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Dennis Kucinich

Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, is in his sixth term as a U.S. representative from Ohio’s 10th congressional district. Kucinich was a candidate for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, and on December 12, 2006, he announced that he will again seek the presidency in 2008. Previously Kucinich was a member of the Cleveland City Council, a state senator, and the mayor of Cleveland.

Jules Witcover interviewed Kucinich on March 23, 2007.

Why don’t you start by just talking a little bit about the state of the campaign-finance system now, whether you think it can be used at all, and what your plans are in terms of whether you plan to stay in the system.

Sure, I plan to stay in the system. I think that the reason why the system was set up was to try to limit the tremendous influence that interest groups would have on the political process. Government for sale is government that escapes the reach of the great mass of American people. When you have a system where you have got so many needs that are not being met, and you have an election where there is so much money being poured into it, what you have is a license to use the political system to redistribute the wealth in the nation upwards from the great mass of people into the hands of a few. And that’s exactly what’s going on right now. So how can we reconnect with Lincoln’s aspirations of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people”?

A number of candidates who are running this year are already saying they are going to opt out of the system. And the numbers that they are talking about raising are pretty astronomical. How does that affect your campaign, if you stay in the system?

Well, in the last election we raised about $13 million, and about $3 million of it was from matching funds. We are going to continue to reach out to the American people through the web and through more traditional canvassing, by telephone, knocking on doors, holding house parties, group meetings, reaching out that way and trying to get the great mass of people involved in the campaign. I think that if we are able to raise $50 million — which is a large amount of money, but which would be dwarfed by what we are hearing other campaigns are raising — I could run a competitive campaign. And I can win.

The more money you spend, the more you have got people that are glomming on to you with every crackpot idea about how to win an election. And you have to carry a payroll of pollsters and advisers who tell you what to think. I don’t need anyone to tell me what to think. I know exactly. I have been in politics for 40 years. I don’t need anyone to tell me to lead the way against the war in Iraq. I don’t need anyone who could tell me that privatization of Iraq oil is wrong. I don’t need anyone to tell me to vote against this [Iraq supplemental] appropriations bill; I am going to vote against it. I mean, you don’t see a phalanx of advisers whispering in my ear, because that whole system is set up to further the aggregation of campaign funds for the purposes of promoting a political elite whose aspirations are, generally, totally disconnected from the concerns of the American people.

What’s happened since 2004 that makes you confident that you can raise $50 million?

I got into the race late last time. I was able to raise $13 million. So I am just thinking that with a concerted effort I should be able to triple it or quadruple it. So I am setting a goal. And that goal is also tied to an expectation that the American people are going to be totally fed up with this war. And that as the election draws near, the angst that people are feeling about the war is going to build. And that those who voted for the war, voted to fund the war, are going to be rejected. And that the one candidate who has been consistent, and that’s me, will then suddenly have the opportunity to get support. And I think that we will probably see a lot of that money come in later.

This little argument that’s going on between the campaigns of [Barack] Obama and [Hillary] Clinton, at least a part of it is based on her refusal to apologize for not supporting the . . .

I think Barack Obama should apologize for voting to fund the war. I mean, we are talking about apologies here. A vote to fund the war is a vote to reauthorize it all over again. You see that happening right now as we speak. So talk about apologies, I mean, let’s get past apologies. Here is what I want to know: I want to know who Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and Senator Edwards are going to apologize to for taking huge amounts of money from hedge funds, which are the largest unregulated source of capital in our economy and which, according to financial analysts and the international community on Wall Street, are moving away from investing in alternative energy and moving toward putting more money into uranium (read: nuclear power), coal, oil. How is that going to affect our energy policies? These hedge funds are heavily invested in insurance. How is that going to affect their health-care policies? These hedge funds are invested in defense contractors. How is that going to affect their policies with respect to matters of war and peace?

These are serious questions that no one is raising. I am just raising them right now. And they need to be raised. And serious investigative reporting work needs to be done to make the connections. It’s not hard to make. So this political debate takes place at such a pathetic level. The more you focus on personality, the less you focus on some of the deeper issues, which really is who owns their own soul. I mean, they are all nice people. But the fact of the matter is that these interest groups have corrupted our system. And Buckley v. Valeo needs to be either overturned or a constitutional amendment [approved] to put in force public financing of campaigns.

Do you see any possibility of that ever happening?

Someday it will. Someday America will once again own itself.

Well, let me just get back to the whole question of the existing system. What do you think can be done to help someone like yourself who is going to try and stay in the system? What can be done to make it easier for you?

