An ill-timed epiphany, 7 years late

I just had a (possibly obvious) epiphany regarding Ralph Nader’s quixotic and some would say ruinous 2000 run for president. In terms of policy, it doesn’t really make sense – as in how the hell do you stand any reasonable chance of anything when your primary issue is something as wonky and difficult to sell as campaign finance reform? But when viewed in terms of what he should be remembered for – consumer advocacy – it makes perfect sense.

The whole business about there being negligible differences between the Republican and Democratic parties – considering I was myself a teenaged Nader devotee at the time, I seem to remember a now-awkward away message quoting the candidate on the subject of the parties being masks wearing different make-up – maybe doesn’t make so much sense in a straight-up George W. Bush vs. Al Gore sense. Most people would probably agree that those two men of privilege would have taken the nation on massively different courses (or tried to, at least).

BUT – and here’s the epiphany, the key is to think of Nader circa 2000, champion of the Green and other obscure third Parties etc., as less a politician and more of a consumer advocate. What he was really offering, more than a viable candidacy or even just a chance to tell the Man (in this case, both of them) to screw himself (though that was tempting to a considerable number of voters), was simple: more information, and another choice – totally reasonable goals, because what else are voters but consumers of government?

So it figures that this quote-unquote Movement, in the guise of the Green Party and all the passionately disaffected (in this case, not quite the oxymoron it would seem to be, I think) politically-inclined folks out there have a suitably famous figurehead to put on the ballot – someone with name regonition/cred.

And so in addition to storking Nader’s ego, the whole thing made sense because how hard is it to believe he genuinely felt the USA was now itself “unsafe at any speed” and careening toward certain disaster due to cowardly and corrupt polls shilling to keep themselves entrenched in the District. Good soldier/egomaniac that he is, how could he refuse a chance to Make An Important And Needed Statement about how incestuous and sealed-off the whole process had become?

Because it surely was/is that, but maybe it always has been, and maybe even idealists like Nader should and/or do know that. On the other hand, is it kind of sickening to reduce something as evidently noble as our beloved form of government – see for instance old saws like “it isn’t perfect but it’s the best there is” regarding same – to another fucking product, with the same battery of focus groups and taste tests and so forth. Sickening and absolutely true.