KUCINICH - As a young peacenik.

In the press toward the 2006 congressional elections, Democratic contenders couldn't talk enough about impeachable offenses committed by the Bush administration in the holy pursuit of oil and influence. The lies. The wire-tapping. The torture. Impeachment hearings, goddamnit! Oversight!

But look at them now. These days, with the White House within reach (two out of three ain't bad!) and a majority of Americans shooting the collective finger at the Bush camp, those same Democrats have once again let honorary chairman of his own Department of Peace, Cleveland Congressman Dennis Kucinich, carry the heaviest load.

All of them still decry the deception and the perils of unnecessary war, and yet they're angling this week to approve another $96 billion in war funding for a war that's cost more than 3,400 American and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, not to mention the $429 billion in tax dollars that could have instituted universal health care. Bush just vetoed a war spending bill with a timeline for withdrawal. Now, he's set to concede to benchmarks instead, one of which is a provision to privatize Iraq's oil supply. Sigh.

"We're still trying," said new Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Avon late last week as the House was preparing to approve the new spending plan. "The president is the commander-in-chief. He digs in, and we've just gotta keep pushing him."

But not push him out.

And so there Kucinich was, still boyish despite his 60 years, standing on the stage at South Carolina State University, just two days after he'd introduced his impeachment resolution without a single co-sponsor, itching to present his case for why Public President Bush and Private President Cheney deserve the boot. When moderator Brian Williams got around to asking the eight Democratic hopefuls at this, their first of many presidential debates, who supported Kucinich's HR333, only Kucinich raised his hand. So he whipped out the tiny Constitution he keeps in his pocket and let loose with a call to arms.

"We've spent a lot of time talking about Iraq here tonight and America's role in the world," he declared. "This country was taken into war based on lies about weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda's role with respect to Iraq, which there wasn't one at the time we went in. I want to state that Mr. Cheney must be held accountable. He is already ginning up a cause for war against Iran. Now, we have to stand for this Constitution, we have to protect and defend this Constitution. And this vice president has violated this Constitution. So I think that while my friends on the stage may not be ready to take this stand, the American people should know that there's at least one person running for president who wants to reconnect America with its goodness, with its greatness, with its highest principles, which currently are not being reflected by those who are in the White House."

Silly Dennis. War is for grown-ups. A few weeks later, Saturday Night Live's lilliputian Amy Poehler made the perfect Kucinich in the show's 2008 Fringe Candidates Debate, which also included representatives of the Dance Party and NAMBLA. Spock ears turned giggle into belly laugh.

BUT IS KUCINICH really on the fringes on this one? Many Americans seem to be on his side.

A Newsweek poll early this month put Bush's approval rating at 28 percent, the lowest level in a generation. Cheney's is lower. Regarding impeachment, oddly, all the major polling organizations have placed a moratorium on asking about it specifically for nearly a year. Still, the momentum up to that point appears to point to support.

In fall 2005, a nonpartisan Ipsos poll found that 50 percent, compared to 44 percent, of Americans wanted Congress to consider impeaching Bush if he lied about Iraq. This was 72 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of independents and 20 percent of Republicans. There's more: A nonpartisan Zogby poll in early 2006 found that 52 percent of Americans, compared to 43 percent, wanted impeachment if Bush wiretapped Americans without a judge's approval, which he's admitted to doing.

These days, the questioning is more subtle. A CNN poll in January had 63 percent of 1,000 respondents agreeing that they can't trust the Bush administration; 56 percent said they wished the Bush reign was over now.

"The war is wrong," says Michael McPhearson, executive director of Veterans for Peace. "War crimes have taken place, and we believe the president and vice president have lied to the nation. And so, if we're not going to impeach them for all this, then under what circumstances can we?"

But despite overwhelming Democratic malaise, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would ascend to the throne if Kucinich's plan to impeach Cheney and then Bush succeeds, maintains that impeachment is for amateurs.

"Speaker Pelosi says it's off the table," says her spokesman, Nadim Elshami, "and she's focusing on a united caucus behind policy that brings a responsible end to the war in Iraq." But couldn't both be done? "I think that statement stands for itself," he says.

Senator Brown says much is at stake. "There are more important things than impeaching the vice president. That's ending the war and dealing with health-care issues and jobs issues. I'm not thinking about the politics of it. We have a limited amount of time and a certain amount of energy and it should be spent on getting a different trade policy, on [improving] No Child Left Behind, on raising the minimum wage, things like that."

To support Kucinich's three articles of impeachment — charging that Cheney manipulated America into thinking Iraq's weapons program was more evolved than it was, contrived a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and has threatened war on Iran in violation of UN charter — would be a risk for Democrats now that the White House is in reach, says David Cohen, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Akron and a fellow at UA's Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.

