>http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040308&s=chait030804
>
>THE MYTH OF THE 'GOOD' NADER
>Make You Ralph
>by Jonathan Chait
Interesting stuff. He seems seriously nuts, in both the political and psychopathological senses:
>The Jimmy Carter presidency only saw a heightening of Nader's
>schismatic tendencies. "I want access. I want to be able to see
>[Carter] and talk to him. I expected to be consulted," he told The
>New York Times. That Carter filled his administration with former
>Naderites didn't help. Less than a year after Carter put former
>Nader deputy Joan Claybrook in charge of the National Highway
>Traffic Safety Administration, Nader denounced her, demanding she
>resign for implementing an air-bag regulation with "an unheard of
>lead time provision." In 1980, Nader told Rolling Stone, "In the
>last year we've seen the 'corporatization' of Jimmy Carter. Whereas
>he was impotent and kind of pathetic the first year and a half, he's
>now surrendered. ... The two-party system, by all criteria, is
>bankrupt--they have nothing of any significance to offer the voters,
>so a lot of voters say why should they go and vote for Tweedledum
>and Tweedledee." (Liberals today who anguish over Nader's insistence
>that no important differences exist between the two parties should
>note that this belief dates back more than two decades.) In the
>summer of 1980, Jonathan Alter (now a Newsweek columnist) worked on
>Nader's voting guide for the presidential election. Alter came away
>amazed by Nader's fury at Carter. "He didn't seem overly distressed
>at the idea of Ronald Reagan becoming president," Alter later told
>Martin. As Nader addressed a gathering of supporters in 1981,
>according to The Washington Post, "Reagan is going to breed the
>biggest resurgence in nonpartisan citizen activism in history."
>
>Of course, that did not happen. But twelve years of Republican rule
>failed to dim Nader's conviction that little difference existed
>between the two parties. Even Nader's critics seem to forget that he
>began running against Democrats in 1992, when he urged New Hampshire
>primary voters to write in "None of the above." "None of the above"
>meant Nader himself, as he would tell audiences: "Hello, I'm 'None
>of the above,' and I'm not running for president." Nader demanded
>that the major candidates address what he deemed the important
>issues of the day. In his 2002 memoir, Crashing the Party, Nader
>alleges that Bill Clinton leaked the Gennifer Flowers adultery
>revelations himself to avoid having to address Nader's agenda. "I'm
>almost certain that [Clinton] and his supporters knew [the Flowers
>scandal] was coming," he posits. "Clinton knew how to stay on
>message, and nothing was going to get him to take a stand on
>President Bush's NAFTA proposal before Congress, or on nuclear
>power, or on the failing banks in New Hampshire." This assertion
>neatly encapsulates Nader's style of thinking--the fevered
>conspiracy-mongering, the moral righteousness, and the laughably
>outsized role he assigns himself in world events.