iraq war. A progressive candidate has the vision
to stick to principles he or she knows to be right, confident that
events will carry opinion towards those conclusions. A progressive
candidacy can radicalize the public by speaking truth to power, by
advancing positions that are right on the merits but unpopular at the
moment.

The power of such a candidacy should not be doubted. Nobody thought
Eugene McCarthy had a chance of altering Democratic Party politics,
and we know what happened. McCarthy made Kennedy and unmade Lyndon
Johnson. Kennedy could have been president. I was around then; trust
me, nobody thought McCarthy would have any such impact.

More recently, in 1992, we had the example of Jerry Brown. His
campaign was energized by a radical, innovative, very bad idea -- the
flat tax. The radical, innovative aspects pushed his candidacy further
than anyone had expected it to go, and the shortcomings of the idea
helped to sink him in the end. So we need proposals that are radical
and innovative without the bad part. There are plenty available.

Winning or losing, such a candidacy can elevate the Democrats'
prospects. Insofar as that candidacy moves the borders of what is
perceived as tenable thinking, all Democrats become more mainstream
and Bush becomes more extreme. How might this be done?

I think the key task is to have the discipline to focus oneself on a
limited number of major issues, coupled with a handful of dramatic,
large-scale, well-substantiated proposals. This in my view was a huge
problem for Nader and is also one for Kucinich. Their minds are
perpetually scanning the horizons for issues -- identifying them,
figuring them out, articulating them, adding them to the repertoire.
It's a lot for the ordinary person to absorb.

Just to get the juices flowing, I will suggest three areas for
emphasis. On the surface, they are obvious enough. The difference is
in how they are handled.

War. George Bush has committed impeachable offenses in the conduct of
foreign policy. Lies the likes of which have never been seen were used
to justify the Iraq venture. It doesn't matter what WMDs Saddam has,
or had. He was not a threat to the US, nor was he implicated in
anti-US terrorism. The other side of the problem, now emerging in
daily episodes of fatal US casualties, is the administration's
incapacity to determine whether Iraq would be governable, and if so,
to effectively plan to govern. The right policy now is a pre-emptive
withdrawal -- bring the troops home, and leave Iraq to the UN.

Taxes. We need an explicit shift in tax burden from the non-rich to
the rich, basically reversing what the regime has done since 2001.
Only a new regime (leadership of Congress and the presidency) will do
this. Among other motives, raising employment requires a basic
reconfiguration of the tax cuts, in the direction of more
progressivity and equal taxation of investment and labor income. So
the flagship proposal: a working-class tax cut, combined with
clawbacks of the Bush tax cuts that more than pay for the tax cut. The
proceeds of this package address concerns about deficits and new
spending needs, because they reflects the audacity of proposing to
actually raise money. The closest approximation of this position right
now is John Edwards, but the tax cut side of his proposal -- for a
saver's credit -- is cold potatoes. When people hear "tax cut" they
expect to see more money in their pocket. The best way to provide such
a tax cut to families below the median is to expand refundable credits
in the income tax.

Health care. There are two problems with health care, not one. It's
not just access; it's also cost containment. In the latter regard,
single-payer has profound implications for wages, the fiscal condition
of state and local governments, and long term fiscal solvency. The
problem is not profit per se. It's fragmentation in the context of
privatization. In other words, to reduce (not eliminate) the growth of
health care spending, we need "global" budgeting for health care
through a single payer system. Some savings can be wrung from reduced
administrative costs and lesser rewards for new drugs, but the major
opportunity here is to grasp the nettle of cost containment -- to
propose to economize on health care spending growth, not to promise
universal benefits without regard to sustainability of such benefits
over the long term. The watchwords of progressive health care reform
are sustainability (in other words, affordability in the long run) and
universality.

To be certain, assorted echoes of these points can be found among
other candidates. But echoes are not enough. We need strong voices.
The greater the din, the more the public mood will shift and the other
candidates will be encouraged to follow along.

Much of what I've said could apply to a generic progressive candidate.
But it happens that Kucinich and Sharpton are the only two
progressives in the race now. Sharpton's problem is that he is dogged
by his past. Whatever you think about that past, it's hard to see his
ideas given the consideration they might deserve in light of the
distractions. Imagine Bill Bennett trying to give a speech on the
unconstructive personal behavior of the poor.

Kucinich's record -- in terms of the Cleveland default -- has a
positive, boomerang-like quality. Once you know the story, you think
better of him, not worse. His potential ability to connect with
working-class Reagan Democrats is notable. I think this is an
advantage relative to Dean, though not to Gephardt, Edwards or Kerry.
Otherwise he is a skillful politician with a progressive message. At
this point in time, that is what should be encouraged. It's not
February, when we will start to obsess about who's up and who's down
in different states. Nor are we in the eleventh hour of the convention
where minute tactical calculations come to the fore. Now is the time
for Big Ideas to get a chance to bloom.

Another consideration is that if you are liberal but pragmatic, your
argument is that the realistic candidates will get the center or swing
voters. The best way to test that is to deny them progressive votes.
Let's see how good they are in proving their own argument. That would
demonstrate "winnability." Their burden, after all, is not persuading
liberals they can get non-liberal votes; it is in actually showing
they can get non-liberal votes. So let them stew in their own juices,
fighting amongst themselves for the center. Meanwhile liberals and
progressives should take a unified stand and show their strength and
potential for growth.

Cynicism is a poor guide to politics when a public is or could become
increasingly mobilized against the Bush dynasty. Now is the time to
stretch. There will be plenty of opportunities to get desperate later
on.

Max B. Sawicky is a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute,
a member of the National Executive Committee of Americans for
Democratic Action and the editor of the "MaxSpeak" weblog at
maxspeak.org/gm. Opinions reflected here do not represent those of the
Economic Policy Institute or Americans for Democratic Action.


-- 
"When our children fail competency tests the schools lose funding.
When our missiles fail tests, we increase funding."  ---Dennis
Kucinich