BTP generally stays away from commenting directly on political contests, but today's NYT column by Gail Collins does warrant mention. The main point of the column is that Representative Dennis Kucinich, who is running for the Democratic Presidential nomination, is wrong to complain about efforts by John Edwards and Hillary Clinton to exclude him (and other "miinor" candidates) from future debates. The basic argument in the column is that no one wants to hear what Kucinich has to say. Of course one of the main things that Kucinich has to say is that the war in Iraq was a terrible mistake and that the country should withdraw its troops as soon as they can be safely loaded onto planes and brought home. Unlike two of the three "major" candidates, Kucinich recognized that the war was a bad idea back in 2002 and was one of the leaders of the congressional opposition at the time. In fact, Senators Clinton, Edwards, and the rest owe the fact that they had the opportunity to vote for the Iraq war in 2002 to Representative Kucinich. He led a contingent in Congress who insisted that the authorization for the war in Afghanistan in 2001 be restricted to Afghanistan. President Bush had requested a blank check that would have sanctioned any future military action in the War Against Terrorism. Given the polls, it's not obvious that the country does not want to hear what Kucinich has to say on this topic, although the other candidates may not want the country to hear what Kucinich has to say on the topic. But the immediate issue that Kucinich was addressing that seemed to prompt the calls for exclusion was his proposal for a universal Medicare system. Kucinich is the only candidate to support a universal Medicare system. It is not clear that the public does not want to hear about a universal Medicare system, many polls have shown considerable support for the idea. It is clear that reporters do not like to talk about plans for a universal Medicare system. For example in its coverage of a presidential forum devoted to health care held in March, the NYT insisted that Edwards was the only candidate who had a detailed health care proposal, even though Kucinich's plan was spelled out in detail right on his website (see BTP, March 25th). When covering the 2004 election, in which Kucinich also ran supporting universal Medicare, both the NYT and Post seemed to go to great lengths to ignore this proposal. For example, charts detailing the candidates' proposals told readers that Kucinch had not explained how he would finance his plan, a fact that any reporter who visited Kucinch's website would immediately recognize as untrue. As a practical matter, a universal Medicare program is a longshot primarily because of the enormous power of the interests who would be harmed (first and foremost the insurance and pharmaceutical industries). By virtue of the fact that his campaign threatens these and other powerful interests, Dennis Kucinich is very much a longshot for the presidency. In horserace coverage of the campaign (which dwarfs the coverage of the issues), it is understandable that Kucinich would be overlooked. But there is something really crass about a columnist using the enormous megaphone of the NYT oped page to belittle a person for trying to educate the public about ideas that the media have largely buried. Kucinich's efforts may prove futile, but he no more needs to apologize for trying to interject his health care plan into the presidential debate than he does for having tried to stop the war back in 2002.
--Dean Baker