"One of Speaker Pelosi's responsibilities is to ensure that Democrats stay in power as long as possible," he says. "There's an old saying in Congress that you have to save your seat before you save the world. You have a lot of people angry about the war. And most Democrats, in a perfect world, would like to end it tomorrow. But in the practical world of politics, it's an impossibility."

But having Kucinich in charge of the effort isn't helping either, he adds. "He doesn't have a lot of political capital within the Beltway, and he's also running for president, which takes away from his power of persuasion."

Others feel even more is at play, like Greg Coleridge, economic justice and empowerment program director for Northeast Ohio's American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization. Many Democrats are beholden to many of the same influences that Republicans are, he says, and many voted to authorize the current war in Iraq along with Republicans.

"They'd rather not bring up this issue because to do so is an invitation to look into the mirror," he says. "By that I mean it brings up uncomfortable questions about why they didn't challenge the president earlier about these issues that they say now he should be impeached for. Congress seeks two fundamental powers: One is to declare war, and two, it's the power of purse. And this new Congress hasn't done a good job yet on either score."

Cheney's painting the whole thing to compliment that perspective. A White House press officer forwarded calls about the impeachment effort to the Republican National Committee. Cheerily named RNC spokeswoman Summer Johnson implies that Kucinich is doing all this to outdo his opponents: "With Senators Clinton and Obama continuing to co-opt his positions, it seems Kucinich has to go farther and farther to the absurd to get attention."

AND SO THE EFFORT sprouts like weeds in the cracks of America's resolve.

Within weeks, Kucinich had just three co-sponsors: William Lacy Clay Jr. of St. Louis, Jan Schakowsky of Chicago and Albert Wynn of Washington, DC's suburbs. But nearly 60 municipalities from Detroit to San Francisco, as well as the Vermont Senate, passed parallel resolutions in that time to support impeachment. Oberlin became the first municipality in Ohio to pass one a few weeks ago.

"The arrogant abuse of power and the complete disregard for the truth needs to stop," Rep. Clay says to explain his participation.

Until the Democratic Congress came aboard, 21-term U.S. Rep. John Conyers of Detroit, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was perhaps the loudest voice for impeachment hearings to take place. He even commissioned his own report, titled "The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution and Coverups in the Iraq War." But now as chairman of the House Judicial Committee, he's aiming for a more constructive, less dangerous goal.

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, he explained that to seek impeachment now would be petty: "It was House Republicans who took power in 1995 with immediate plans to undermine President Bill Clinton by any means necessary, and they did so in the most autocratic, partisan and destructive ways imaginable. If there is any lesson from those "revolutionaries,' it is that partisan vendettas ultimately provoke a public backlash and are never viewed as legitimate."

And so it was his wife, Detroit Council President Pro Tempore Monica Conyers, that led her members to pass a unanimous impeachment resolution instead.

"The Democratic party has gotten too sophisticated and elitist and out of touch with mainstream America," says Sam Riddle, Monica Conyers' spokesman, "What the Detroit council is doing is more in touch with what America wants us to do. Mrs. Conyers feels like not one more American needs to die for the Bush lie, and one way to stop that is immediately embark on the impeachment process."

THE LATEST OUTRAGE in Kucinich's eyes: a benchmark requested by Bush/Cheney to privatize Iraq's oil supply. In a diatribe, he called this "a grand deception."

"Congress prepares to continue to fund the war while the White House crafts a bipartisan consensus to force Iraq to show "progress,' meaning Iraq gives up control of its oil," he said recently. "This war will never end if Iraqis believe we are trying to steal their oil and, given the substance of the Hydrocarbon Act, how could they believe anything else?"

He's also recently voted against an amendment to the war spending plan that would raise the minimum wage. He supports the principle, just not the timing: "It tells American workers that the only way they will get an increase in wages is to continue to support funding the war which is taking the lives of their sons and daughters. First blood for oil. Now a minimum wage for maximum blood."

But still, no widespread outrage, and only condescending coverage of Kucinich's words (maybe that's why we couldn't get an interview for this story?). He's short and that's funny and we laugh Š and his words float up, out and away like bubbles. And pop. Gone.

"In many cases, [Dennis Kucinich] tells the truth," Coleridge says, "which is not something that's very normal inside the Beltway. So rather than deal with the uncomfortable feeling that comes with dealing with these ideas, most people simply belittle the guy."

TALK TO PEOPLE in the peace movement, and Kucinich's three impeachment articles aren't a complete indictment. Here's the other offenses many say justify an article or two more: Cheney's defiance of congressional inquiries into his secret energy task force meetings; refusal to release Reagan's presidential papers; the ignoring of 9/11 warning signs; domestic spying; torture authorization; the leak of a CIA agent's identity for political revenge.

