Fighting the good fight, he will tell you. Standing up for real change against a two-party duopoly. Offering a campaign that's "not for sale" to America's pervasive corporate interests.

I suspect Nader really believes the dubious rationale/justification set forth on his campaign site, votenader.org:

Part of his [Nader's] mammoth legacy is the effective national network of citizen reform groups that labor to preserve the safety and quality of life of EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN. His groups have made an imprint on many areas including civic skills, tax reform, pensions, aviation, regulation of atomic power, renewable energy, clean air and water, clean elections, food, medicine and auto safety, safety in the workplace, access to health care, civil rights, civil justice, Congressional ethics, campaign finance, discriminatory lending, the tobacco industry, corporate crime and reform, investor protection, corporate globalization, agribusiness and small farms, intellectual property, medicine prices abroad, freedom of information, and government procurement. The list goes on and on.

But how much of an imprint has Nader really made over the years? Auto safety? Yes, one has to grant him some significant credit there, though his signal achievement is decades past. But access to health care, campaign finance, corporate globalization? Nader's "imprint" in these and most of the other areas listed above is very faint indeed.

Let's look more closely at just one issue, corporate globalization. Nader has addressed this subject off and on for years, with—I think—a striking lack of success. His strategy here and in other areas has been to employ a cadre of bright, eager, low-salaried young people to do research and leg work. It is a strategy that is both idealistic and naive, and it has produced few major breakthroughs. I should know; as an idealistic (and naive) young person I once interviewed for one of these positions, working for something called, I believe, Multinational Monitor, a D.C.-based newsletter intended to track global corporate malfeasance. Taking the job would have meant a 70% salary cut and moving my wife from New York, and it did not work out. But the point of this anecdote is not that I once considered working for Nader, but rather that corporate globalization is arguably a much greater problem now than it was those many years ago. Nader's "legacy" is smaller than he and his followers would have you believe.

People who support Nader are earnest, sincere, well-meaning. But how helpful is it, really, to talk and talk and talk and talk about corporate domination in every facet of American life? Most thinking people know this. In terms of actually doing something about it, I think an infectious and cheerfully subversive dance tune like Adam Freeland's "We Want Your Soul" does more to make a point that sticks; that makes people more likely to vote Democratic in November.

Ralph Nader has done more than most of us to make some kind of difference, and that is an honorable legacy. But his notion that he can single-handedly change the system by running for president is dangerously wrong at this late date. At best, his candidacy will prove irrelevant. At worst, he will contribute to a repeat of the 2000 election and help Bush narrowly win again. In either case, but particularly in the latter, Nader's legacy will be sadly diminished.

—Tom Pletcher

(Reviewed February 25, 2004)