The Nader Factor

Posted 11:05 p.m., March 31, 2004

By Kevin Featherly

Fourteen years ago, I read the great 1989 biography, "Witness to a Century," by the fiery old liberal muckraker George Seldes. Seldes had been a left-wing journalist through most of the 20th century--sort of a blogger for the '20s,'30s and '40s, but one who really got around. He met and dealt with most of the last century's pivotal characters, was publicly pilloried by more than a few of them. He could have chosen from among literally thousands of people as his personal selection for Man of the Century. So who do you think he chose?

If you picked Ralph Nader, give yourself a Corvair.

Todd Purdum had an interesting story in the New York Times yesterday, that makes one thing abundantly clear. Nader knows very well the objections of Democrats to his current run for president. He knows the critique: Nader, once a great man, a great protector of the consumer and the environment, has fallen into a fit of delusional grandeur, has tarnished his star and dismounted his pedestal, first by setting in motion the election of George W. Bush in 2000, and by then refusing to back away from what promises to be a tight 2004 contest. Nader gets letters to that affect all the time. No doubt, were he still alive, one of them probably would come from Mr. Seldes.

"And the more I got of these," Nader tells the Times about the missives, "the more I realized that we are confronting a virus, a liberal virus. And the characteristic of a virus is when it takes hold of the individual, it's the same virus, individual letters all written in uncannily the same sequence. Here's another characteristic of the virus: Not one I can recall ever said, 'What are your arguments for running?'"

It's a fair question, even if Nader undercuts its power by insisting he hopes to affect the effort to unseat George W. Bush by running a campaign that attracts votes from disaffected Republicans and independents. That's fairly absurd. Have you ever met a real Republican who would so much as considering casting a vote for Ralph Nader?

But let's go back to his question. What would be legitimate arguments for Ralph Nader--or better, some attractive, moderate major-party stalwart like John McCain--to run in the current presidential election as a third-party candidate? (Yes, I know, McCain would never abandon the GOP, it's just a what-if.)

Bill of particulars

In the new edition of Minnesota Law & Politics, former U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy lays out some possible answers to that important unasked question. And it gets to the heart of the problem of the two-party duopoly in the country, which the founding fathers feared so much and which has in the past five decades taken on the stamp not just of legitimacy but of inevitability in this country.

McCarthy, the Minnesota Democrat who shocked the country at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968 by nearly winning the New Hampshire primary against incumbent president Lyndon Johnson, argues powerfully in favor of opening the political system to multiparty parity.

McCarthy's indictment:

• In the 60 years since the end of World War II, two-party democracies have not proven more stable or effective than established multi-party democracies.
• The Democratic and Republican parties competed to claim the mantle of extremism regarding the anticommunism of the 1950s.
• Both parties -- unchecked by a serious third-party alternative voice -- were virulently supportive of the Vietnam War.
• The "protected parties'" cooperative domestic agendas have included participation in the savings and loan scandals, the stock market and corporate financial scandals and the exploding national debt.
• The two-party system has dealt very poorly with either the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the war in the Iraq.

To that I would add the disgrace of a Medicare program massively expanded on the national credit card, the approval by both parties of an unfinanced military excursion in the Middle East at the same time that massive tax cuts for the rich have been approved -- accomplishing nothing so much as dumping of the national treasure into mansion upgrades along the coves of Naples, Fla., and other posh wintering spots.

So why would Nader run? Because he's right about the most important of his points: the two-party system is not working. It might even be turning the United States, long-term, into a failed state.

That's a tough point to make at a time when the excesses of the Bush administration are pushing liberals, left-leaning independents and sturdy middle-of-the-roaders into the Kerry camp, terrorized at the thought of a second term for Dubya. (Who no longer seems quite harmlessly bumbling enough for that belittling nickname, despite Karen Hughes' best efforts to demonstrate otherwise.)

So there is no Ross Perot equivalent out there right now, probably because most of the types of people from the Radical Center who might vote for such a figure are either in the Bush camp, convinced that he is the only guy capable of conducting a war on terrorism, or into the Kerry camp, convinced that Bush is pile-driving the nation to disaster.