So much to fathom that apathy, disillusionment, cynicism disperse their lethal fumes.

In the buildup to the Iraq war, Coleridge says protests were pretty vibrant. A gathering of 1,800 marched from Trinity Commons to Public Square in a world-wide day of protest that drew millions. That number has dwindled in recent rallies. The lack of a draft has something to do with it, he thinks, as well as the absence of other social causes like civil and gender rights movements to coincide with the general malaise over the war.

But an overarching truth lies, Coleridge believes, in an animated interview of Canadian labor leader Tommy Davidson called Mouseland. A condensed version: The people are mice and the leaders are cats. When upset with the black-cat leader, the mice get together and throw their support behind a new voice for change, maybe a white cat or a striped one. One day, a mouse proposes electing a mouse like them. Cries of "Communist!" ring out.

It's a frustrating reality for many to bear.

"A lot of people are very disappointed; others are outraged," Coleridge says. "They feel that these public officials, Democrats in particular, have sold out."

But remember those weeds. They keep popping up. McPhearson, Veterans for Peace's leader, four other veterans and the father of an acting service member, sat down and refused to leave the office of Democratic Congressman Russ Carnahan last month. At the end of the workday, he and another man were arrested and charged with trespassing.

"The reality is," McPhearson says, "millions of Americans think the same thing: that this whole thing is wrong. But the question is whether they're willing to put in the sweat to make something happen. Unfortunately, it seems most people aren't."

UA's Cohen says it apparently takes a lot more than lies and death and torture and wiretapping of citizens to wrest the bulk of today's America from the sports pages or the latest Anna Nicole custody update, and that's allowed a lot of potentially underhanded offenses to occur in their name.

"To a certain extent, it's our fault. The American public claims it wants substance, when really the American public wants fluff."

And cheaper gas. 

IT'S A QUIET DAY at Peace House. The Quaker home of Coleridge's group is nestled comfortably among Case Western Reserve buildings and the Western Reserve Historical Society in a giant house shaded by tall, fat trees.

On the back stoop, Vicky Knight, a member of the group since 1979, is offering a lunch of organic muffins from the Food Co-op to two summer interns, Willoughby 17-year-old Aileen Byrne and 26-year-old area anarchist and Case engineering alum Ian Charnas. The two are on their way to the computer lab for Charnas to continue Byrne's lessons on Web design. They acknowledge how the movement for peace seems like a shadow of its former self.

"Maybe since the whole point is the peaceful approach, outrage would counter those ideals," Byrne opined.

"Most people are depressed; they feel like they can't do anything," adds Charnas.

A lot has surely changed since Knight joined the fight in the '60s. For her, the image of what war can do came from her time in the '70s counseling injured Vietnam vets at the Cleveland VA hospital.

Knight's faith today doesn't let her mourn a movement spurned. It tells her that a new movement is coming: "The people are declaring peace right now. And it's not just war they're against, it's corporate rule. That's what people are waking up to. People are taking back the commons. It's what I believe. North America's been slow, but it's waking up."

Art Dorland, a 64-year-old local member of Veterans for Peace, admits it took him a while to snap out of his unquestioning acquiescence. He signed up to serve in the Navy during Vietnam and didn't start to question the war until his own father, a WWI vet and, at the time, local post commander of the VFW, sent him a letter about how he didn't like what was going on. Dorland claims he saw a napalm strike from the air, something "I didn't want my name on." When he got home, he joined his first anti-war veterans' group.

In 2000 and 2002, he traveled to Fallujah, Iraq as part of the VFP's Iraqi Water Project, which provides water purification systems in towns that have been cut from the country's power grid by war or sanctions. He was startled by the hardships he saw forced on an entire nation to punish a man who lived in a succession of palaces.

"We destroyed that country for years before we invaded them," he insists during a recent lunch at Tommy's in Coventry. "So this was one way I could pay personal reparations for a war my government will never pay reparations for, to express some regret that my country will never express."

The Fallujah residents were welcoming, inquisitive, when Dorland was there. He's heard things are much different these days.

But who cares about all that? Did you hear Dennis Kucinich's a vegan? Yep, pretty un-American. And that British wife of his? So pretty. A full head taller than the little runt. And she's got her tongue pierced, too. Weirdo hippies. Just what are they gonna try next?

"We're this TV-dominated culture," Dorland says. "Image is everything. Maybe if Dennis had a musical talent, like he played the trumpet, and he went on American Idol, maybe people would take him seriously then, maybe then they would listen."