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Saturday, Oct 11, 2008
Ralph Nader is turned away from yet another presidential debate, but he's hoping for a post-debate bounce nonetheless.
Oct 18, 2000 | The moment was fleeting, but the protesters and reporters traveling with Ralph Nader Tuesday night briefly recoiled and held their breath. For the second time, Nader was trying to make it onto the grounds of a presidential debate, for what was probably his last chance at making a splash big enough to draw serious media attention to his campaign.
Two weeks earlier, in Boston, Nader had been publicly and resoundingly evicted from the grounds on his way to the media tent, and his polls jumped the following week. This time, officials detained him at the first gate as he strode in off the street, and the officer who stopped him was just a little bit too rough.
The campus cop, from debate-host Washington University, grabbed Nader just above the left elbow and seemed to squeeze him just a little, causing the angular Green Party candidate to bend slightly but awkwardly. Briefly, it felt like it might grow ugly.
It passed, though. And while Nader didn't make it any further -- about four security checks away from the media tent he was trying to get to -- he exploited the situation beautifully.
WU police chief Don Strom came out to reason with Nader, saying that the Green Party candidate just didn't have the right credentials to get in.
"I do," Nader said, holding up his green "host" pass. He'd been invited by the Washington University student TV station, and its reporter, Gabe Roth, who stood eagerly next to him.
But you were not specifically approved, Strom said.
Nader then pointed to two of his staffers, George Farah and Tarek Milleron, who is also Nader's nephew, who had just strolled back from the other side of the checkpoint after having been admitted with the identical green pass.
Strom could only shrug, and admit that he knew Nader had been turned down earlier by the Commission for Presidential Debates for a pass to get in, and that there was nothing he could do. "I can escort you wherever you want to go," he offered.
Earlier in the day, Nader announced a lawsuit against the CPD for unlawfully denying him access to the Boston debate grounds. The CPD, a private institution run by a bipartisan committee, restricted participation in the debates to candidates polling only 15 percent or higher. "So you're prepared to be a defendant?" he asked Strom.
"I want to do what is right in this situation," Strom said, almost pleading. "I want to do my job."
"And you're saying I haven't been singled out," Nader said.
"No. No one has asked me to exclude Ralph Nader," Strom said. "I have grave respect for you."
And with that, Nader let up, telling Strom, "This is what I want you to do. I want you to go back to the administrators at Washington University and tell them I think their university was politically misused." Strom nodded. Then Nader shook his hand, before heading off to a waiting car that whisked him away for interviews.
As he left, he shouted out the window to great effect: "This is the biggest blunder the CPD has ever done." The small crowd of supporters howled.
The college student who had tried in vain to escort Nader in, Gabe Roth, was unable to conceal a huge toothy grin, even if he didn't land his on-camera Nader interview. "I thought we had a 50-50 chance," he said. "But one of our main objectives was just to document the whole thing," he said, pointing to another WU-TV colleague, grinning hugely behind a minicam.
He was even magnanimous about the police chief. "Don Strom does a great job for the university."
Nader continued to hammer at his list of issues all day Tuesday -- universal healthcare and "corporate control of the political system," to name two -- that wouldn't be addressed in the evening's debate. And he sent an afternoon crowd estimated by organizers at about 2,000 into paroxysms of delight. The crowd, gathered in a park just outside of the main campus, responded with enthusiasm to calls from various speakers who expressed concern about the plight of developing nations, and their exploitation by corporations and wealthy Western countries.
They jeered lustily when speakers invoked the WTO or the World Bank or the IMF; it was a crowd that shared the concerns of the protesters in Seattle last fall, Washington this spring and, most recently, Prague. It didn't seem to have a whole lot in common with the people Gore and Bush regularly pander to. No one came to hear about middle-class tax cuts or prescription drug benefits for the elderly or Gore's Medicaid "lockbox."
Their excitement and animation, coupled with the huge crowds Nader has been drawing nationwide (he sold out Madison Square Garden last weekend) makes a good case that there is a huge range of issues of importance to many Americans that the two main campaigns never talk about. It is, of course, the case for a third party, and that's the cause Nader's stumping for more seriously than he's seeking the presidency.
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