DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

At the forum for Democratic presidential candidates in Carson City a few days ago, as the candidates finished the on-stage interviews with moderator George Stephanopoulos, most of them stepped into a different part of the building for a "media availability" - a press conference with waiting reporters.

As former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel was leaving his session with reporters, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich was just entering. He stopped Gravel and offered his hand and his praise for Gravel's "standing up to end that rotten war."

It was a moment that went unseen by the reporters and probably would have meant little to most of them, anyway. But there was a poignancy and power to it. There they were - once fiery young leaders who now were in the winters of their careers, the least known of the Democratic presidential candidates making probably futile races for the presidency.

Dennis Kucinich once made a battle against corporate power that shook the state of Ohio and captured the nation's attention, a reminder of the kind of economic populism that defined the Democratic Party before it became bewitched by money and power. He was mayor of Cleveland when the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company (CIE) and the city's banks combined their formidable economic muscle to try to force the city to sell its publicly owned power company.

The city council supported the corporations, but Kucinich battled them week after week, month after month. By the time the corporations were finished they put Kucinich through a recall election, forced the city into default, and used tactics that damaged the municipal power utility - but the city's voters backed Kucinich's ballot measures on keeping public power. The mayor was competitive in his re-election fight until his opponent's daughter was run down by a van and killed, submerging issues under a wave of sympathy.

In the years that followed, information emerged on the predatory conduct of CIE and the banks and Kucinich's reputation, which had suffered severely because of the turbulence of his mayoralty, was rehabilitated. He was elected to the Ohio Senate and then to the U.S. House. The Cleveland city council in 1998 honored his "courage and foresight."

Mike Gravel was a former state legislator and Alaska House speaker when he made was seemed like a quixotic race against a man who was an Alaska institution, U.S. Sen. Ernest Gruening, who had been territorial governor before becoming senator upon statehood in 1959. Gruening was also one of only two members of Congress who voted against authorizing war in Vietnam. Gravel shocked many by defeating Gruening and surprised them again by becoming just as outspoken a dove.

Gravel advocated economic populism, including restoration of the progressive nature of the federal income tax that had been undercut by decades of loopholes. He also battled the messianic view that the U.S. needs to guide the world's ways, often enforced by weapons of war or covert actions. He mounted a months-long filibuster that helped end the draft.

In 1971 newspapers were printing sections of the massive top secret Pentagon study that revealed how U.S. officials manipulated and misled the nation into war in Vietnam. One of the largest leaked collections of the Pentagon papers were in Gravel's hands. He did what even better known antiwar leaders like George McGovern would not do. He gave the papers to the public. Convening a late night meeting of his subcommittee on buildings and grounds, he read some of the more disturbing documents, becoming tearful at the misdeeds they revealed, and entered thousands of pages into the record, then distributed them to anyone who wanted them. They composed the largest available set of the Papers outside top secret archives and were later published in four volumes by Beacon Press under the title "The Pentagon Papers/Senator Gravel Edition" over the objections of the Nixon administration. A set rests on my bookshelves.

Gravel was defeated for a third term after Jerry Falwell, then at the peak of his power, intervened in a primary against him.

The man once known as Dennis the Menace is 60 now, Gravel is 76. They will likely both lose their presidential races. But if they will not make history in the presidency, that does not change the fact that they have already made a lot of history by showing the character and nerve we seldom see anymore in our presidential candidates.