The nation is truly polarized, and a wicked campaign coming up is only going to make it more so.

Go, Ralphie Boy!

So do I think Nader should run? Yes, I do. Not because I will vote for him. I won't. I'm not even sure I can vote for Kerry, only that I can't vote for Bush. And with no centrist third party figure in the race, I may not have a horse in the running.

Still, I think Nader should run, because the two-party system is broken, and that message needs to remain on the national radar screen, even if it means a Bush reelection.

There, I've said it.

My point: I think the nation will survive a second Bush administration, however scarred, however broke -- though I am even more concerned about the long-term fiscal impact of this liberal-spending compassionate conservative president than I am about the international calamity he is causing, if that is possible.

We will pull through -- though I confess I say that not in full confidence I am correct about it -- even if Bush remains. But I am confident we cannot continue on long-term with two Supreme Court-validated, permanently entrenched political parties, cooperatively frittering away the public-policy viability of the nation while going foolishly to war with each other over marginal wedge issues like abortion, gay marriage, gun rights and the like.

Let me borrow from the McCarthy piece this quote from John Adams, who more than 200 years ago made the point much more succinctly than I can:

"There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting issues in opposition to each other. This, in my humble opinion, is to be dreaded as the greatest political issue."

Mad as Hell

9 p.m., March 29, 2004

I'm one of the four score Americans now watching commentator Joe Scarborough on MSNBC. He's just wrapped up giving his "Real Deal" commentary. I've never seen this fellow before. A quick Google tells me he's a Republican former congressman from Florida and one-time appointee of President Bush to the Labor Department's Council on the 21st Century Workforce. And, no real accident, I'm sure, he looks rather like Bill O'Reilly.

Anyway, the fair Mr. Scarborough is batting about .500 by me. He argues that the Bush White House has unnecessarily blown it by refusing to allow National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice to testify before the 9-11 committee. I agree with that, but not for the same reason he argues.

Joe thinks that the White House has nothing to hide because it's right about its rationale for war in Iraq. You'd have to ask first before agreeing with him, which rationale would that be? But he has an answer: The war is right because we've unseated an evildoer.

No. The war was not right, even though we did unseat one bigtime bad boy. The war was wrong for all the classic Clauswitzian reasons that Vietnam was wrong. The rationale for going in was confused, the strategy for the aftermath was unformed and the population was unprepared---it clearly would not have bought into war but for deception on the part of this administration about weapons of mass destruction.

Now we can argue that last point--and I would allow Colin Powell's statement of February 2001 on Saddam Hussein's state of toothlessness and his assumed inability to threaten his neighbors to stand for me. But I want to get onto Joe Scarborough's second point, which is about Richard Clarke.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm getting a little tired of Richard Clarke's face and voice. I think maybe he should take a break from the talk-show circuit and let his book sell itself for a while. But I also think the Joe Scarborough-Bob Novak-Bill Frist take on Clarke is way off the mark.

Scarborough decries the idea that Clarke is "making a million dollars off the victims of 9-11" by publishing his book. (And what is Scarborough's salary for doing essentially the same thing as a commentator on MSNBC?) I'm a little surprised to hear staunch conservatives begrudge good old-fashioned capitalistic book peddling, but let's let that pass. And let's talk about what Clarke is really doing.

It's obvious from the vehement reaction against his "60 Minutes" appearance and from the polls that I'm in the minority. That's nothing new. But my gut tells me Richard Clarke is a man who simply is calling it as he sees it. And, not coincidentally, he sees it as I do: In allegorical terms, we're being led into a deep, black tunnel populated by armed bandits with night goggles. We don't know where we are, nor how to turn back and we can't see our way clear to the other side. We're blinded. And unseen spooks are shooting at us. Or soon will be.

