Gephardt Adds His Hat to the Presidential Ring

Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri announced his candidacy for president Wednesday in the modest neighborhood where he grew up, offering a sweeping indictment of President Bush and promising health care for every working American.

Standing alone on a small stage at the elementary school where he was once a pupil, Gephardt, 62, acknowledged his position as a political journeyman.

“I’m not going to say what’s fashionable in our politics -- that I’m a Washington outsider, that I couldn’t find the nation’s capital on a map, that I have no experience in the highest levels of government,” said Gephardt, who is serving his 14th term in Congress. “I do, and I think experience matters. It’s what our nation needs right now.”

With that, Gephardt addressed one of the most daunting challenges his candidacy faces: the hunger many Democrats have for someone fresh. His run for the White House is Gephardt’s second. He served nearly eight years as the party’s leader in the House of Representatives, stepping aside in November. During his tenure, he tried unsuccessfully four times to win back Democratic control.

He offered an ambitious array of proposals Wednesday, capped by his call for repeal of Bush’s $1.3-trillion, 10-year tax cut to help pay for “high-quality health coverage [for] everyone who works in America.” The plan would give billions of dollars in tax credits to businesses and require them to invest the money in benefits for their employees.

He proposed creating a pension plan that would follow workers from birth to retirement; forming a national teacher corps, modeled after ROTC; launching a decade-long effort to achieve energy independence; expanding after-school programs; increasing anti-terrorism funding for police and fire departments; and working to create an international minimum wage.

“Every proposal I am making, every idea I am advancing, has a single central purpose: to revive a failing economy and give Americans the help and security they need to make the most of it, on their own,” Gephardt told roughly 500 friends and supporters, corralled in the leaky gymnasium of Mason Elementary School.

Gephardt was scathing in his assessment of Bush, even as he called the president “a good man” and reiterated his support for the administration’s Iraq policy. Peering across the gym floor into 14 television cameras, Gephardt painted a portrait of the nation as gray and gloomy as the rainy morning outside.

“President Bush has taken us right back to the broken policies of the past, the economics of debt and regret -- unaffordable tax cuts for the few, zero new jobs, surging unemployment,” Gephardt said. “I’ve got to hand it to him. Never has so much been done, in so little time, to help so few.”

He also took a swipe at Bush’s foreign policy, suggesting his go-it-alone policies have heedlessly antagonized many abroad. “We need the friendship and cooperation of our time-honored allies,” Gephardt said. “We must lead the world, instead of bullying it.”

Gephardt became the third Democrat to formally declare his candidacy, following former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut. Others waiting to officially announce their candidacies include Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio and former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois filed papers Wednesday forming exploratory committees.

Gephardt, the son of a milk-truck driver and a secretary, grew up two blocks from the site of his announcement, in a neighborhood of red-brick tract homes. He began his 30-year political career on the St. Louis Board of Aldermen and was elected to Congress in 1976. He has represented his old neighborhood and the suburbs of south St. Louis ever since.

His homespun announcement -- complete with an off-key rendition of “God Bless America” by the school choir -- was a deliberate contrast to the launch of Gephardt’s 1988 presidential bid. That event was held in a downtown rail station with a crowd of more than 1,000 people and 20 members of Congress on hand. The purpose then, according to strategists, was to establish Gephardt’s credibility as a national candidate. This time, they said, they hoped to reconnect the Washington insider with his Midwestern roots and dispel the notion, as one of them put it, that Gephardt was a creature born on one of the Sunday political talk shows.

“I’m not the political flavor of the month,” Gephardt said, working through his 45-minute speech with characteristic doggedness and little flair. “I’m not the flashiest candidate around. But the fight for working families is in my bones. It’s where I come from. It’s been my life’s work.”

From Missouri, Gephardt traveled to Iowa, which holds the first vote of the presidential campaign in January. Speaking to an audience of construction union leaders in Des Moines, Gephardt reiterated his vow to roll back Bush’s tax cuts and promised that as president he would introduce his health-care proposal during his first week in office.

“Nobody should be sitting in a hospital terrified because a loved one’s going to lose their life because they don’t have the money for the right health care,” Gephardt said. “We’re going to get health care for everybody who works in this country.”

It was no coincidence Gephardt addressed a labor audience in his first post-announcement stop, or that he traveled to Iowa to do so. Organized labor is a key Gephardt ally and, given his 1988 victory in Iowa, a strong showing in these lead-off caucuses is considered a must.

Mindful of that, Gephardt advisors strove Wednesday to tamp down those expectations. “We need to do well. We hope to do well,” said spokesman Erik Smith. “While he’s well known, that doesn’t mean it’s a cakewalk. It’s going to be competitive.”