Nader Redux: "An Unreasonable Man'

Oh, for an honest Quixote again

ROBERT ZALLER

I suspect that An Unreasonable Man will slip in and out of town quickly, so I urge anyone fed up in advance with the politics of 2008 to see this film. Its subject is Ralph Nader, the one-time white knight of American reform (he was even once depicted in medieval armor on a national newsmagazine) and now liberal pariah.

Nader was a product of the 1960s, the only good decade this country has had in a long while. Already 30ish at the time, Nader was caught up in the sense of possibility that so briefly crackled across the skies of corporate capitalism in the wake of the civil rights revolution and the Vietnam War. Unlike Freedom Riders and protest marchers, however, his concern was neither liberty nor war, but product safety. This seemed so battily far down the list of priorities for ‘60s radicals (why improve capitalism’s products when the whole point was to abolish it and them?) that he seemed, even then, a Quixotic character.

His real decade: The ‘70s

Nader’s real decade turned out to be the ’70s, when black power met benign neglect and the Vietnam War went out not with a bang but a whimper. With expectations of social change drastically lowered and then silently abandoned, Nader’s dogged campaigns for seat belts and drug labels were suddenly the next best thing, and those who had agreed to Come Clean for Gene during the 1968 presidential primaries were drafted as Nader’s Raiders. Nader did indeed accomplish much practical good, although one would like to have seen a little more backup for the claim that the reforms he helped enact “saved” 195,382 lives between 1975 and 2004.

Nader’s influence peaked during the Carter administration, whose pro-business agenda— virtually indistinguishable from Nixon’s or Ford’s— made it clear that liberalism had had its day. The Reagan years saw a rollback of regulatory reform, which continues unabated to this day. Nader kept fighting but, like a boxer past his prime, no longer winning.

Then the New Democrats discovered K Street money, and the jig was up. American politics had always run in roughly 30-year cycles of reform, from Jefferson to Jackson to Reconstruction, and thence to Populism, Progressivism, the New Deal and, finally, the New Left. Democracy’s promise had never been more than fitfully realized, but at least it had been renewed at more or less regular intervals. But the 1990s witnessed a decisive break with this pattern. The Clinton administration was Republican in all but name; and Nader himself, persona non grata, couldn’t get so much a meeting with the Arkansas rube. The Old Right was now the New Center, and the New Right, bristling with advantage, awaited its innings. The Left had simply ceased to be.

The candidacy that made liberals seethe

It is at this point that An Unreasonable Man begins. After flirting with the idea of a challenge to Clinton in the 1996 primaries, Nader came to the belated conclusion— obvious to many ’60s survivors, but apparently a revelation to him— that the two major political parties were one beast with two heads. Accordingly, he launched an independent, Green Party candidacy for president in 2000. It fell far short of its electoral goal of 5%, but was widely credited with costing Al Gore the state of Florida, and with it the election.

The first faces you see (unidentified) are those of sociologist Todd Gitlin, the well-known chronicler of the ’60s, and Nation columnist Eric Alterman. Even at a distance of several years, they seethe with indignation at what they regard as the vanity candidacy that foisted George W. Bush on the republic. These gentlemen are not, of course, Clintonistas but liberal pragmatists who know full well that while the best they can hope for is very little, the worst they can suffer is great indeed. Where once they might have stood well to Nader’s left (Gitlin actually did), his unreconstructed liberalism now appears to them what Lenin used to refer to as infantile Leftism.

After delivering this one-two punch, the film flashes back to Nader’s early career, with its improbable string of triumphs, before charting the long road of disillusion that led to his candidacies in 2000, 2004, and (it may be) 2008. The story line is nearly hagiographic, as Nader slays one corporate dragon after another until the country’s rightward shift slowly cuts the ground out from under him. Former associates who parted company with him over his presidential races (Bill Maher and Michael Moore are on their knees at one point on Maher’s comedy show, begging him not to run in 2004) remember him with respect and affection, and even ideological adversaries like Pat Buchanan express admiration. Gitlin and Alterman come back at the end for a fulminating reprise, but their impact is, of course, blunted. An Unreasonable Man is the story of a hero, an American original whose place in history is secure and whose legacy is to inspire future generations.

Problems with the “Jewish lobby”?

A hero Nader well may be, but An Unreasonable Man seems to subliminally exploit an issue that is deeply troubling in his record. This is his violent antipathy toward Israel (Nader is a Lebanese Christian). Anti-Zionism is not, of course, anti-Semitism, but there is a noticeable paucity of Jews in Nader’s entourage, past and present, while Gitlin and Alterman, whose criticism of him the film makes finally repellent, are both Jewish. The not-so-subtle implication is that Nader’s problems with the establishment Left are actually with the Jewish lobby. That may have a germ of plausibility; it is my personal though highly unscientific opinion that Nader’s disappointing showing in the 2000 election owed no little to the defection of Jewish voters alienated by his anti-Israeli position.

As to the famous 97,000 Florida votes for Nader that year, 538 of which would notionally have spared us the Bush presidency, the film argues elaborately that (a) Nader made no effort to be a spoiler in closely contested states, but only to maximize his overall vote; and (b) those votes wouldn’t have been cast for Gore in any case. The fact is that Nader knowingly burned his bridges to the Democratic Party in 2000, and that he had every right to do so. The two-party monolith is not serving us well.

Whether Ralph Nader is or ever might have been a plausible alternative to it is another question. But to survey the current field of candidates— the play-it-safe spouse of a former president; a speak-no-evil senator whose response to the greatest assault on civil liberties in 200 years is simply to urge more civility; and a millionaire populist who dines on silver at home and sports dungarees in public— is to make one long for an honest Quixote again. Not only the American auto industry, but also the American ship of state is now unsafe at any speed.



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