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In a message dated 8/23/00 5:12:28 PM, NJ4Nader writes:
Harper's Magazine -- September, 2000
Cover Story: A CITIZEN IN FULL (excerpts)
Ralph Nader campaigns for president with a course in civics
By Lewis W. Lapham, Editor of Harper's Magazine
"We can have a democratic society or we can have a concentration of great
wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both."
-- Louis
Brandeis
Ralph Nader declared himself a candidate for president on February 21 in
a Washington hotel, and for the next two months the national news media
were careful to ignore the proposition. Although well-known as a zealous
consumer advocate, Nader didn't enjoy much standing as a politician.
So little was said about Nader's presidential campaign in February and
March that as late as April 10 it wasn't hard to find New York sources
supposedly well-informed (editors at Doubleday, columnists for Vogue) who
hadn't been told. They had heard that somewhere west of the Pecos River
Pat Buchanan was on the hustings for Ross Perot's troubled Reform Party,
but if in answer to a question about the November election I said that
I intended to vote for Ralph Nader, I could count on expressions of genuine
surprise.
Most of the upscale media adopted a complacent tone when they were obliged
to take notice of Nader's campaign in early May. The candidate by then
had placed his name on the ballot in fifteen states; actively in search
of votes, he was making stump speeches in Kentucky and South Carolina,
attracting endorsements from prominent celebrities (among them Willie Nelson,
Susan Sarandon, Pearl Jam, and Paul Newman), apparently being taken seriously
by the United Auto Workers union. Still not enough of a campaign to warrant
mention on the political web sites maintained by ABC, CBS, and CNN, but
certainly a curiosity deserving of the same attention paid to spotted owls
and giant pandas.
Nader's candidacy gained currency during the spring and early summer (his
acceptance in Denver of the Green Party's presidential nomination, nearly
$1 million raised in campaign contributions, his name on the ballot in
another ten states), but the official portrait in the media (that of the
harmless reformer, high-minded but faintly ridiculous) wasn't retouched
until June 30, when the New York Times promoted him to the rank of public
menace. The upgrade took the form of an impatient editorial, royalist
in sentiment and pompous in tone, reprimanding Nader for his meddling in
an election that was beyond his sphere of competence and none of his concern:
"He is engaging in a self-indulgent exercise that will
distract voters from the clear-cut choice represented
by the major-party candidates, Vice President Al Gore
and Gov. George Bush.
"It is especially distressing to see Mr. Nader flirt
with the spoiler role.
"Of course, both Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Nader have the
right to run. But given the major differences between
the prospective Democratic and Republican nominees,
there is no driving logic for third-party candidacy
this year, and the public deserves to see the major-party
candidates compete on an uncluttered playing field."
Disappointed as well as piqued, the editorialist acknowledged Nader's "legacy
as a conscience-driven crusader" and took the trouble to commend him for
championing the cause of automobile safety and having "sharpened Americans'
awareness of the flaws in their political system." Which was why it was
distressing to see a man once principled destroy his reputation with conduct
unbecoming a moralist. His irresponsible behavior threatened Al Gore's
chances in "swing states like California," and if he were a true gentleman
and a real liberal he would stay with the seat belts and leave the politics
to the professionals.
It so happened that June 30 was the same day on which I had arranged to
interview Nader in Washington, also to accompany him on his afternoon rounds
of the television talk-show circuit. I'd read the Times editorial on the
plane from New York, and when I arrived shortly before noon at Nader's
campaign headquarters on N.W. Fifteenth Street, I discovered that it had
been received as a gift of rare good fortune. The few campaign workers
present looked like graduate students -- young, idealistic, underpaid,
not the kind of people given to cutting deals with trade-association
lobbyists
or shouting into telephones -- and their response to the rebuke was less
loud or sarcastic than quietly pleased. It meant they were making progress.
The lead editorial no less, publicity that money couldn't buy, 618 words
of fatuous indignation proving Nader a candidate in fact as well as theory.
