A long-shot candidate has his media moment

"That's him!" says a Today show producer. All eyes focus on an old-fashioned Checker cab coming up Broadway, an odd relic in the teeming New York City traffic. It's a bright Thursday afternoon and dozens of sign-carrying supporters are gathered at the main entrance of Columbia University. They begin clapping and whooping for their new favorite presidential candidate—a 77-year-old most of them hadn't even heard of a week before.

"All I know is that if I can get up to double digits, it's Katie bar the door!"NBC has taken an interest as well. A crew is on hand to film the rally for the network's morning show and its 5.3 million viewers. "Wait! Is he driving?" wonders one of the supporters. As the Checker gets closer, the white-haired man behind the wheel waves at the crowd and smiles a broad politician's smile. He is driving. Newsweek columnist and occasional Today correspondent Jonathan Alter is riding in the back seat, looking a little green. It turns out the two got in a fender bender on the way uptown. The Checker's brakes went out on Madison Avenue, and Gravel rear-ended another cabbie. But, with no injuries and after consulting a mechanic, they'd pushed on.

Five decades ago the candidate was a real-life New York cab driver working at night to put himself through Columbia, but it hardly shows now. For his arrival shot he's supposed to pull onto the sidewalk in front of the school's iron gates. It ends up requiring a couple of tries and temporarily blocks the flow of traffic on Broadway. If anything, the crowd only becomes more enthusiastic and swarms him when he gets out of the car. Driving skills are apparently irrelevant in a dark-horse populist.

The wave of popularity that Mike Gravel, an ex-senator from Alaska, has ridden out of the first Democratic presidential debate, held on April 26 in South Carolina, has been remarkable and unexpected. When the cameras started rolling, he was the one utterly obscure candidate of the eight on stage, having kept his distance from politics since 1980 and (in his own words) "hiding under a rock" for much of the interim. Ninety minutes later, he was a sensation. He'd been smashing: hilarious and provocative in just the right balance. (For a highlight reel, click here.) "You people scare me!" he'd hollered at his rivals, calling out Barack Obama in particular for seeming to consider the option of using nuclear weapons against Iran. He'd made a slam dunk comment about Joe Biden's arrogance and decried the military-industrial complex as a cancer on American culture. In his eyes, the war on terror was as bogus and illogical as the war on drugs. Blogs and MySpace pages were instantly abuzz with approving messages. Producers from the Situation Room, Hardball, and The Colbert Report came calling. And, as final proof that his appeal was not limited to online devotees of fringe politics, Today, the most-watched news show in America and staple of white-bread middle-brow programming, had decided to profile him. A question looms for Gravel, though: As much as the media mob gobbles up his antics, will it tolerate a real political bombthrower when he's no longer a novelty?

After getting out of the cab and shaking everyone's hand, former Senator Gravel leads the rally over to the steps of Low Library in the middle of campus, where he gives them a sneak preview of his plan to end the Iraq war. While congressional Democrats claim they're trying to end it, Gravel dismisses their efforts as worthless. "Pelosi introduced a resolution," he explains. "You know what a resolution is? That's like taking a poll. We need to pass a law!" The producers have carefully arranged the students on the steps so that they fill the frame in front of him, and a boom mic hovers behind him as he talks. He's wearing a pastel silk shirt, slacks, and a pair of black shoes with Velcro straps—a style concession for someone at an age where finger dexterity is not what it once was.

Despite his advanced years, the ex-senator doesn't lack for boldness. The law he proposes to end the war would make it a felony for the president to keep troops in Iraq after a 60-day withdrawal period. He envisions calling for a daily vote in Congress in a multi-month campaign until enough Republicans wither under the political pressure to override the inevitable veto—and "they will, because politicians generally are gutless." In addition to ending the war, the law would also prove that there is a new sheriff in town in American politics. "The sooner we put some of our leaders in jail for what they do to the people, the sooner we stop [them] from doing [those things]," he says. "Now they break the law wantonly." He announces that he is working on setting up a meeting with Pelosi's people to discuss the option.

The Today producer seems less interested in the plan to criminalize the president's conduct than in getting some footage of the candidate interacting with the students. "Let's move on," he says.

One young man raises his hand and begins by pronouncing Gravel's name like the word for loose fragments of rock. "Gra-VEL!" the candidate corrects him forcefully, with a wide smile and an inflection that reveals his French-Canadian heritage. The student nods and continues, "Who would make the most formidable Republican opponent?"

"I'd love to get my hands on any one of 'em!" the candidate booms. He makes a faint throttling gesture. "I'll eat 'em alive! They're warmongers!" The students clap, and after another softball question the mini-media event is over.

It's no coincidence that Mike Gravel has chosen this moment to re-emerge onto the political scene. He made his name during the Vietnam War era as a maverick willing to use all the parliamentary tools available to him as a U.S. senator to do battle against Richard Nixon and an unpopular war. His five-month filibuster in the early '70s led to the end of the military draft. (That, in turn, helped end the war.) He says the only time since his 1980 electoral defeat that he missed being in the Senate was when the body gave Bush the power to invade Iraq in October 2002. "I wish like hell I'd been there," he tells Radar. "I'd have filibustered that thing till hell froze over." So why didn't any sitting senators try that? "When you filibuster, you piss everyone off," he says. "But, truthfully, none of them showed any guts at all."

