Crashing the Party. - book review

BY RALPH NADER ST. MARTIN'S PRESS 2002, 383 PAGES, $24.95

Everyone knows Ralph Nader. He is the man the corporations love to hate. Since 1965, when he wrote the best-selling Unsafe at Any Speed, his name has been anathema with the auto industry. The book gave a critique of the compact cars then being manufactured, especially the Chevrolet Corvair, citing myriad dangers inherent in the design. General Motors so resented his criticism that they had him tailed to see if they could dig up some dirt, but to no avail. Since then, he has become the foremost consumer advocate in the country. If anyone deserves the title, "Mr. Clean," it is the gadfly Ralph Nader.

This book is a recap of his campaign for the presidency against George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000. The author was reluctant to change his status from "citizen activist to electoral candidate" representing the Green Party, but, after much agonizing, decided to accept the challenge. (He was the sole candidate to campaign in all 50 states.) Ours is supposed to be a government of "We the People," and Nader urges that we must take back government from the special interests which presently dictate to it.

Pres. Dwight Eisenhower warned us of the "military-industrial complex." Yet, during his administration, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, a former General Motors executive, maintained that "What's good for GM is good for the country." A half-century later, Pres. Bill Clinton's Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, complained about "corporate welfare." Nothing has changed, argues Nader, for the Democrats and Republicans are so beholden to big business that there is little difference between them. The parties have become a "political hermaphrodite." Hence, the need for a third party.

Nader's gaunt face reveals the concern and effort he has made for decades to obtain social justice instead of "discriminatory justice." His Yankee Connecticut parents taught him to fight for the underdog, and his zeal in this endeavor had never slackened. Essentially, he charges, our government is a corporate puppet, with big businesses more interested in their own well-being than that of our country in which they exist. He cites such global interests (rather than national ones) as the World Trade Organization, World Bank, NAFTA, etc. Corporate dishonesty never has been so rampant, as witness the former Savings and Loan crisis, the Big Tobacco subsidies that helped produce addiction and lung cancer, the Enron scandal together with that of the auditing firm, Arthur Andersen, and the phony stock recommendations of Merrill Lynch.

Nader garnered the votes of various splinter organizations, such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the Ruckus Party, but the best he could do was serve as a spoiler, which was the big worry of the Democrats. Nader was blocked out from the national TV debates and even harassed by some in power. Although they needn't have been, the Democrats were worried about losing California's 54 electoral votes to this maverick. Nader, however, knew that, even though he had the support of numerous citizens, it was a truism that when voters go into the polling booth, they want their vote to count and not be wasted on someone who cannot possibly win. Nevertheless, Nader votes in Florida arguably cost Gore the election.

This book serves as a critique of what's wrong with present-day politics and excoriates everyone and everything that makes politics what it is today. Still, Nader does not discourage easily, and we can expect him to continue fighting for the U.S. our forefathers envisioned.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Society for the Advancement of Education
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group