Several recent news clippings posted on the walls confirmed an uptick
of interest from syndicated columnists suddenly as worried as the Times
about the damage likely to be done to Gore, and among other signs as hopeful,
Nader's web site was receiving 20,000 visits a day; 12,000 volunteers were
setting up storefront operations in every one of the fifty states; there
was talk of a campaign bus, maybe even television commercials; some of
the national opinion polls were conceding Nader 7 percent of the prospective
November vote, as opposed to 2 percent for the far more lavishly financed
Pat Buchanan; Vogue had called with the request for an interview; so had
CNBC and Slate.
I found Nader in the front room on the third floor. He was wearing his
customary rumpled suit. The standard press description gets it right about
Nader's frugal habits and bookish manner -- sixty-six years old and never
married, he doesn't own a car, a cell phone, or a credit card -- but it
misses his candor, his modesty, and his wit. More amused than offended
by the Times editorial, he asked me if I knew who might have written it:
"You've got to love these people," Nader said. "They think the American
electoral process is a gated community."
Never in recent memory, he said, have the Democratic and Republican parties
so closely resembled each other, and if the absence of 100 million citizens
from the polls in the 1996 presidential election didn't indicate, or at
least strongly hint at, an impressive lack of respect for the threadbare
wisdoms in office (and thus "a driving logic" for a third party, or any
party at all that could reinvigorate the country's moribund political
debate),
then what would it take to prompt the editors at the Times to smuggle their
heads out of the sand? For ten years the American electorate has been voicing
its objection to "a government of the Exxons, by the General Motors, and
for the Du Ponts." The party of discontent voted for Ross Perot, elected
Jesse Ventura governor of Minnesota, made credible the candidacy of John
McCain, paraded in animal costumes through the streets of Seattle.
Several well-wishers already had telephoned that morning with the suggestion
that Nader distribute reprints of the editorial as an endorsement, on the
ground that anybody who so provoked the Times couldn't be all bad, and
when Studs Terkel called from Chicago to offer the same advice, Nader said,
"Remember that you're talking to your friend, the clutterer. Obstructing
the playing field for next autumn's Yale-Harvard game."
They talked for five minutes, then it was John Anderson on the phone, saying
that when he had run as a third-party candidate in 1980 the Times had cast
him in the same role --"spoiler," "ego-driven" nuisance, no friend of
America.
"You would think," Nader said, "that in twenty years they could come up
with some new words."
The judges on the bench of prime-time opinion say that Nader lacks charisma,
but the word admits of different interpretations, and if it can be referred
to a lively intelligence as well as a bright smile, Nader seems to me a
good deal more charismatic than David Letterman or Brad Pitt. I know of
few spectacles more entertaining than the play of a mind being put to
constructive
or imaginative use, and I like to listen to Nader talk. I never fail to
learn something new, and in Nader's idealism I find an antidote for the
cynicism that constitutes an occupational hazard on the shop floors of
the image-making industries in New York.
Accepting the Green Party nomination in Denver on June 27, Nader had
presented
his campaign as a question -- "How badly do we want a just and decent
society,
a society that raises our expectations of ourselves?" -- and in Washington
three days later he supplemented it with further commentary and explanation.
"Unlike Gush and Bore," he said, "I don't promote myself as a solution
to the nation's problems. The idea is to encourage a lot of other people
to use the tools of democratic government to take control of the assets
they hold in common -- the public lands, the public broadcast frequencies,
the public money. Whatever your issue is, whether it's racism, homophobia,
taxes, health care, urban decay, you're not going to go anywhere with it
unless you focus on the concentration of power. We have an overdeveloped
plutocracy and an underdeveloped democracy, too many private interests
commandeering the public interest for their own profit. Most Americans
don't realize how badly they're being harmed by the unchecked
commercialization
of what belongs to the commonwealth. If enough people knew what questions
to ask, we have both the ways and means to achieve better schools, a
healthier
environment, a more general distribution of decent health care."
Nader has been asking the questions for forty years. He established his
credibility as a consumer advocate in 1965 when he published Unsafe at
Any Speed, a fierce indictment of the carelessness with which General Motors
manufactured its cars. The book resulted in legislation that forced G.M.
to improve its automotive designs, and Nader went on to search out further
proofs of malfeasance almost everywhere else in corporate America, filing
investigative briefs against oil companies, banks, hospitals; publishing
another twenty books (about corporate accountability, the judiciary and
banking committees in both the Senate and the House, etc.); organizing
numerous civic-minded committees (among them the Center for the Study of
Responsive Law and the Public Interest Research Group); and bringing about,
or at least setting in train, changes for the better in the management
of the country's pension funds, classified information, and toxic wastes.
