Barring a surprise carpetbagging move to Washington State, this coming January will mark the end of Dennis Kucinich’s time in the House of Representatives. In all, Kucinich will have served eight terms. That’s sixteen years. During that time, unless he suddenly goes on a productive streak over the next few months, he will have passed a grand total of four of the bills for which he was the original sponsor.
When Kucinich lost a primary fight against his fellow Ohio Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur on Tuesday (the two incumbents were pitted against each other due to redistricting), liberals lost one of their favorite elected officials, and the press lost one of its favorite sources of comic relief. But Congress did not lose a leader.
I made this same basic point about Kucinich in March of 2010. At the time, he’d only succeeded in passing three of the bills he sponsored. Those three were, in chronological order:
In the two years since then, Kucinich has gotten one more bill passed. It named another post-office building in Cleveland.
Kucinich’s supporters will point out that he advocated for much more than he got passed. He opposed the war in Iraq, he pushed for single-payer health care, he introduced articles of impeachment for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (and mused about impeachment for Barack Obama), and so on. They’ll be right. But so what? For all of his advocacy for liberal issues, Kucinich got almost nothing accomplished. He’s one of those legislators who becomes a favorite of the base—this happens on both sides; look at Michele Bachmann—by talking a lot while doing very little. Effective legislators build coalitions, they work to persuade their colleagues, they even compromise, if that’s what’s necessary to get legislation passed (or blocked, if that’s the goal). Not Kucinich. Liberals may miss him, briefly, but they’ll forget him soon enough. After all, he left nothing to remember him by.
Photograph by Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call.
