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Selling Kucinich short - should the media elect our president, or should we?
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Cambridge Chronicle on townonline.com

Selling Kucinich short - should the media elect our president, or should we?

By Adam Penn
Wednesday, October 1, 2003

Is it just me, or is something very curious going on in the race to choose a Democratic nominee for President? First Howard Dean, and now Wesley Clark have charged to the lead, and yet almost every Dean or Clark supporter I speak with says that he or she actually agrees more with the policies of Dennis Kucinich. Many of the articles I read in support of Dean or Clark state the same thing, that Kucinich is actually more in tune with the author's way of thinking, but that the author will support Dean or Clark anyway. The reasoning behind this is usually that the number one priority is to get Bush out of the White House, and that Kucinich is not electable.

I can't help but think that we've got a real-life case of the Emperor's New Clothes going on. Everyone says Kucinich is not electable, it seems, because that is what the media tells them. I'm the little child who has to ask the question - "but if so many Dean and Clark supporters actually prefer Kucinich, and if these two candidates can beat Bush, then wouldn't Kucinich be able to beat Bush if all those Dean and Clark supporters simply voted for Kucinich instead?"

I realize, of course, that not all Dean and Clark supporters prefer Kucinich. In fact, I'd bet that a lot of their supporters haven't even heard of Kucinich. But that's my point; the media is determining who is or isn't a viable candidate, and we're not being given a real choice to elect the one who best represents our views.

In my mind, there's no excuse for lopsided coverage. The media knows who the 10 Democratic candidates are, and it should be informing us about each and every one of them. It should be analyzing their proposed programs and giving us a sense of what policies might or might not be implemented under their respective administrations. Instead, we find ourselves doing detective work to figure out what each of the candidates really stand for; and some of the candidates' names, let alone their views, still remain barely recognizable to a majority of the public. Unfortunately, it seems democracy can indeed be bought and sold.

This media neglect is readily apparent in the whole Howard Dean phenomenon. To Dean's credit, he received a lot of early support and financing because of his own well-organized campaign efforts. As a result, the media has given him a significant amount of coverage, thus snowballing his name recognition, support and fund raising. He has gained a great deal of support among progressives largely through this media recognition.

Dennis Kucinich, on the other hand, who is a more progressive choice than Dean, has received very little recognition in the media. Why? It knows he's running. It should tell us who he is and what he stands for, and let us decide if we want to support him or not. It should tell us that Kucinich has been even more unwavering in his opposition to the Iraq war than has Dean, the supposed "anti-war" candidate. It should tell us that Kucinich proposes a plan for universal health care that would cover everyone, while Dean proposes a piecemeal plan that would still leave many Americans uninsured. It should tell us that Kucinich supports the environmental Kyoto treaty, while Dean opposes the treaty subject to stronger calls for emission reductions by developing nations (this even though the U.S. is by far the greatest contributor to, and developing nations largely victims of, such emissions). Instead, all we're really told about Kucinich is that he can't win. Some democracy we're in when the media decides for us who can or can't become our President!

I don't know about the rest of you, but when I'm buying a car, I want to buy the best car, not a lesser car from the best salesman. We need to move past the campaign rhetoric and not be swayed by levels of media recognition. We need to find out what our real choices are so that we can elect the person who best represents us and what we believe. For me, that person is Dennis Kucinich. For my fellow Cantabrigians, it may be someone else. We all agree that the number-one priority is to get Bush out, and in the general election we can all unite to support whichever candidate is opposing him. But for now, let us, not our media, decide who is or isn't electable; that's the least that we owe ourselves and our democracy.

(Adam Penn lives on Inman Street. He is co-owner of Veggie Planet restaurant in Harvard Square.)

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Updated 27 October 2003