The Party of Me
By
Seeing Ralph Nader’s unrequited letters of self–love, one might be tempted to think that he’s merely a bitter old man. Sadly, this kind of thing goes back a long way:
The Jimmy Carter presidency only saw a heightening of Nader’s schismatic tendencies. “I want access. I want to be able to see [Carter] and talk to him. I expected to be consulted,” he told The New York Times. That Carter filled his administration with former Naderites didn’t help. Less than a year after Carter put former Nader deputy Joan Claybrook in charge of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Nader denounced her, demanding she resign for implementing an air-bag regulation with “an unheard of lead time provision.” In 1980, Nader told Rolling Stone, “In the last year we’ve seen the ‘corporatization’ of Jimmy Carter. Whereas he was impotent and kind of pathetic the first year and a half, he’s now surrendered. … The two-party system, by all criteria, is bankrupt–they have nothing of any significance to offer the voters, so a lot of voters say why should they go and vote for Tweedledum and Tweedledee.” (Liberals today who anguish over Nader’s insistence that no important differences exist between the two parties should note that this belief dates back more than two decades.) In the summer of 1980, Jonathan Alter (now a Newsweek columnist) worked on Nader’s voting guide for the presidential election. Alter came away amazed by Nader’s fury at Carter. “He didn’t seem overly distressed at the idea of Ronald Reagan becoming president,” Alter later told Martin. As Nader addressed a gathering of supporters in 1981, according to The Washington Post, “Reagan isgoing to breed the biggest resurgence in nonpartisan citizen activism in history.”
Not only is Nader’s belief that there’s no meaningful distinction between progressive politics and massaging Ralph Nader’s insatiable ego longstanding, so is his conviction that someone like Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush in the White House wouldn’t be so bad, and anyway surely a speculated rise in ineffectual opposition will more than make up for it. (What Iraq war widow or widower wouldn’t be comforted by the news that Uncle Sams on stilts are up 20%?)
A reader sarcastically invited me to denounce Bernie Sanders for announcing that he might run for president. Why on earth would I? If he runs in the Democratic primaries, great! As for the possibility of a 2000-like spoiler campaign, I see no evidence whatsoever that Sanders is an obscenely self-centered crank with a remarkably callous indifference to the effects of his actions on the most vulnerable members of society, and I don’t denounce things that have a 0% chance of happening.