Dennis Kucinich, king of spin: how Dennis Kucinich remade himself from race-baiting bomb-thrower to liberal sweetheart. As a pro-Obama-or-Edwards progressive and former resident of Cleveland, I found this article really interesting, though it's quite a smearjob and I'm sure I'd be pretty unhappy about it if it had been launched against one of my preferred candidates.
"If you are mayor, you have to do things," says Mike Roberts, The Plain Dealer's former city editor. "There was nothing that he did of any success, unless it was self-serving."
City dwellers who could afford to flee did so in droves. Everyone else was holding on for dear life. "The town had a nervous breakdown during [Kucinich's] mayoralty," Larkin says. "He wore everybody out."
Yet almost 30 years later, Kucinich has managed to recast this period as his greatest triumph. In the revised telling, this isn't a story of a mayor who hurled the city into chaos with startling swiftness. It's a rewritten David and Goliath tale, with Kucinich playing the role as the only man with the cojones to stand up to corruption and nefarious corporations. His presidential campaign paints a man of sturdy principles, unsinkable optimism, and untainted liberal bona fides — a mythology now being regurgitated by everyone from supporters to the national media.
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