"The oligarchy," he said, never wants anyone to know what, or how much,
ordinary citizens can accomplish if they learn to use the power of their
own laws. Apathy is good for business-as-usual; so is cynicism. Convince
the kids that history is at an end, that nothing important remains to be
discovered, done, or said, and maybe they won't ask why a corporate CEO
receives a salary four hundred times greater than that of the lowest paid
worker in his own company."
The first of Nader's television appearances, a taped broadcast for CNN's
Crossfire, was scheduled for 2:00 PM, but he was slow to finish talking
to a reporter from Business Week, and in the car Theresa Amato, his campaign
manager, worried about being late.
As Nader was being ushered to his seat at the table between them, Theresa
and I found chairs against a back wall, and Novak greeted the candidate
with a condescending joke. "Well, Ralph," he said. "I see that you have
brought the whole of your bloated campaign staff."
Nader let the remark pass without comment, and while the technicians fixed
his microphone Novak turned to the teleprompter to read the opening tease.
Smoothing his vest, adjusting his tie, he puffed up his voice into the
registers of mock urgency and canned sensation, bringing his viewers the
promise of furious debate -- "Ralph Nader in the crossfire. Ralph Nader
and his third-party presidential campaign. Will it last? Will he find
money? Will he take votes from Al Gore? Is he serious? Can he win?"
The lights went briefly down, and during the lull that accompanied the
first commercial break, Novak sagged back into the posture of a bored
Washington
courtier, the Rosencrantz to Bill Press's Guildenstern (or, on alternate
days of the week, the Guildenstern to Press's Rosencrantz); it was obvious
that with respect to the questions he had just asked, his answer to all
of the above was no. Nor was he particularly interested in the interview
that he was about to conduct. Nader quite clearly wasn't going to be giving
tours of the White House or tipping anybody off to tomorrow's bombing of
Belgrade. But the show was the show, and what Novak had to sell was the
sport of bearbaiting. When the lights again came up, he instantly regained
the pose of "the citizen who cares" and began a garbled interrogation along
the lines of the morning editorial in the Times, "Are you really totally
indifferent to these two candidates?" "If you were to take away enough
votes from California to carry the state for George Bush, I think that
might elect him. Does that give you trouble sleeping?"
Nader said he could sleep. The Democratic Party had shifted its thinking
and policies so far to the right that the only difference between Bush
and Gore was the relative velocity "with which their knees hit the floor
when the big corporations knocked on the door."
Nader began to explain his reasons for saying what he'd said (i.e., with
specific reference to the Clinton Administration's record on child welfare,
medical insurance, national forests, the Glass-Steagall Act, etc., etc.),
but well before he could complete the bill of indictment it was time for
another commercial break, and as soon as the cameras returned for the second
half of the program, Novak was talking about "Ralph Nader, consumer advocate
multi-millionaire!" He had seen a newspaper report placing Nader's net
worth at $4 million, and real money in the hands of anybody to the left
of William F. Buckley struck him as prima facie evidence of hypocrisy.
Liberals were supposed to be poor; their poverty was what made them
liberals.
So, said Novak, as if peering under a pillow or a rock, you have $4 million.
Nader said the number was about right, but he went on to explain that
he lived on only a small fraction of the income and gave the bulk of it
to his several public action committees. The answer didn't satisfy Novak,
and for the next fifteen minutes, attempting to discredit Nader's claim
to the prerogatives of an idealist, he pursued the subject with questions
about how the money was invested, in what kind of stocks, and were those
companies cruel monopolies, enemies of the people, creatures of the corporate
state? Because Nader answered the quiz without embarrassment or evasion,
the effect was lost.
Twenty minutes later we were back in the car, and Nader was saying that
he thought the show had gone about as well as could be expected. He cited
the list of issues on which Gore had sold out his avowed concern for the
environment to the highest corporate bidder -- oil development in Alaska,
organic food standards, greenhouse gases, ozone-depleting chemicals, the
California redwoods.
