A $150-a-person, black-tie version of a Bataan Death March was stumbling to an end when Dennis Kucinich, a vivid reminder that there are afterlives in American politics, saved the night.
“I knew it either would work or I would fall on my face. Since I had already flopped once in my life, I figured this might be the second,” Kucinich, Cleveland’s “boy mayor” in the late 1970s, said in a chat the next day.
The surfacing of Kucinich, now a 50-year-old freshman Democratic congressman, as a droll amateur comic came at one of the humongous dinners that bring the capital’s media and political establishments together in mind-numbing orgies of smugness and self-congratulation.
The charitable cause this evening was the Washington Press Club Foundation. The celebrity master of ceremonies was Tim Russert of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and the room was filled with senators and congressmen, lots of journalists cozying up to sources, a few lobbyists and assorted other bootlickers.
The foundation dinner, which in recent years has lasted as long as some speeches by Fidel Castro (at least the indoor ones), honors new members of Congress and asks several to attempt to humor the privileged masses.
It is proof of the inherently modest expectations that a rambling stream of consciousness by Rep. Sonny (“I Got You Babe”) Bono (R-Calif.) two years ago was greeted by the local newspaper with an overheated account that suggested its reporter had witnessed the second coming of Lenny Bruce and Alexis de Tocqueville bound into one.
Then again, some in Washington confuse Newt Gingrich with an intellectual and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) with Dennis Miller.
It was thus no surprise that mild guffaws gave way to furtive checks of wristwatches soon after everybody finished their bouquet of field greens surrounded by endive leaves, mango and smoked duck (with sesame ginger dressing); pistachio encrusted sea bass and jumbo shrimp (decorated with red pepper confetti and asparagus); and chocolate walnut torte.
First there was freshman Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), who has Bob Dole’s former seat and was supplied with a string of stinkers, including ones about President Clinton’s campaign finance mess. There was an already moth-eaten quip about “two Huangs don’t make a right,” a reference to controversial Democratic fundraiser John Huang.
Then came freshman Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), accorded early star status by bored, post-election pundits. Her sense of pacing and timing was awful, her joshing about vote fraud back home (she won a close, disputed race) fell flat.
Rep. Anne Northrup, a freshman Kentucky Republican and mother of six, was a slight improvement. But given her biggie, on how teenagers and Democrats are similar (“they are always happy spending other people’s money”), she should have been given the hook. Undeterred, she tried a Clinton fundraising witticism.
“The president invited the (Green Bay) Packers to the White House. He said, `I hope you guys don’t mind spending the evening with some Indonesian businessmen.’ “
Bah-boom.
Finally, Kucinich.
The floppy-haired Beatle look resembled that from long ago when he was an enfant terrible of American politics. He brought an easel and made fun of Gingrich’s controversial “Renewing American Civilization” courses, the heart of the speaker’s ethics violations.
“I have arrived from Cleveland to be the civilizer of Washington,” he announced, indicating that “Kucinich-brings-civilization-from-Cleve land-to-Washington” was the evening’s “operative paradigm” (pure Gingrichese).
“This is the first rule of civilization,” he declared with a flourish, flipping a page on the easel to reveal one emblazoned “POLKA.”
He had given his approval for Cleveland and Milwaukee legend Frankie Yankovic’s “Polka Flow” to be in the inaugural parade, thus “correcting the decadent drift toward the macarena.”
The second rule? He flipped another page: “BOWLING.”
He recalled a former Cleveland mayor whose wife refused an invitation to the Nixon White House because it was her bowling night. “Since then the moral power of bowling is clear.”
The final rule: “KIELBASA,” to replace the old Washington principle of “baloney.”
Kucinich had worked on his skit late that afternoon, but without much satisfaction. Then he got a call from an old friend, Arianna Huffington, the well-heeled conservative gadfly who’s married to moneybags former Rep. Michael Huffington (R-Calif.).
She came up with the idea of his bringing civilization here. Bingo. Then she gave him the phone number of comedian Al Franken, with whom she has worked on the TV show, “Politically Incorrect.” Franken advised him to keep things simple. Kucinich whipped off the final product.
He was gratified at the response, which underscored the latest turn in a serpentine career.
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The son of a Teamsters truck driver of Croatian descent and a mother of Irish ancestry, he was one of seven children raised in a Catholic home. He was elected to the Cleveland City Council in 1969 as a tyke of 23 and became
a populist, establishment-bashing mayor in 1977. Adversity came quickly.
He was in charge as the cops walked out, a brother was charged with bank robbery, the school board president was caught mooning on a highway, feuding broke out between him and the police chief, and relations with the council deteriorated. He became “Dennis the Menace.”
His Waterloo came in 1978 when Cleveland, in inherently bad fiscal shape, confronted banks unwilling to refinance $15 million in short-term debt. One insisted that, in return for the refinancing, the city had to sell the municipally owned electric company to a private utility.
Kucinich said no, and the city went bankrupt. It is only these many years later that the refusal has become a badge of courage. Customers of that city-owned utility pay less than those served by the private one, in part explaining why the City Council last fall named a building (one owned by the public utility) after him.
Mayor Kucinich survived an embarrassing recall vote but lost a re-election bid to Republican George Voinovich, now Ohio’s governor. After that loss, he fought back to win a seat on the council, but later lost a bunch of races, including for Congress, secretary of state and governor.
.He gained a seat in the state senate in 1994, again relying on his sympathetic, ethnic base on Cleveland’s West Side. He was the lone Democrat to defeat an incumbent Republican in a Republican landslide. Last year, he tried his fifth run at Congress and, despite being outspent, topped two-term incumbent Republican Martin Hoke.
When I broach his resilience, he gets back to the two mayoral years. He believes that the utility flap “smeared me for 15 years. People didn’t understand the issues. I was blamed for wrecking the city’s finances. It took 15 years before there was any measure of vindication. But, then, it became a catapult rather than a millstone.”
Watching him interrogate witnesses Friday at a hearing on the State Department’s annual human rights report, he seemed at home. And so far he has been impressed by the folks he’s met, though he finds the city “a pretty lonely place.”
“I think I can still say that after three decades of political involvement, I’m still an idealist about the potential of government to make this a better country.”
“I’m 20 years older. But the convictions are the same, the passion the same. I’ve learned more patience and tolerance. I’m 50 now.”
“But, then again,” said the onetime whiz, “I was really 70 when I left the mayor’s job.”