Interview With Nader: "Watch What You Wish For"

by Brian Shott

(PNS) -- Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate and fighter for worker rights, health care and the environment, spoke with PNS editor Brian Shott about George Bush, John Kerry, and the rise of corporate power. A longer version of this interview aired recently on the "Upfront" program of KALW-FM in San Francisco.

Q: Many on the left are panicked that in a tight race you'll throw the election to George Bush. I imagine your answering machine is filled with messages from Very Important People urging you to not run.

A: That's true. That's because the politics of fear shuts down their brain and --

Q: But who's calling? Hollywood?

A: Sure. Susan Sarandon called, Tim Robbins...

Q: What did they say?

A: "Not this time." To which I say, Oh, are you for democracy, Hollywood stars? "Yes, of course." Are you for competitive elections? "Yes, of course." But not this time, huh? Some other time? What other time?

Q: Isn't your personality better suited for the gadfly role? As president, could you bring people together?

A: No citizen groups have gotten more regulations for health and safety to save lives than our groups. It's just that the doors are closing, because there are "For Sale" signs on both Democratic and Republican administrations in the last 25 years.

Q: What about people who are with you politically but can't bear to see four more years of Bush?

A: Well, the Democrats should worry about the 10 times more Democrats who deserted Gore in Florida in 2000 to vote for Bush, compared to the number who deserted Gore for the Green Party ticket. But the answer is straightforward: If you live in California, and you see that Kerry is 15 points ahead, you can vote your conscience.

Q: And voters in battleground states?

A: I'd still like them to vote for our ticket. But they're free to do whatever they want. The spillover vote from the Nader-Camejo ticket is going to help progressive Democrats in close races in the House and Senate, and may help recover Congress to block any second Bush administration.

The moment you have "anybody but Bush," you close down many tactics and strategies that may advance your interests. Watch what you wish for -- if Kerry wins without a mandate, a lot of people will be coming back to our citizen groups saying, "Oh, you can't believe how bad Kerry is on the environment. You can't believe how bad Kerry is on WTO, or on NAFTA, or on corporate tax breaks." So think it through, open up your minds and decide what you want to do.

Q: Is America still a democracy?

A: Not really. It has democratic forms and symbols. But when you have a two-party monopoly; when our government is for sale; when campaigns are based on money rather than the merits of competing arguments; when people are increasingly blocked from their courts when they're wrongfully injured... One can go on indicating the decline of our democracy in one institutional area after another.

Q: What scares you most about that decline?

A: Well, we're taxing our children big-time; that's what the huge deficit is. We're ignoring major environmental catastrophes on the horizon. And the take-home pay of the American worker is the smallest share of the national economy since 1929, which indicates that economic growth is now disconnected from the economic well being of the majority of American workers.

Q: John Kerry took on powerful interests in his investigation of the corrupt BCCI bank, and in the Iran Contra hearings. Didn't that impress you?

A: Yes it did. But he voted for the war, and the Patriot Act. He's all for corporate globalization. He won't touch the bloated, wasteful, redundant military budget that is now absorbing -- and people are amazed by this -- one-half of the federal government's operating expenditures. Without that budget, you can't find the money to deal with repairing the schools, the clinics, the drinking-water systems and all the public works that make up the fiber of our private economy.

Q: What can you offer immigrant communities in California?

A: First of all, Peter Miguel Camejo, the first Latino vice president, fluent in Spanish and English and a real fighter. He marched with Martin Luther King Jr.

On the immigration issue, first we've got to stop supporting oligarchs and dictators in Mexico and Central America, who impoverish people and drive them to our borders. Second, we've got to crack down on the big employers who lure this type of entry. Third, we need a living family wage to open up these jobs to the 14 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed. If they were paid $10 an hour instead of $5.15, they would do more of these jobs.

Immigrants who are here illegally, working and paying taxes, should be given the same labor protections as anyone else.

Q: What did you make of the recent announcement by the Bush administration that the elections might have to be postponed should there be a terrorist attack?

A: Again, the politics of fear. They're trying to scare people into voting for the Bush-Cheney ticket. My answer to that is, "George W. Bush, the main battleground state that will decide your election is called Iraq."

Q: Do you think there are Al Qaeda cells operating in the United States?

A: Well, we're told that. But they're subject to the biggest manhunt in history, and haven't struck back. Does that indicate that perhaps there weren't those types of cells? That Bush is engaging in exaggeration of threats? We've got to ask these questions.

The Homeland security budget is completely out of control. We're not focusing on the chemical plants, 100 of which the EPA has said, could produce a million casualties if they were sabotaged... But we can't just go berserk here. We could spend 20 times our gross national product and not secure our country. That's why we have to go to the roots of terrorism: poverty, dictatorship, destitution, illiteracy, hunger.

Q: I get the feeling you're optimistic about the future.

A: Always! The only alternative to optimism is raising the white flag. Pessimism is an intellectual self-indulgence we don't have time for.