Cojones

Found this article in Mother Jones, describing Kucinich giving a fundraising speech at the L.A. home of actor James Cromwell. Snippet:

In the study, Dennis Kucinich calmly feeds a Los Angeles Times reporter his positions. He is five feet seven, about 135 pounds, and swaddled in a suit that looks like something grabbed off the rack at a discount store and intended for a larger man. His 56-year-old face looks boyish, his hair cropped rather than shaped. He seems a miniature candidate out of scale and out of place among the perfect bodies and faces (well, not completely out of place since Shirley MacLaine is his daughter's godmother). Finally, the wine and trays of food disappear, the crowd drifts into the rows of chairs, and Kucinich takes the podium. At first, as he says his anti-war position "arises from a vision that views the world holistically," the audience listens listlessly as the heat bakes the yard. Then suddenly Kucinich's knuckles hit the podium like a drumroll as he says he will "cause the U.S. to work toward total nuclear disarmament.... Fear has led this country to pass a law that attacks numerous provisions of the Bill of Rights. Fear is leading this country to a kind of paralysis," and now his voice grows louder and louder and overwhelms the crowd wedged in among the roses. He shouts that he wants to "call this nation to a higher calling!" And the small man in the ill-fitting suit suddenly grows large and becomes some no-neck Teamster on a loading dock exhorting the working stiffs to the cause. The wind chimes softly toll on the perfect patio behind the perfect house with all the perfect bodies listening intently. He ends his talk in eight minutes flat -- always he ends in eight minutes flat. He uses no notes, never falters. He never skips his points: bring the troops home now, cut the Defense budget by 15 percent, found a Department of Peace, withdraw from NAFTA and WTO, cancel the tax cut, fully fund health insurance, sign the Kyoto Accords and the land-mine treaty. And always, take back our country. He plays off the word "fear" as if it were a chord in a blues song. He began sounding like someone in a high-school speech class, then became a union rabble-rouser, then soared into some ghostly presence of Huey Long, and now he is walking through the crowd with the smile and grace of Phil Donahue. Their eyes say this is too good to be true, too good to ever win the nomination much less the presidency. Hector Elizondo (Chicago Hope, Tortilla Soup) confides that Kucinich can't win but "he's got big cojones." Dennis Kucinich, totally engaged, totally exact in his answers, seems somewhere else. He always seems somewhere else, some place that is hard and cold and where the roses never bloom. And he always seems alone. "Dennis has always believed in himself more than most people around him," says Tim Hagen, a Democrat who grew up in Kucinich's ward and lost the Ohio gubernatorial election in 2002. "He's been on a crusade his whole life. He's always fashioned himself as the darling of the left. You'd have to drive a stake through his heart to get him out of the business. He has a borderline messianic point of view. There's been a constant theme in his public life -- rallying against the establishment. The only avenue for him to feel he was somebody was in political life."

Even if Bush had cojones, he wouldn't know where to find them. Cojones... that's one big difference between Kucinich and everyone else in this race (except maybe for Clark).