Call Congressman Dennis Kucinich what you will: Hobbit. Keebler Elf. Leprechaun. Tinfoil-hatted flying saucer enthusiast. Fringe candidate. One thing that you can’t call him is Dennis the Menace. And you Hillary, Obama and Edwards supporters are partly to blame for that.

Dennis Kucinich is like a brand of health food cereal that you guiltily slink past in aisle four. From at least a cardiovascular standpoint, you know damned good and well that those boxes of twigs, burrs, brambles and thistles are the healthiest breakfast food you can eat. So saith all those anonymous doctors and nutritionists that we also ignore.

And no matter how much they jazz up the packaging, the cereal makers, God bless ’em, will never completely sell us on the idea of a box of twigs that doesn’t have free gifts inside, puzzles on the back, exciting promotional gimmicks or a substance that gives one an erection for at least four hours. Not even a handful of desiccated marshmallows in cute little shapes? Get that shit away from me!

Plus, we can’t get past the stigma that goodness and health carries with it like a disease. Hell, unless you soak the shit in a bowl of milk overnight, the content will rasp your gums, chip your teeth and Rotor-Rooter your esophagus on the way down and for the princely sum of over $5 a box. So, obviously, health food is an acquired taste.

But so is corruption and the Old Boy network that it inevitably engenders.

So, while we avert our eyes and skulk past Dennis Kucinich like a guilty pleasure that’s in danger of getting exposed, we head like famished lemmings to where the brand names are. We cherry-pick what the popular candidates say that we like and deliberately disregard like an inedible garnish the troubling comments.

We nod and shake our heads in unison like penguins in a zoo following a darting flashlight and say, “Well, Hillary does make a good point about fiscal responsibility…”

…while blithely ignoring the glaringly obvious fact that this self-same, carpetbagging New York “Democrat” just blew $42,000,000 defeating a joke of a challenger with the transparent intention of hanging on to a springboard Senate seat for just the next two years (That’s $21,000,000 a year to hang on to a job that pays $162,500 per annum).

We clap like cymbal chimps when Obama talks about how he wouldn’t have voted for the Iraq War resolution and paying no attention to the fact that his Wednesday morning quarterbacking in telling us how he wouldn’t have voted five years ago (remember George W. Bush telling Al Gore during a debate that it would be stupid to invade a foreign nation and impose our will on them?) isn’t germane and should not be the reason why we’d vote for him.

What we ought to concern ourselves with is what a President Obama would do after next year. And, before you retort with, “But it’s an ever-changing world. Obama won’t know what the world will be like in 2009”, allow me to remind you that the biggest problems facing us today will still be around. Like our crushing debt and deficit, the subprime lending crisis and Iraq the war will still be around, if not Iraq the nation. George W. Bush and company went to great pains to ensure all that will be dropped into the lap of the next president.

And we get a little thrill when we hear Hillary insulting Bush in faux populist language about Iraq and other things in her best scolding mother voice. But if you listen closely, you’ll note that what Hillary’s really saying is not that the Iraq invasion and occupation is a bad thing, only that it’s being managed badly. Which neatly explains why she continues to refuse to apologize for her vote for the IWR.

Kucinich, on the other hand, is telling us what we want (and, more importantly, what we need) to hear:

The necessity for a universal, single-payer health care plan, something not specifically designed to further bloat an already bloated health care and pharmaceutical industry.

Removal of all troops from Iraq within weeks of the presidential inauguration.

The repeal of NAFTA within hours of the presidential inauguration.

86ing the USA PATRIOT Act. Campaign financing and lobbyist reform.

And, of course, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment.

I’m not saying that Dennis Kucinich is showing us the way to the Promised Land. But at the very least, he’s showing us that pinprick of light at the end of the long, dark tunnel in which Bush and his cronies have buried us. It could be that he’s the Leonardo DaVinci of politicians: He can think of brilliant and necessary concepts but lacks the engineering skills to realize them. But how will we know which he is unless we ask him more substantial questions than whether or not he’d seen a UFO over Shirley MacLaine’s house?

It’s no secret that I like Mike Gravel as well as Dennis Kucinich. Gravel’s wisdom, honesty and faith in the goodness and intent of the American people is like a blast of fresh, bracing air from Juneau. But there’s something unnerving about a 76 year-old man who appears ready at any minute to hurl his podium at the first candidate who says something stupid (which, of course, is only inevitable).

Kucinich is easily young enough yet mature enough to assume the huge mantle of responsibility that comes with the presidency. His thoroughly liberal, progressive agenda, his proposals for sweeping changes may make him a target of the most hostile bipartisan Congress eager to maintain the status quo.

And when we hear about so-called Democrats doing that just that, maintaining the status quo on things like torture, Iraq and Afghanistan war funding, health care for uninsured children, etc. I keep hearing whining about “Why, O why cannot we have more progressive-minded Democrats in Congress who’ll sign on to Kucinich’s HR 333?” without once becoming even passingly familiar with the irony of such a statement.

Kucinich is good for you. Eat of him. We desperately need some political Eucharist if we’re going to finally justify our whining about Old Boy network politics corrupting and bogging down a very necessary progressive agenda that can right our ship of state. And when Kucinich takes the stage at the next debate, I don’t want to hear, “But… but (whine) the granola (winge) factor!”

Suck my dick. I don’t want to fucking hear it. You want a way out of this mess? Listen to the man and don’t waste his time and trivialize him with questions of little green men. Maybe he’s trying to write checks that he can’t cash. But if you’re going to fall for someone hook, line and sinker, why bother trusting someone who promises to extend the war in Iraq by another year or four, someone who's accepted more money from more people and corporations in the last year than Jerry Lewis in the last 40?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to pour myself a bowl of gravel, er Grape Nuts.