The (non-)confessions of St. Ralph

Ralph Nader's new book makes it painfully clear that he has no idea how to build a left-wing alternative to the Democrats. But when you're pure of heart and unsullied by politics, who cares?

By Joan Walsh

Jan 17, 2002 | It's official: Green Party spoiler Ralph Nader gave the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000 by stealing votes from Al Gore. "The Simpsons" tells us so: The Jan. 6 episode featured Homer's boss Mr. Burns at a meeting of Springfield Republicans, asking what new "unspeakable evil" the party can come up with. One rumpled fellow is waving his hand, ooh-ooh-oohing for attention like a schoolboy, but Burns dismisses him: "You've already done enough, Nader."

Ouch! Sucks to be Nader! The nation's foremost anti-corporate crusader lampooned by its foremost anti-corporate sitcom? It isn't fair. But the notion that Nader is to blame for Bush's presidency had hardened into fact for bitter Democrats even before Simpsons creator Matt Groening made it funny. In his new book, "Crashing the Party: How to Tell the Truth and Still Run for President," Nader carps about it nonstop; an appendix features the full text of a self-righteous Nation essay by lefty actor, Nader backer (and husband of Susan Sarandon) Tim Robbins, who complains about being attacked at parties by Gore voters who snarl at him: "We hope you're happy now!" -- meaning now that he helped elect (is that the right word?) President Bush. They even harass his and Susan's children!

Now let's get this straight, Gore voters: Nobody should be attacking Tim Robbins' and Susan Sarandon's kids for their parents' support of Ralph Nader. At this point, let's be nice to them at parties, too, OK? I'm not being entirely facetious: Reading the Robbins piece made me cringe a little, because I've needled friends who voted for Nader in much the same way. In the days before and after the November 2000 election -- especially after the Florida deadlock made it clear that had just half of Nader's 96,000 Florida votes gone to Gore, the Democrat would have won the state, and the presidency -- there were lefties lining up to kick Nader in the pages of Salon: Todd Gitlin (twice), Joe Conason (also twice) and Charles Taylor; I myself couldn't resist a cheap shot at Nader and the "poor dumb Greens" in a less than stirring endorsement of Gore Nov. 6. It could have been a new Internet business model: Instead of paying them, we could have let writers pay us for the satisfaction of denouncing Nader's evil appeal.

Two things made me crazy about Nader and his Green Party groupies. First and foremost was their sanctimony. But a close second was the way the Green campaign represented the depressing fatal tendency of the American left to divide and conquer -- itself. Nader and his friends were nastier about Al Gore and Bill Clinton than even Bush was, and to me that reflected the circular firing squad mentality that's kept the left a comparatively marginal force throughout most of American history.

But even during that soothing frenzy of Nader-bashing during the otherwise unbearable Florida debacle, it occasionally occurred to me that my own ire, and that of my allies, could be an example of the exact same tendency. Why be such a Nader-hater? Some liberals seemed more outraged at Nader than, say, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, whose shocking halt to the Florida recount, we now know, did more to hand Bush the presidency (if you believe, as Newsweek and the Orlando Sentinel reported, that Florida Judge Terry Lewis was prepared to order the counting of overvotes, which favored Gore) than Nader's quixotic candidacy.

A year after the shouting, I had to at least consider the possibility that Nader-hating was my version of the way the powerless (and that certainly includes the American left) typically respond to their plight: by lashing out at something small they have some control over -- Nader and the Greens' appeal -- in order to forget the bigger things that they can't change -- the way Bush won the White House, the way Gore lost it. Certainly Nader wasn't all wrong in his critique of the Democrats: Their failure in the past year to block Bush's agenda, especially his budget-busting tax cut, seemed to prove his point about their wimpiness, though Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle may have gotten a spine for Christmas.

And clearly the metastasizing Enron scandal proves Nader right about the corrosive effects of corporate control on both parties. Sure, the Bush administration seems like a wholly owned subsidiary of Enron: The company's lavish financial patronage helped the up-from-failure president's son launch a political career at 48 and become president six years later, and its ties to the Bush Cabinet rival those between al-Qaida and the Taliban. But generous Enron donations to Democrats are blunting the scandal's partisan edge. CEO Ken Lay played golf with President Clinton and advised Al Gore on energy deregulation. The corporation gave Democrats $532,000 in "soft money" during the 2000 election, Republicans $623,000. Perhaps the most powerful advocate of an Enron bailout -- something no Bush administration figure publicly backed -- was a Democrat, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who unsuccessfully lobbied his old department, as chairman of Citigroup, to intervene with bond-rating agencies to stop the downgrading of Enron's status (and massive losses for Citigroup) last November.

So I resolved to read Nader's new book, and revisit his 2000 campaign, with an uncharacteristically open mind. What was he trying to say last year, while I kept my fingers in my ears and chanted "Spoiler!" so I wouldn't have to hear him? I never even considered voting for Nader. Could his book convince me that I was ... wrong?

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