"Critics tell me that I ought to work 'within the system,' but people 'within
the system' don't welcome new ideas. They like to talk about social change,
but when it comes to actually doing something, they remember that social
change is outrageous, un-American, and wrong. Look at the history of the
country. I don't care whether you're talking about the Revolution of 1776,
or abolitionists forcing the issue of slavery in the 1850s, about women's
suffrage, the late nineteenth-century populist revolt against the eastern
banks and railroads, the trade-union movement, Social Security, meat
inspection,
civil rights. The change invariably begins with people whom the defenders
of the status quo denounce as agitators, communists, hippies, weirdos.
And then, ten or twenty years later, after the changes have taken place,
the chamber of commerce discovers that everybody's profits have improved.
The captains of industry never seem to understand that a free democracy
is the precondition for a free market; try to turn the equation the other
way around, and you end up with an economy like the one in Indonesia."
By the time we returned to the building on N.W. Fifteenth Street three
more newspapers had called with requests for interviews, 60 Minutes had
expressed interest, and Tom Brokaw's producers had asked if it might be
possible for Tom to follow Nader into Minnesota with a camera crew. The
campaign staff was impressed, but not to the extent of sending out for
beer and paper hats. Like their candidate, they understood the political
crisis in the country not as an ideological quarrel between liberal and
conservative, Democrat and Republican, but rather as an argument between
the people who would continue the American experiment and those who believe
the experiment has gone far enough, between the inertia conducive to
acceptance
of things-as-they-are and the energy inherent in the hope of
things-as-they-might-become.
To the delegates at the Green Party convention in Colorado, Nader had defined
his politics as "first and foremost a movement of thought, not of belief,"
and later in the afternoon, riding in a taxi to the PBS studio in Arlington,
Virginia, I asked him whether politics so defined didn't set him up for
a good deal of disappointment. "Maybe it would if I were into mood changes,
he said.
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer allotted Nader ten minutes at the top of the
broadcast and didn't bother with the theatrics of false confrontation.
Lehrer asked straightforward questions, but they were so tired and
perfunctory
that it was apparent he didn't understand Nader's critique of the sham
democracy. Nor, like Novak and Press, did he seem to know what was meant
by the phrase "economic injustice." Where was the problem, and why the
complaint? Here we all were in the most prosperous society ever to see
the light of heaven, real estate prices going nowhere but up, the ever
expanding middle class floating in suburban swimming pools on the buoyant
mattress of the Nasdaq, and why were we talking about poor people?
In the time allowed, the conversation couldn't become anything other than
an exchange of platitudes, but it permitted at least one memorable question
and answer. Lehrer was asking Nader what he would do in and with the office
of the presidency in the unlikely event that he won the election. How
could Nader possibly appreciate the complex workings of all those vast
and complex government agencies in Washington? Nader paused for a moment,
as if he couldn't quite believe what he'd just heard. Then he laughed
and said, "Well, I don't know anybody who has sued more of them."
The station provided another taxi to return Nader to Washington, and he
offered to drop me at the airport if I still had policy issues that I wished
to raise. Once again we found ourselves stalled in traffic, but over the
course of the next half hour I mostly asked less lofty questions about
Winona LaDuke, the vice presidential candidate on the Green Party ticket
-- an Indian woman, a White Earth Anishinaabeg from Minnesota, Harvard
educated, an author, a social activist who shared his views on foreign
trade and human rights. He'd met her a few years ago and had been impressed
by her integrity and strength of character; he knew of no finer person
in the United States.
As my plane to New York climbed into a steep turn over the Potomac, the
sight of the Lincoln Memorial in the lovely evening light reminded me that
a democratic republic knows no higher rank or title than that of citizen.
The media prefer celebrities, who come and go like soup cans or summer
moths, unthreatening and ephemeral. Cheaply produced and easily replaced,
made to the measure of our own everyday weakness, celebrities ask nothing
of us except a round of applause. Like President Clinton, they let us
off the hook. Nader sets the hook on the sharp points of obligation to
a higher regard for our own intelligence and self-worth. Less interested
in the counting of votes than in the lesson of freedom, he mounts his
campaign
on the proposition that the party of things-as-they-are depends for its
continued survival on the party of things-as-they-might-become.