Based on performance, is Dennis Kucinich qualified to be President?

[SaveElmer]

It is a given that the vast majority of DU'ers love his position on the issues...but it takes more than a laundry list of issue positions...one must look at the performance of the person in office.

Evaluating Kucinich as a Congressman is clearly incomplete. He has never known a Democratic majority, and with the clamp Republicans have had on the minority any evaluation of Kucinich's true effectiveness in Congress will have to wait...

His other major position was as Mayor of Cleveland...and here his performance seems less than stellar...

Some of his appointments proved bizarre...a 24 year old with 8 months experience as a stock broker was appointed finance director, and a 19 year old woman appointed as a service director..

He also appeared to have a very difficult time getting along with just about anyone else in positions of power within the city...including a memorable war with the Chief of Police and the city council...

He did prevent the privitization of CEI, which has proven to be the correct position, but it was done with such turmoil that he was nearly recalled (by 300 votes), and was defeated in the next election...

Professor Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois published a book in 1999, following the tradition of Arthur Schlesinger and his rankings of U.S. Presidents, polling historians, authors, sociologists, commuinity leaders, and urbanologists and ranked all big city American mayors from 1820 forward...

Dennis Kucinich was ranked as one of the 10 worst mayors in American history on that list alongside such luminaries as Frank Rizzo, Jane Byrne, and Sam Yorty...

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E4DC103AF931A35756C0A96F958260

Should his record as mayor be a factor in deciding how one should evaluate him for the Presidency?