In recent years, Nader ambled the streets of Washington unrecognized. He wasn’t quite a has-been (his groups still do some important work), but he seemed a figure from the 1960s and 1970s. Now he’s cool again–mobbed by young supporters–and don’t think he doesn’t love it. When I saw him recently, his beef was with the press–particularly The New York Times–for not covering him more. Fair enough. And he and Pat Buchanan should have been allowed into at least one of the debates. (It was idiotic to bar Nader even from the audience.) But my beef with him was bigger. By refusing to admit that there are deep differences between Al Gore and George W. Bush, by clinging to this emotionally satisfying but factually inaccurate notion of a “DemRep Party,” Nader is squandering his most precious asset–his intellectual honesty.
Start with the environment, which the Green Party is supposed to be about. Beyond his support for gun control, why is Gore in such trouble in a state like West Virginia? Because he won’t roll over for the coal and chemical industries that run the state. They know he is the most serious environmentalist ever to run for president. It’s Gore who negotiated the Kyoto accords on global warming and got Clinton to set aside the most acres for conservation since Teddy Roosevelt. The Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth believe Clinton has fallen short on getting some things through (as would, needless to say, a President Nader), but these and other environmental groups have enthusiastically endorsed Gore over a GOP candidate who argued in Texas that compliance with clean-air standards should be “voluntary.”
Or take campaign-finance reform, the signature issue of many Naderites. A recent poll showed that voters actually thought Bush would be better on that issue than Gore, though Bush opposes reform and Gore supports it. This cockeyed notion is a result of all of the coverage of the Democrats’ 1996 irregularities. Much of that coverage was justified, but in combination with the endless GOP slurs on Gore’s honesty and integrity, it created the phony impression that Gore is: (a) in someone’s pocket and (b) not for cleaning up the system.
Nader has fed these canards. The fact is, President Bush would veto the McCain-Feingold bill banning soft money, while President Gore would work with John McCain and quite likely get it passed. That wouldn’t solve the problem of money in politics forever, but why make the perfect the enemy of the good?
Nader voters might consider what’s being called “the Ivins strategy” (after columnist Molly Ivins). She urges “voting with your heart where you can and your head where you must.” New York mayoral candidate Mark Green, who backs Gore despite having once been Nader’s closest associate, last week privately urged his old boss to embrace that approach, which would mean campaigning in states like Texas and New York, where the outcome is preordained, but not in Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and other swing states, where he could truly cost Gore the election. So far, Nader is not complying. He’s looking past the campaign toward building a movement.
But he’s going about it the wrong way. An ascendant Green Party (whose zany platform of abolishing the Senate and other left-wing idiocies has been renounced by Nader himself) would simply guarantee Republican presidents for the foreseeable future. Naderites should have persuaded their man to run in the Democratic primaries; he might well have won a few, scared Gore and pushed the party to the left on trade. That is the way real change occurs in American politics, and it would have given Nader the genuine influence he craves. Instead, he risks being marginalized by angry fellow progressives and remembered by history as a spoiler. That would overshadow all he has accomplished.
Nader voters are under the illusion that a Bush era is somehow harmless to them–a mere interlude to rally their cause. Many were in grade school when Reagan was president and forget the consequences for progressive causes. It would be one thing if Bush were brilliant but lazy–or thick but hardworking. But he is neither brilliant nor hardworking, which means that the presidency will be essentially subcontracted to exactly those corporate interests that Naderites believe are threatening our democracy. That reminds me of the logic of those who extended the Vietnam War, courtesy of Nixon and his unwitting allies on the left: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” America has tried that, Ralph. It doesn’t work.