Networks and local TV stations should be required to provide free television. Radio stations should be required to provide free radio time. This is consistent with the original intent of the Federal Communications Act of 1934, which says the broadcast media should serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity. So I would say that’s one area in particular that would be very helpful. I think that each network should be required to sponsor a series of nationally televised debates so that candidates would have a chance to be seen. Their ideas would have a chance to be made visible.

I remember in the last election, Ted Koppel gave you a really hard time on the debates. Do you remember that? And he tried to basically talk you out of the campaign. One of the complaints is always, “Well, there are too many candidates.” What’s your answer to that, and do you think there is a better way to put together the debates?

I mean, the system sorts itself out, really. I don’t think the system’s ever suffered for an excess of candidates. It suffers from an excess of special-interest groups trying to buy the candidates. And it wasn’t really Ted Koppel’s finest moment trying to intervene on a corrupt political establishment.

It’s stupid.

Really. I am sure he wishes he had that to do over again.

What do you make of this phenomenon we are seeing now, highlighted by the recent YouTube video against Hillary Clinton? Do you think that whole use of the Internet network by freelancers is good, bad, or a mixture?

Look, you do not need a pen anymore but a keyboard. I think democratization of the media is a good thing. The consumers, simultaneously, are charged with the responsibility of becoming a little bit more sophisticated. I think that happens as time goes on. But I mean, look at it this way: Consider the degree to which people swallow whole propaganda that comes out of government that then is reported uncritically by the media. That’s why we are in Iraq. We would not have gone into Iraq if there had been a strong, independent press. And so the rise of the Internet journalists, or blogosphere, or whatever you want to call it, fills a demand for alternatives and for a more full public discussion.

We haven’t gone so much of a distance from the days of A.J. Liebling, the famous dictum about freedom of the press belonging to the person who owns one. And so many people now are free to get their message out. That can only be a good thing. Because part of the problem with the media is that there has been such a concentration, within the electronic media and within the print media, that the owners of those structures can wield tremendous power to push one candidate out or make another one invisible by not covering them.

How do they push them out? They didn’t push you out in 2004.

No, I work on different rules. I can’t be intimidated. And I have my own plane.

Are you concerned at all about the lack of editing that goes into a lot of the stuff that gets on the Internet — editing for accuracy or obvious bias?

I used to be a copyboy at a newspaper more than 40 years ago — let’s see, to be accurate — ’64. So that’s 43 years ago. And mistakes are made in mainstream media. I was a copy reader at The Wall Street Journal. It was my job to find mistakes in copy. There were a lot of them, including one time where someone misread the advances, declines, and unchanged. And some poor soul who was relying on that for his daily numbers payout met his demise because of a typo.

But, as you know, it’s not a question of editing or no editing. I mean, it’s true that a lot of mistakes do appear in the newspapers; I have made my share of them. But in the current atmosphere, in the blogosphere, there doesn’t seem to be any editing at all.

Well, yeah. I mean, shouldn’t there be a sense of ethics? Of course. Should there be certain principles in journalism? Yes, but there aren’t. It’s kind of like the Wild West of journalism. But it’s worked in reverse. I mean, journalism came through as a very skilled craft where people would study for years and get backgrounds in law, and science, and literature. They would then be journalists and some would go to newspapers. And there was this pride of craftsmanship, and this idea of having the credibility that when your name, your byline, would go on something, it was your whole career that was basically in that byline. It carries a lot of weight.

Today it does not. Today anyone with an Internet link and an address is in business. And it’s a whole new world. And a teenager can emerge overnight and become watched by or read by millions of people. All of the rules are changed. There are not any rules anymore. And I cannot say that I think that’s bad. I mean, I have a master’s [degree] in communications. But we have to be more than our résumés. So I don’t think it’s all bad; I think it’s probably healthy. You wonder, though. Here’s what I wonder: We just had a vote that kept the war going. It will be interesting to see what the difference is between the so-called mainstream media and the blogosphere, [to] see if there is any concurrence, split, whatever.

But one of the things that occurs to me about this new period, this new era we are in with the Internet and so on, [is that] campaigns lose control. I mean, all of the campaigns [lose control], in a lot of ways, because these freelancers out there are able to speak in your behalf whether you approve or not. I mean, look at what happened with that YouTube ad with the Obama campaign.

