Nader, Nader, Nader

Back when Sam worked at UC Berkeley, he used to come home with all sorts of delightful stories about the things that he saw on Telegraph and around the campus. It's true that Berkeley has mostly settled down and become a "respectable" school – the naked guy no longer goes there – but it still has its fair share of crazy events.

One of my favorite stories began when he was on his way to lunch one day. He passed a man standing on a crate who was yelling, over and over again:

"Nader, Nader, Nader! Liar, Liar, Liar! Nader, Nader, Nader! Liar, Liar, Liar!"

He went to lunch and came back 45 minutes later or thereabouts. When he passed the man on the crate, he found a second man now standing on a second crate. After the first man finished screaming:

"Nader, Nader, Nader! Liar, Liar, Liar!"

He would point at the man and yell:

"Liar, Liar, Liar! Nader, Nader, Nader!"

They kept this up, like one of those medieval call and answer chants, except with more screaming and more Nader, as long as he was in earshot.

Nader, Nader, Nader

I have related this little anecdote of Berkeley craziness because today I'm going to talk about Ralph Nader.

If you were watching Meet the Press on February 24th, then you already know that Ralph Nader has announced that he is running for President yet again. (You can read the transcript here.) Even though I predicted that he would run, I'm not going to start crowing about how smart I am, because it was pretty much a given that he would throw his useless hat in the ring.

Since Nader made his announcement, there has been a lot of melodramatic moaning and groaning on the liberal blogs about how Nader is going to get McCain elected. Many haven't forgiven him for costing Al Gore the election in 2000. Of course, many of the Greens and other would-be rebels who were "sticking it to the man" justify their votes by way of the argument that it was Al Gore's robotic lack of personality and mismanaged campaign that cost him the election, and that if he hadn't flubbed things as bad as he did, it wouldn't have come down to him needing Florida so badly. As for me, I take the middle road: What the Greens say is true in part, and I won't deny this; Al Gore's campaign was a mess, and his inability or unwillingness to let his true self shine through was a mistake. However, nobody reasonable can deny that Nader's selfishness and arrogance, and the Quixotian quest of his followers, played a part. The Republicans knew at the time that he would, which is why they they aired pro-Nader ads in 2000, and contributed to his campaign in 2004 (Nader took the money).

Aside from a few diehard supporters, the Greens learned their lesson, and in 2004, and many of them begged him not to run. Nader ran anyway, but as an independent, and the party itself refused to endorse him. His campaign was a joke; the people who had foolishly voted for him in 2000 now, by and large, understood the stakes, and why empty displays of rebellion were dangerous to their interests, and the man who had loomed so large only four years before became an afterthought. Even so, the democrats haven't forgotten the victory that they see as unfairly snatched from Gore's grasp, and so the worry persists that he will cost the democratic nominee the election once again.

They couldn't be more wrong. If Nader's campaign was a joke in 2004, his 2008 campaign is going to be an Eddie Izzard HBO special; only the most stubborn, lime kool-aid drinking Nader supporters will vote for him – and even some of them will defect to the democrats. Here's why:

Look, first, at Nader's rallying cry: Washington is corrupt, lobbyists are bad, we should take care of the environment and have universal health care, we should fix US trading policy, and get out of Iraq. Sound familiar? It should, because it's also Obama's platform, only Obama expresses it with an inspirational passion that Ralph Nader cannot hope to imitate. Given that both men share essentially the same message, who are people going to vote for? The egotistical, crotchety old man, or the young and vital leader? If Nader gets even 2% of the popular vote in November, I will be stunned.

This is assuming that Barack Obama secures the nomination, as he seems almost certain to do. If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Presidential candidate, she's going to lose no matter what Nader does.

Liar, Liar, Liar

If Ralph Nader cared about his causes half as much as he cares about his ego, he wouldn't be wasting what little political capital that he has left from his days as a great crusader in the 1970's, and he wouldn't be further tarnishing his reputation by running for President. He has a great opportunity right now, if only he would abandon his grasping self-interest and seize it; the issues that he has so loudly espoused over the years are finally being discussed on the national stage. A major player on the political scene, a candidate for President who is almost a shoe-in as the Democratic nominee, who has a real chance at the White House, and who has the leadership qualities to push his agenda through a Democratically controlled congress has taken up the banner of his cause. This candidate, though he has been rightly critical, has even refused to wholly reject Ralph Nader, calling him "heroic", and a "singular figure" in American politics, and stressing that Nader has reached out to his campaign. If Ralph Nader would abandon his nonstop lunatic denouncements, he would have a chance of brokering himself into an advisory position in the Obama administration. His past actions have probably ruined any chance he might have once had for a seat on the cabinet – at least for now – but a change of tone and thrust in his rhetoric could allow him to, for the first time in years, offer a real and substantive contribution to the forwarding of the causes that he insists are so important to him.

Unfortunately, Nader's obsession with himself has blinded him to the possibilities, and that's too bad – for him, and for his supporters.