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Chicago Tribune Interview with Ralph Nader

February 17, 2002

By John D. Thomas

Ralph Nader first drove onto the scene in 1965 with his auto industry critique "Unsafe at Any Speed." For the next 35 years, he was known primarily as a consumer advocate and critic of corporate power. In 2000, Nader sought to effect change by running for president. His new book, "Crashing the Party," recounts his controversial run and answers critics who say he was nothing more than a Democratic Party spoiler.

Q. You write that people who accused you of merely taking votes away from Gore missed the point. What was the point?

A. The point was to build a broad-based political movement that transcended any single election. In a two-party-dominated political system like ours, where it is rigged against third-party challenges, you can't do it in one cycle. You have to do it in multiple cycles. That's why the argument "Don't do it this time, wait for another time" that some liberal Democrats were saying doesn't wash because we are not trying to build a one-cycle political party. We are trying to build it for the long range and connect it to multiple civic movements that have the same commitment to reform in America.

Q. Did you accomplish your goal?

A. The first stage, certainly. When was the last time any progressive party got 3 million votes? We also appealed to a young generation and brought a lot of people back into civic activity after the election. We also highlighted the overwhelming power of large corporations on our government, our workplace and our environment.

Q. What is the biggest impediment to the rise of a progressive third party in this country?

A. One is the winner-take-all mentality. If people don't think you can win, they won't vote for you. The second is that, if you don't get on the presidential debates, the gateway to tens of millions of voters, you don't have a chance. I campaigned in 50 states, the only candidate to do so, and I estimated that I reached 1.5 percent of the people who would have watched the first debate.

The debate commission is a private corporation created in 1988 by the two parties, run by the two parties and funded by business donors. You can't overestimate the obstruction that causes third parties, because it's the two parties who decide in effect whether there are going to be any competitors on the stage.

Q. Are you trying to change that?

A. Yes. First, we have litigation against the debate commission for excluding me. In that litigation, the tyranny of the debate commission will become very clear and documented. Second, we are going to be pressing soon for an alternative people's debate commission that will be supported much more broadly by citizen groups, labor unions, civil rights organizations and foundations, so that come 2004 the de facto monopoly of the debate commission will be challenged.

Q. It sounds as if you are going to run again in 2004. Is that the case?

A. It's too early to tell. I'm focusing on our civic projects and 2002. I want to encourage more Green candidates to run in local, state and federal elections.

Q. But you are not ruling out a run in 2004?

A. No.

Q. Did Bush win because of you?

A. No, he won because he got 12 times more Democratic votes in Florida than I did.

Q. Would you rather Al Gore had won?

A. The similarities between the two towered over dwindling differences, so I was indifferent to whether Bush or Gore won. I'm not indifferent to whether the Democrats or Republicans control the Senate, because the range of difference between Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is very significant. But between Bush and Gore, if you make a checklist of major categories of political positions, you can see how many they are pretty identical on.

Q. You write about the emergence of a "democracy gap." What is that?

A. It's the consequences of the excessive concentration of power and wealth in too few hands. There is a democracy gap, for example, in the election process because money dominates and nullifies votes and discourages good candidates from running. There is a democracy gap in access to the courts, because the rich have better access than the middle class or poor people. And of course a big gap is the media. The people own the public airwaves, but they are leased free by the Federal Communications Commission to radio and TV stations who decide who says what and who doesn't 24 hours a day. The landlords have no power over their own property.

Q. What was your biggest campaign mistake?

A. Using too many electronics and not enough foot power. In other words, I wouldn't have spent as much time working through the Internet. I think the Internet failed to get out the vote by all parties. What I would have done was have far more people in the neighborhoods responsible for getting a dozen votes here, two dozen votes there. I should have been much more hands on, and person to person. But that's much more difficult to do. It's a lot easier to get on TV, have a few ads and get on the Internet.

Q. Was the whole experience of running for president a negative or a positive one?

A. It was a very pleasurable experience because when you interface that much with people, groups and issues, you learn a lot. And to see people drop their apathy and say that after the election they are going to get involved in their community or neighborhood or in national or international issues is very gratifying. I know a lot of candidates see the Holiday Inn routine as a terrible drag, but I didn't see it that way at all. I have been traveling and campaigning for almost 38 years, so this was not all that different.

Q. Did your run for the White House have any lasting impact?

A. Yes. I think one way is very intangible. There are people who are in their teens and 20s who oriented themselves into a civic arena, and they are going to be the leaders of the future. And second, I think we broke through. The Green Party is now the third-largest party in America, replacing the Reform Party, and it is the fastest growing. It won 25 percent of its local seats in November. At the local level the party is going to win more and more seats before it increases the number of seats at the state and national level.

Q. Would you have made an effective wartime president?

A. This war would never have happened had I been president, because for 30 years we have had an aviation safety group, and we have been urging the airlines to toughen cockpit doors and improve the strength of the locks, and they have been resisting for 30 years.

Q. But could a president from the Green Party, which advocates non-violence, wage war?

A. Non-violence does not mean that you let people destroy you, because that encourages violence. In other words, we wouldn't foment aggressive war, but we would certainly have a very strong defense. The Green Party stands for health and safety, and safety means security. But we'll do it in a smarter way. The key in the Green Party is to foresee and forestall, and one way you do that is to put meat and potatoes on what Don Rumsfeld and Colin Powell said: that this kind of terrorism is tolerated and bred by poverty, injustice, dictatorships, destitution and human suffering.

Q. How worried are you about the erosion of civil liberties in the wake of 9-11?

A. Very. If you ask Ashcroft, "Are you going to erode our civil liberties?" he'll say of course not. But their behavior is to the contrary. I have asked what civil liberty didn't we give up before Sept. 11 that would have caught the hijackers. I haven't gotten an answer to that question.

Q. What is the most important thing a president could do to challenge corporate dominance in America?

A. Pass one bill that requires all corporations and government agencies to send inserts to insurance policyholders, bank customers, motorists, you name it, to join private consumer environmental worker action groups. The U.S. government can spend $10 million to $15 million a year sending out such invitations in Social Security envelopes and other ways. There is a citizen utility board in Illinois, for example, to represent residential utility users. In 1993, the board obtained a $1.3 billion refund for overcharges. There are five roles we play in our political economy: worker, consumer, taxpayer, voter and investor/saver. Those roles are not organized. People are not banding together. These people would fund their own groups, $20 or $30 a year, but they need a kick-start. Can you imagine what 50 state taxpayer groups and a national group could do monitoring the federal budget?