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The Trouble with Ralph
Singing the blues with Green Party's Nader
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Business New Haven
10/30/2000
By: Laurence D. Cohen
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What question could you possibly ask Ralph Nader that would shut him up? What could you possibly throw at him that wouldn't generate a few hundred thousand impassioned, hyperbolic words about big, bad business and corporate welfare and the corrupt election system and blah, blah, blah?
Jay Leno found it. The late-night talk-show host asked probably the best question to any candidate in the entire campaign season. Nader sat there, mute. Oh, blessed silence, if only for a moment.
“What do you do for fun?” That's what Leno asked him. It really gets to the heart of what is so unsettling about Winsted, Connecticut's favorite son - the goofy Green Party's candidate for President of the United States.
Her sat there, a bit stunned, for a few seconds. You could see the little flip cards turning furiously inside that over-active little brain, trying to craft something that would make him sound normal. Even Walter Mondale liked to smoke cigars for fun. Clinton likes golf and girls, Bush the Father likes to race around in fast boats, Bush the junior loves baseball, Jimmy Carter likes to fish. Reagan liked to ride horses.
There sat Ralph, with nothing to say. He finally mumbled something about going to a few baseball games.
That's the problem with Ralph. He isn't like you and me. He's the crazy aunt you lock in the attic and only let out for holidays. The intellectually lazy college students who adore Ralph see him as one of the few adults they know who can get away with calling their moms and dads criminal idiots if they work for HMOs or chemical companies or car manufacturers. His young munchkins have been propagandized since they were five years old about “saving the environment,” and Ralph offers them pollution-free salvation with no cost, no nuance, no compromise, no common sense.
That's the problem with Ralph. He isn't like you and me.
When the small, struggling , somewhat redundant hospital in his Connecticut hometown decided to merge, sell itself, or transform itself into something other than a in-patient medical center, the adults got together, found a credible compromise, and life went on. Ralph popped in for a few weeks, ranting about shadowy conspiracies and corporate medicine and corpses strewn around where the emergency room used to be. It was unhelpful.
That's the problem with Ralph. He isn't like you and me.
Michael Kinsley, editor of Slate.com, had it right when he characterized the Nader reason-for-being as “irritating others for the public good.” But you can't create a public good until you recognize the reality of a private good - the product of freedom to acquire and strive and create for personal gain.
Because multi-national corporations go their amoral way, because chemical companies have to put their gunk somewhere, because insurance companies have to say “no” to some doctors, sometimes, we are the happiest, healthiest, most prosperous nation in the world.
Al Gore has done a bit of his own business-bashing, but the difference is, Al doesn't really mean it. He knows how the world works, when it is played by adults. The lobbyists and plutocrats and “consumer advocates” and government regulators come together in a big, messy pile - and what comes out is, in some cases, marginally better.
Nader tells his young enthusiasts that the clash of special interests isn't leadership, but a corporate takeover of all that is kind and just. The faithful often buy tickets to come to his campaign speeches, because they know that, in the end, Ralph is recreation on the order of a rock music concert.
It isn't that Ralph is wrong on every issue, but that he has created a make-believe America where everyone is either very, very good or very, very bad - a television plot masquerading as political philosophy. Despite what Ralph says, the Democrats and Republicans aren't exactly alike. But their differences are at the margin, because adults recognize the strength of a nation that prospers by being a bit greedy and a bit generous at the same time.
Nader pretends to be generous, without being greedy. But he and his merry band are greedy to regulate everything, to make us just the way he thinks we should be, with each of us acting just the way he wants us to act.
But that's the problem with Ralph. He isn't like you and me.
Laurence D. Cohen is a senior fellow with the Yankee Institute for Public Policy.
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