Well, you know what, though? Hold on a minute. Every one of us, as a candidate, sets a tone. And you don’t have to be shaking hands with someone for them to pick up that tone. So it’s quite possible that someone picked up a tone of aggression toward Hillary Clinton and just decided to go after her and wouldn’t necessarily check with the campaign. Those are the kind of things that happen.

But I mean, that also happened without any tone like that coming from the campaign. It seems to me it is a comparable situation when you are dealing with 527s and independent-expenditure groups.

That’s a little bit different. I mean, 527s put targets on people’s backs. There can’t be coordination. But it’s a little bit different. What I am saying is that the dynamic between Clinton and Obama is causing people who favor both candidates to look for ways to attack the other one. And frankly, the die may be cast. You may see a dialectic of conflict that’s going to continue. I don’t think it helps either candidate. Having been involved more than 30 years ago in political conflict in Cleveland in that kind of polarized situation, it’s a politically dangerous undertaking.

Are you saying that this exchange that is going on between the two camps is going to backfire on them?

Yeah, I think they both get hurt. Absolutely. To me, there is no question about that. They both get hurt by it.

Well, is it the candidate who is ultimately responsible for seeing that it stops?

Yeah, [that’s] absolutely right. No question about it. And that’s what I said: We set a tone. And what happens is when campaigns become discussions about the other candidate, campaigns have then lost track of purpose. And I think that’s probably happening already. As soon as you get into that, it’s a dead end.

Isn’t there any danger that that kind of situation in this particular campaign could create so much noise that it makes it harder for you to get your message through?

I’ll tell you what I think is happening: I think that the risk for both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama is that the public tires of the conflict and loses interest in both of them. They ought to worry about that. How do you sustain that right into the first primaries? Where does it go? Where do you go with that? After a while, people want to know what you stand for: Where are you going to take this country, not who are you against. I don’t think it helps either of them, frankly. I mean, we have a war going on. What are they doing to end it? We’ve got 46 million people without health insurance in America. What are they going to do about that? Really, there are some matters of consequence there. And the coverage of our politics is kind of like Entertainment Tonight instead of MacNeil-Lehrer [the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer]. It’s a whole different metric. You can have Entertainment Tonight. But you know if that’s all it’s about, it’s just about personality. Then what? I mean, that might be deliberate to carry it that way. But I don’t buy that.

And I don’t think the public will tolerate that kind of exchange going on and on and on. That causes people to lose faith in candidates who get trapped in that. I would be very careful about setting in polarity with another candidate. You can challenge them. That’s what you are there to do. But when it becomes like a dialectic and it escalates, you are in trouble, you are both in trouble. I know about that. I have been in situations like that when I was mayor of Cleveland. It’s a very dangerous situation. Everybody loses in that.

Do you think the money that is pouring into campaigns now inevitably leads to more negative campaigns?

Not necessarily, but it can. I mean, what it leads to is a government that cannot function in the public interest. Think about it. Why don’t we have alternative energy right now? How can we have a for-profit health-care system? Why do arms manufacturers have such a hold on our country? Why haven’t we developed mass transit? Why is our environment so poisoned? I mean, why? Why are utility rates so high in the northeast part of the country? You start to answer all of these and you can relate every one of them to money, to money that goes into the political system. That’s why people give. They give to influence public policy. But some people help raise millions so they can have a great influence on public policy. That’s what it’s all about. We have to have public financing. If it takes a constitutional amendment, we’ll have to have public financing. And we have to outlaw these private interests from corrupting our process.

Some of the consultants we have talked to denigrate the argument about money. They say: “Well, money doesn’t buy access. Money really doesn’t buy influence. We are not going change. We are not going to act differently.”

Yeah. They are paid to say that.

They are paid to say that?

They are doing their job, they are paid to say that. If they said otherwise, they would lose their job. I mean, their job is to get access. Their job is to make sure that people who have money are led to believe they will have special access.

Do you think that, in practical terms, there is a kind of access that used to exist and result out of access? Access always exists. But the argument that a lot of these people — professional politicians, professional campaign managers, consultants — say: “Sure, they have access, but the end result isn’t there. They can’t establish that for ‘x’ thousand dollars [they] will get ‘x’ results.”

That’s probably true. I mean, we are not talking about a test that a prosecutor has to make here. But on the other hand, everyone knows that the people who help raise large amounts of money are people who have special access. That’s the way the system works. And that’s why the system is off.

I want to go back and talk about health care for a minute. In 2000 and 2004, I took a proposal for single-payer health care to the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee meetings. [It was] rejected both times because of the insurance companies’ influence. I was told outright in 2000 not to present it because of the money that insurance interests had contributed to the party.

