Falling in Love With Nader

by Joyce Marcel

It looked like a hideous prep school dorm fight to me, with poor Jim Lehrer acting the part of daddy/teacher, trying to get them to behave.

If these are the only choices we have, then the country is in deep trouble. But it doesn't matter, because I've fallen in love with Ralph Nader.

A few days ago, Nader showed up to speak in Brattleboro, Vt. With almost no advance notice, he attracted more than 600 people.

He spoke at a podium on the crest of a hill; behind him were the green rolling hills of the Connecticut River Valley, the trees close to bursting with color.

He wore a dark, well-tailored suit, a deeply-dyed blue shirt and a red tie. His close-cut gray hair was short and neat. He was slender and tanned, sporting high cheekbones, a ski-slope of a nose, a long horizontal line of a mouth, and dark bright eyes.

Just a few years ago, Nader was a rumpled man in a rumpled suit with rumpled hair who shunned the spotlight. Now he has transformed himself into a sophisticated and elegant man. Dare I say it? He looks presidential.

He also turned out to be candid, witty and entertaining.

He called the Republican candidate, Texas Governor George W. Bush, "a major corporation running under the disguise of a human being."

He wasn't much kinder to Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic candidate. He called him a tool of large corporations and a moral chameleon.

At one point he slipped and called the pair "Bore and Gush." And he described the debate, from which he was excluded, as an event where "the drab debate the dreary."

With just a few glances at note cards, he spoke for almost 90 minutes, scrolling out a long series of facts, figures, public policy problems and solutions.

They ranged from creating universal health care to preserving the environment, from supporting education to reforming campaign financing, from creating alternative energy sources to building a public transportation system, from supporting trade unions to ending child labor, from protecting pensions to growing hemp.

He played with language; phrases like "rapacious myopia" and "compellingly candid" rolled easily off his tongue.

His analyses sounded like pure common sense; his policies were clear and easy to understand.

He was an adult. He spoke his mind, and fluently. He used no code words; he was no wind-up toy pretending to be a presidential candidate. He responded to the event spontaneously -- and when you are the president of the United States, that is an important character trait. He was clearly enjoying himself.

He attacked the "spoiler" problem head-on.

Many people are afraid to vote for Nader because they believe that a vote for him equals a vote for Bush. Many others feel condemned to vote -- once again -- for what they call the "lesser of two evils."

Nader said this is a spurious dilemma which only shows that we have lost control of our "expectation levels."

"Voting for the least of the worst has no endgame," he said. "As the two parties slide deeper into the slime, one will always be slightly better... Don't look at what (Gore and Bush) are saying, look at what they're really willing to fight for. You have to have a magnifying glass to see the difference."

There is a "permanent government in Washington" that transcends whoever is elected, Nader said. He and the Greens are working to build a third party which "will become a major watchdog in Washington." For that watchdog alone, a vote for him might be worth it.

"Invest your vote in building a political party," he said. "You cannot lose in any traditional sense."

Something about what he was saying nagged at me, so when the question period started, I grabbed the microphone.

"You claim that there is a 'permanent government' in Washington that is impervious to whoever is in power," I said. "If you were elected, how would you deal with that government? What changes could you possibly make?"

His eyes flashed.

"I've been able to do a whole lot from small offices in Washington," he said with a smile. "Think what I'll be able to do from the White House."