"There's always someone like you," Alter remarks. "Last time it was Sharpton"In a larger sense though, the quagmire in Iraq is just more evidence that the U.S. is being run into the ground by its corporate elite, argues Gravel, most notably those in the military-industrial complex. Given that these forces already own Congress, the only hope, he believes, is a sweeping change to the Constitution to allow America's 300 million citizens to effectively become their own legislature. No more lobbyists. No more clubby Washington insiders—just an information-age population that governs itself and passes its own laws. "My plan would bring the people in as a check on power that could not be voided," he says.

His presidential candidacy, in fact, began as a quixotic attempt to bring attention to this radical plan, which he calls the National Initiative for Democracy, but the reception from the South Carolina debate has convinced him that he truly stands a chance to win. That confidence now pervades everything he does. He will tell hard truths and thumb his nose at wimpy political orthodoxies, believing these things will carry him to a stunning victory.

Beaming after the Columbia event, Gravel walks with Alter to a nearby Cuban restaurant for a late lunch. On the way they encounter a gray-haired gentleman in owlish glasses. Alter greets him very respectfully. "This is Tom Edsall," he says. Edsall was a senior political writer for the Washington Post for 25 years. He retired from the paper in 2006 and now writes for the New Republic and teaches at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Gravel smiles broadly and says, "Hey, can you straighten out David Broder?" Broder, an influential columnist at the Post and the unofficial godfather of the D.C. press corps, has been a target of much criticism from liberal blogs for seeming to provide political cover for Bush on Iraq, even with a majority of Americans now opposing the war. "He doesn't believe in the power of the people!" Gravel says. Edsall blinks and looks perplexed. "David Broder is the voice of the people," he replies matter-of-factly. Gravel starts to smile, assuming Edsall is making an absurdist joke. But Edsall is not joking. The two men look at each other in awkward silence over a great gulf of unshared beliefs, then Gravel chuckles and walks ahead into the restaurant.

Over a lunch of chips and salsa ("no jalapeños") and a Bud Light draft, the candidate discusses his recent media blitz. Alter, wearing a sharp blazer over an open collared shirt, is sitting across from him eating a grilled chicken salad.

"All I know is that if I can get up to double digits, it's Katie bar the door!" He claps his hands together and smiles a Chosen One smile. He's already counting the media, including Alter, as part of his team. "It's people like you who take an interest—and all I gotta do is keep plugging along," he says happily. "Everyone does their thing! I just happen to be the cutting edge of the sword."

Alter knits his brow. He seems to want to avoid any misunderstandings. After all, if Gravel's enough of a candidate to get attention from the major media, then he needs to see what his role is and exactly how to play it. In a careful but purposeful tone, speaking explicitly "as a media guy," the pundit explains that as long as Gravel can "surprise people" with "one liners," the press will pay attention. If, however, he starts to "sound like a broken record," or allows his rhetoric to get "old" as Dennis Kucinich's has, then he's done for in the media sphere. "There's always someone like you," he remarks. "Last time it was Sharpton."

Gravel takes a swig of beer. He doesn't look pleased with the analysis. He says that what he displayed in the debate was merely the "tip of the iceberg."

Alter's not done though. From a media insider's perspective, Gravel's hard knocks on his fellow candidates are ill-conceived. "Right now the Democrats, unlike the Republicans, are very happy with their field," Alter says. "They don't dislike anybody. There's a school of thought that says it's a bad strategy to attack any of the other candidates personally."

"I don't personalize it," Gravel replies. "But if there's something wrong with attacking people on the issues, then there's something wrong with our democracy."

"Something like, 'You people scare me'—where does that fit in?"

"You tell me," Gravel fires back. "If you're prepared to use nukes against Iran when they haven't done anything to us—no threat to us—that could trigger a third world war."

Alter replies that it's generally considered imprudent for a president to take any option off the table, including the use of nuclear weapons.

"If there's something wrong with attacking people on the issues, then there's something wrong with our democracy""I will! I don't understand it. They're pointing to Iran and saying, 'By God, those people are dangerous.' Christ, we're dangerous! You're very familiar, I'm sure, with the neo-con plan. It was in writing a few years before Bush even got elected: first Iraq, Iran, Syria, then Saudi Arabia," says Gravel, a reference to a 1996 paper entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, by Richard Perle and several other prominent neo-cons. "Wolfowitz and Perle and all those guys—they're crazy as loons! Not one of 'em has even seen a gun fired in anger. Dammit, it just galls me no end! Why should Jessica Lynch go over there and get all shot up—why not have Bush's daughters do it?"

While Gravel says this, the pundit looks down impassively into his salad as though peering into a bottomless pool. "I need to get going," he announces. One-liners about sending Barbara and Jenna off to get shot at are going to be a bit too pungent for the gatekeepers of mainstream media culture.

And the Today show segment probably won't shed any light on whether Gravel's media honeymoon will last—either as a curiosity or, flocked by legions of flying pigs, a contender. "It's going to be a typical hokey piece," Alter tells Gravel. Viewers will likely learn more about the candidate's days as a cab driver than about his ambition to re-make American democracy.

For the moment, though, Gravel's quest seems to have some life. While CNN and its cosponsors hadn't planned on inviting him to the next Democratic debate—to be held next month in New Hampshire—a deluge of requests from viewers caused them to change their minds.