With winter well underway, the rain and snow have helped keep
Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the Democrat representing Ohio’s 10th
Congressional District, on my mind. This baby-faced fifty-nine-year-old
tossed his hat into the ring during the presidential primaries of 2004.
He has kept himself in the news by continuing to push his campaign
proposal for a cabinet-level Department of Peace. Bills to establish the
new federal department, pending since September in both houses, thus
far have garnered 62 Congressional endorsements. That’s a long way off
enactment, but still much more than a flash in the pan. This tells me
that Kucinich is somebody to watch.
So what sort of a fellow is he?
If you believe the old saw that the child is the father of the man, perhaps we should wonder, “What sort of fellow was he?”
That question takes me back 30 years. My wife and I, both native
Pennsylvanians, found ourselves in Cleveland, compliments of the U.S.
Coast Guard, in 1970. By 1976, after half a dozen years of apartment
dwelling, we’d bought our first house… in Cleveland’s blue-collar West
Park neighborhood. Proud homeowners, we enjoyed our rose bushes and
backyard barbeques.
Then, along came Dennis.
He was still some months shy of his 32nd birthday when inaugurated the
53rd mayor of the “Mistake on the Lake” in 1978. The municipality he
inherited was by then a national joke. Its Cuyahoga River was famously
so polluted that it once burst into flames. Ironically, the steel mills
lining its shores, which provided much of the volatile pollution, were
in sharp decline; some plants were already closed.
Cleveland’s weather also was a national howl. Only Buffalo’s winters
garnered worse press. Kucinich’s first month in office witnessed the
worst winter in recent memory. Unrelenting snowfalls climaxed with a
blizzard on January 26th which roared through town on the back of a
100-mile-per-hour wind. When friends and neighbors here in Delaware
County complain about our winters, I think back to Cleveland in ’78 and…
like an old combat veteran… mutter under my breath, “Think about
shoveling out your driveway for 14 mornings in a row and then tell me
how bad you have it here.”
In short, we hapless Clevelanders required a real leader. Instead we got
the mayor whom the media were soon calling “Dennis the Menace,” partly
because of his uncanny resemblance to the comic strip character… but
mostly because his was a destructive administration from the get-go.
Among his appointees was a 24-year-old finance director with little or
no financial experience. The beleaguered Cleveland business community’s
discomfort over this appointment seemed justified when the mayor
rejected a prestigious $41 million Urban Mass Transportation grant for
one of only four downtown “people movers” to be built in selected
cities. Take it “back to Disneyland where it belongs,” was his
oft-quoted kiss-off of the federal bucks.
When Kucinich appointed Sheriff Richard Hongisto of San Francisco to be
chief of police, he hailed him as “the best law enforcement officer” to
come to Cleveland “since Elliot Ness.” Not three months later Kucinich
fired Hongisto in front of live TV cameras during a Good Friday press
conference.
The police chief was merely canned. The mayor was very nearly crucified.
When on April 10th the City Council voted to investigate other City
Hall shenanigans, the mayor called the council members “a group of
lunatics.” With that, the movement to recall Kucinich, only a fourth of
the way through his two-year term, was underway. By June 1st the
necessary 37,500 petition signatures had been gathered. When the ballots
were counted on August 13th, Dennis held on to his post by a mere 236
votes.
The following year, Cleveland became the first U.S. city of its size to
default on its municipal bonds. We hapless homeowners voted ourselves a
50% income tax increase to insure that the city could continue to
collect our garbage, police our streets --- at one point during the
fiscal crisis Kucinich threatened to lay off 600 city workers, including
400 cops and firefighters --- and, heaven help us, plow our snow.
That autumn Dennis the Menace was ousted by George Voinovich, who went
on to become governor of Ohio and a U.S. Senator. Kucinich went into
exile in New Mexico for almost 20 years, before returning to politics,
eventually winning his current Congressional seat in 1997. By then
Joanne and I had long since returned to the relative warmth and sanity
of suburban Philly.
Even from three decades’ distance, I still feel a chill. Hey, maybe it’s
only my recollection of record winters that makes me shiver. On the
other hand, commendable as a Peace Department might be, I’d hate to see
it catapult Dennis the Menace to national power.
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