Citizen Nader

Most of those who work for Nader soon leave, burned out by the grueling hours and monkish pay. (There are a few exceptions, such as John Richard, Nader's longtime right-hand man, who came to the Center for Study of Responsive Law in 1978, shortly after I did. Over the years, Richard has acted as Nader's buffer to the outside world, advising him on which ideas are most feasible and which might be a bit wacky -- like the anti-siren campaign Nader started in 1979. Richard is the son Ralph never had.)

Nader was, in fact, like a father to many of us. He's a strange kind of alpha male; though he doesn't draw attention to himself, he is the center of any room he enters, and people listen to every word he says. He is handsome, like a bookish cousin of Alan Alda. He is shy, but he can make you laugh with him and at him (we'd laugh with him when he did his stinging impressions of famous people he'd met; we'd laugh at him when he asked things like, "Is that singer Jackson Gray going to perform at the Musicians United for Safe Energy Concert?"). He can be awkward if he has to make small talk, and attractive women sometimes make him nervous. He could be blunt and demanding, asking for the impossible and demanding we give ourselves the way he did. Projects could drag on for years, some never completed. Boxes stuffed with papers would pile up in the office, making information-gathering or simple navigation of the hallways almost impossible. Sleep deprivation was rampant. Still, we came back the next day.

We came back because Ralph, like Lou Gehrig, kept coming back. One day Ralph pulled up a chair and joined us as we prepared a mailing of 3,000 form letters to private citizens who had contributed to Public Citizen, his nonprofit umbrella group. Ralph sat there and signed every letter by hand, with a ballpoint pen. When we asked why he didn't just use a stamp or a printed signature, he said, "They'd know."

And he kept us entertained. One day in 1979 a couple staffers were taking Nader to the airport. We rolled up to a stoplight next to a Honda Civic with a Reagan bumper sticker. Nader rolled down his window and shouted at the driver, "How can you drive a Honda and be for Reagan?!" He was serious. He genuinely wanted to know.

On another occasion, in the middle of a staff meeting, he plopped his foot on the table, pulled back his pant leg and pointed to his socks, by way of illustrating the importance of frugality. "See these socks? I've had these for 20 years! Army surplus. They're cheap and they last forever!"

Critics would get on Nader's case for being a nag, for being single-minded, for not getting certain issues. Gloria Steinem once told me that she thought Nader never understood the women's movement. He was always more interested in general consumer issues than feminist causes like the Equal Rights Amendment or abortion rights.

And while he has tried to stay current with consumer causes, organizing a conference last year on Microsoft's monopolistic power several months before the Justice Department launched its antitrust suit against Bill Gates' empire, some observers question whether the 64-year-old activist has lost his ability to touch the public's nerve. His office says he communicates regularly with the Clinton White House, but not since Jimmy Carter's days has Nader operated at the center of Washington's political circles.

But bestowals of presidential favor have never been of much importance to Nader. There is a heroic quality to his unfashionable obstinacy. Henriette Mantel, a comedy writer and actress who worked alongside me in Nader's office for two years, says, "He's just a great man. He's a walking, talking Jefferson Memorial, except he doesn't have as much sex."

One hopes Nader would laugh at this. I once asked him if he ever wanted a wife and kids, to have a family like the one he grew up with. He said he had considered it, but felt that he couldn't give all of himself to both family and work, so he had made a choice.

He chose to work for us. And, like the priest-ballplayer he is, he sits long into the night, surrounded by mounds of paper, books and his poster of Gehrig. When I asked via fax how he wants to be remembered, he wrote: "For helping strengthen democracy, for making raw power accountable and enhancing justice and the fulfillment of human possibilities."

Let the record show he has lived up to this epitaph.

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