Nader’s rants about the political “duopoly” that shuts out third-party candidates are old news, and his critique of Corporate America is getting shopworn, despite its searing accuracy. So Nader at age 70 is re-inventing himself as an antiwar candidate. It’s a smart political move, and it comes at a time when many analysts had written him off. Instead, the wily consumer activist has found an opening that could doom John Kerry’s chances in November.
Kerry wants to stay the course in Iraq–“a big mistake,” says Nader, who wishes Kerry would just repeat what he said 27 years ago when he testified so compellingly against the Vietnam War. Bush ads calling Kerry “wrong on defense” and a waffler put the Democrat on the defensive, Nader declared. “Now he’s got to out-Bush Bush.” On every reporter’s chair at a media breakfast this week was a press release from the Nader for President campaign declaring the Iraq war illegal and urging Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
While Kerry’s position on Iraq is so similar to Bush’s that voters can’t distinguish between them, there’s no doubt about where Nader stands “[Kerry’s] stuck in the Iraq quagmire the way Bush is,” says Nader. It’s the Bush side that has shifted closer to Kerry as the administration increasingly looks to the United Nations to bail it out, but the Massachusetts senator can’t capitalize on Bush’s mistakes. Kerry is the invisible man, unable yet to strike a compelling image with the public.
The big question in Washington this week is why, with things going so badly in Iraq, Bush is doing so well. Polls show his job approval holding steady and the number of Americans who favor sending more troops to Iraq doubling in recent weeks. As long as national security is in the forefront, Bush is able to hold his own. He dominates the airwaves, and Kerry is not a factor. It’s way too early to judge the outcome of the race, but Kerry going dark for so many weeks after winning the nomination cost him ground. “I’ve been watching Kerry for many years,” said Nader, who hitchhiked to Washington in the 1960s and has a keen, if cynical, read on all the players. He likens Kerry to a “political accordion–the stronger the citizen pressure on him, the better he becomes.”
Kerry is in a bind. He can’t attack the administration wholeheartedly while soldiers are dying in Iraq, and he doesn’t offer a clear alternative to voters. Enter Nader, who sees himself as the “muscular peace candidate.” He says Congress unlawfully transferred the power to wage war to Bush, abdicating its war powers under the Constitution. It’s like the early days of Lyndon Johnson, Nader says, when we’re told we will not retreat, we need to send more troops. “It’s one of history’s great ironies,” he says, that Kerry, having fought in Vietnam, “is now bogged down in the quicksand of Iraq.”
Nader says with a straight face that his goal is to “depress or take sufficient votes from George Bush to help defeat him.” That’s like destroying the village to save it, and just as effective, though he leaves no doubt Bush is the real enemy. “We’re dealing here with an unstable president,” he says, citing Bush’s stated belief that he’s doing the Lord’s work, and appealing for strength to a higher power than his own father. “A messianic militarist is an unstable officeholder,” Nader says, speculating that whether Bush acted to gain revenge for his father’s failure to oust Saddam, or whether he wanted a distraction from domestic necessities, day after day, the media focuses on Iraq. “He’s basically stolen a year of journalism,” Nader concludes.
If he feels so strongly about Bush, why doesn’t he team up with Kerry, a reporter ventures. Maybe it would lead to a job where if Kerry wins, Nader would have his hands on the levers of power. Maybe he could head up OSHA, the government agency that oversees workplace conditions. “What makes you think heading up OSHA puts your hands on the levers of power?” Nader exclaimed, making it clear government work is not in his future. He’d reached a point in life, he said, “where you either quit and go to Monterey and watch the whales or you go into the electoral arena.”
The Gore campaign strategy in 2000 was to treat Nader like glass. Approach with care; he might break. The Kerry campaign hasn’t yet settled on what to do; they’re still hoping sweet reason will prevail and Nader will bow out. Ultimately it’s up to Kerry and how compelling he is as a candidate. Democrats worry he has no Elvis, that dash of pizzazz so essential in today’s media culture. Kerry had it as a young man when he stood up to the Nixon administration. Nader will be a factor only if Kerry doesn’t look like a winner. Right now, that’s a question mark.