The DNC asked you not to?

No. The Gore campaign asked me not to present it. Because of the influence that the insurance companies had on the ticket, I was asked not to do it in 2000. And I was asked the same thing by the DNC. I was asked to withhold resolutions in 2004, but I presented them anyway.

On health care as well?

Single-payer, not-for-profit health care. So here is an area where the Democratic Party, you would think, would achieve a confirmation of its purpose. Not a chance. It’s just insurance companies running the day.

Has that sort of thing happened on other things that you have attempted to put forward? Pressure from a campaign or national committee?

I remember being in a meeting with Democratic leaders in 2000, maybe 2001. When was Enron? Well, in wholesale energy markets, the price of energy was going through roof. And it was crushing people in California, in particular. Bob Filner from California tried to get our Democratic leadership to back an initiative to really start going after Enron. And some of our leaders at the time, who were from Texas, heavily discouraged any kind of action by the Democratic caucus.

Would you say that that sort of thing is commonplace?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Of course. That’s how it works.

Getting back to the debates for a second, there has been some criticism about the sponsorship of the debates. Do you have any problem with that?

Look, people are free to go or not to go as they choose. If somebody sponsors a debate, I’ll go to it.

You mentioned a few minutes ago that you don’t have to worry about people thinking for you or running your campaign. Other campaigns have really become very loaded with all kinds of consultants — not just a campaign manager, a media person, a media buyer, all of these. It’s a whole industry now.

Yeah. There is an industry.

What impact do you think the growth of that has had on politics?

It sterilizes it. It takes the heart out of it. It takes the spirit and soul out of it. It makes it like anything else. It makes it like just another business instead of an agent for transformation of this society. Because then you get business ethics in it. Then profit and loss comes in. And then just a whole different philosophy comes in.

How do you go about fundraising? Do you hire anybody to raise money for you?

I have people who make calls for me. I make calls.

A lot of campaigns pay millions of dollars to raise . . .

We have a telemarketing company that’s very progressive. We do mailings, hold fundraisers at houses, and [use] the Internet. When you go to our website, Kucinich.us, you see that we raise money that way. We raise a lot of money that way.

We were talking before about these videos that are put on by freelancers. Do you see that it could be a positive thing for you?

Sure.

Do you have anybody doing that for your campaign now?

I have got four videos this morning. I am doing videos all the time. I have a camera that I carry with me so that I have the ability to post stuff to the Internet like that. Oh, yeah. I mean, I am plugged in. We are doing that. You can check out the videos we put out. We are doing them all of the time.

You are actually doing them yourself?

Oh, yeah. Sure.

Personally?

Yeah. Actually, I have a card in the cameramen’s union. Did you know that? Local 600, IATSE [International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees]. Yep. I know how to do videos. And we do them. And we turn them out. I am comfortable with a camera. And I am comfortable in front of a camera. I am comfortable behind a camera. I know how to work it. I actually probably have an advantage over the others.

So you could be the only candidate, other than the ones who are raising $100 million-plus, who would be able to stay in the system, through the assistance system. Is that right?

That’s exactly right.

The only one?

That’s exactly right.

Why is that? Why would you be the only one?

Because my campaign has the technical skills, because I have the political skills, because I have been in politics for 40 years, because I have had probably 35 elections in that time, primaries and generals, and won 28 of them. Because I have the heart, because I don’t quit, and because I can’t be bought, nor intimidated.

But you must have some skeletal staff. What is your skeleton staff?

Oh, yeah. We have people that work the Internet. We have people that do video. We have people that do scheduling. We have a campaign manager. We have a person that helps develop our Internet.

Is your manager a paid consultant?

We pay him. Sure.

Is he a professional consultant?

No. He’s not a consultant. But we are paying him. I mean, we have a small campaign staff that we are paying.

But you don’t have one of the hired guns that . . .

I don’t need that. I don’t need it. It’s like it lacks authenticity when you have to go out and ask people to pay you to tell you what to think. I can stand on my own two feet.

Do you see any other candidate in the field who has this?

I am not paying attention to the other ones. I am paying attention to what I have to do. When I get up on the stage, I know what I need to say. I said, when I was at AFSCME [American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees], “I don’t have any strings attached.” That is true. I am an independent spirit.

Has anybody tried to get you out of the campaign? Did they ever try in 2004, besides Ted Koppel?

No one in the Democrats tried to tell me how to vote on this [the Iraq appropriations supplemental bill]. People know me. They know better. It’s called integrity.