The invasion of Iraq is a distraction from the war on terrorism, meaning the war in Afghanistan, against the Taliban, against al Queda. And it has made us not safer, but less safe. Howard Dean was right when he said it, Richard Clarke is right when he says it. Madrid proved that, if Istanbul hadn't already. (Watch for al Queda's next blow-'em-up show to strike London any day now. And then, I'd wager, the American homeland.) We've stirred up the hornets, and the hornets hate us. Worse, we've our missed our chance to burn out the hive before the pests multiplied; we're now becoming awash in them.

As to Clarke, is it so hard in this day and age--under these circumstances--to believe that a man of conviction might come forward in righteous anger? I think it's hard to argue that Clarke is anything but the real deal. He's a career bureaucrat, obsessive about fighting terrorism. He's a bulldog, the kind of guy who loses friends by pushing hard for what he thinks is right, but wins admirers for exactly the same thing.

Does that make Clarke a hero? Or a flawless figure? Hardly, as this column suggests. He's got his warts. He might be rewriting his own history a bit and might be wrong in what he says now, though the bulk of it jibes with everything we've learned to this point from the likes of Paul O'Neill and others--including President Bush, as quoted by Bob Woodward in the book "Bush at War."

However, alone among all the principals in charge of our security on Sept. 11, Clarke has had the courage to show humility while all the others were simply explaining why it wasn't their fault. And dammit, calculated or otherwise, taking responsibility counts for something. John Kennedy knew that. Does this president?

Imagine the temerity of a Senate majority leader standing before his colleagues to suggest that Clarke had no right to apologize to the American people for his own failure, and the failure of the government that employed him, for what happened Sept. 11. Imagine the depths that we’ve sunk to when an apology is no longer just, as a John Wayne movie character once suggested, a sign of weakness. Now it is a sign of weakness capped by malevolent intent.

Fact is, there is very little in what Clarke says that is new. The Aug. 4, 2002, Time magazine piece--the one Clarke did his now infamous off-the-record briefing about, said all these same things. Even Al Franken wrote about it, in a chapter of his “Lying Liars� book titled “Operation Ignore.�

I think Clarke is right: The White House has unleashed the hounds, both within administration ranks and within the right-wing media echo chamber. He is being excoriated for his candor, his "disloyalty." He’s being branded a peon of the left. He is not.

He is something much simpler, from where I stand. He is mad as hell, and no matter how much mud and blood they rub into his face, he’s not going to take it anymore.

Introducing Kevin Featherly Online

7:30 P.M., Saturday, March 27, 2004

Welcome to my world. This site is intended to have several purposes, one of which is to serve as an ego trip for me. But if that were the only point, it would hardly be worth the time I will probably wind up spending here. No, there must be a larger mission. I've made it an archive of some of the more interesting articles that I've written in recent years that either have never appeared on the Web before, or which were originally published on Web sites that no longer exist. (Newsbytes, we hardly knew ye!) I also offer links to a few stories that remain online where they originally were published.

As things proceed forth, perhaps I will use this site as a repository for some of my musical recordings. What kind of music do I do? Think of it as karaoke with real instruments.

Beyond that, I really don't know what I'm going to do. Blog? Maybe. But people like my friend Howard Owens are far out in front of me, and I'm a bit overcommited in my life as it is; don't know if I'll have the time. Still, a centrist blogger -- which is what I would be -- does seem to be something the world could use. I just don't know if I'm the guy.

Anyway, enjoy this work in progress to the limited extent that you can.

Kevin Featherly, a former managing editor at Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, is a Minnesota journalist who covers politics and technology. He has authored or contributed to five previous books, Guide to Building a Newsroom Web Site (1998), The Wired Journalist (1999), Elements of Language (2001), Pop Music and the Press (2002) and Encyclopedia of New Media (2003). His byline has appeared in Editor & Publisher, the San Francisco Chronicle, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Online Journalism Review and Minnesota Law & Politics, among other publications. In 2000, he was a media coordinator for Web, White & Blue, the first online presidential debates. Currently is news editor for the McGraw-Hill tech publication, Healthcare Informatics.

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Copyright 2004, by Kevin Featherly

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