When I was in high school, an English teacher convinced me to write a piece for an essay contest. The topic of the essay had to address the question, " What does it mean to be a patriot?" In an effort to approach the theme from a new and refreshing angle, I chose to write about protest and civil disobedience as a form of patriotism. I knew my essay would not win the contest, but I could not bring my self to write a flag-waving, pledge-uttering piece that I knew would be a facsimile of everyone else’s essay. My heart simply was not in it.
When I handed the essay in it was obvious my teacher was not impressed. I did not win the contest.
In this small way, and others, I feel a certain affinity for Ralph Nader. He espouses a brand of patriotism that has proven to be very unpopular with the American people. His bid for the White House in 2000 set him up to be the quintessential pariah of the last election, and though it was not clear whether the majority of Americans liked Bush or Kerry, it was painfully obvious that everybody hated Nader. The Democrats saw him as the gate crasher threatening to ruin their party, and the Republicans – in a gesture of blatant cynicism that has become their hallmark – used him as a means to deflect support from their opponent.
Both of these tactics failed, however, to divest Nader of the one thing he had going for him in this election – a monopoly on truth. I saw him speak on C-SPAN during the election season and one thought that occurred to me was that his campaign was a total PR vacuum. He stood crookedly behind the podium, his gnarled hands grasping its edges, his hair unkempt. He looked like he had suffered a stroke at some point, as he spoke out of one side of his mouth and had an eyelid that lazily drooped half shut.
It was hard to believe a man like this would lie to you. He certainly was not lying to you about who he was, physically. This honesty imbued him with a personality that is woefully lacking in most candidates, and it is part of the reason I voted for him in 2000. Most candidates hide behind a façade of sound bites, meticulously written speeches and powerful advertising machines. I simply could not bring myself to vote for either of the dull, contrived candidates that the two major parties backed.
(Though I like his economic policy, Nader’s obvious downfall is his outright lack of foreign policy experience. However, a stable cabinet could solve this problem. Indeed, I think it’s become obvious to most that Bush pretty much lets his advisors do the thinking for him.)
I did not vote for Nader in the last election, but I never missed an opportunity to defend him when, in the approach to the election, whiny Democrats accused him of trying to ruin their chances. To listen to the way some Kerry supporters maligned him, you would think it was illegal for him to run for office.
Nader is not the problem – it is the process by which we elect the president that is the problem. Whether or not we use the Electoral College (which is worthy of a whole other discussion), one has to contend with the fact that the popular vote is counted on a plurality basis. Rather than identifying who gets a majority (more than half) of the vote, it points out who gets the most votes. This does not ensure a democratically sound election. Indeed, as we have seen in the last two elections, it shuts out the chances for a third (or fourth, or fifth) party to have any real success.
A more democratic way of voting is the instant runoff method. I won’t go into a detailed description of this method, but it works by each voter ranking the candidates. Votes from a rejected candidate automatically go to the voter’s next choice. (For more information on this, look up articles on how San Francisco ran its most recent mayoral election.) As well as ensuring a more democratic vote, it also forces candidates to work together, because they may be relying on the other nominees for votes. Critics say this method is too time consuming and costly, but I feel it’s worth waiting for and see no reason candidates can’t divert a certain percentage of the money they use for advertising into a fund to make this program work.
So, I don’t harbor any hard feelings regarding Mr. Nader. Indeed, it seems he embodies a certain patriotic ideal I think everyone can grasp - this is the ideal of not giving up what you truly believe in, despite the fact your prospects don’t look good. When a candidate’s spin machine gets rolling, it is trying to speak to this very sense of individuality that resides deep inside us. Whether or not this is always the best or most responsible ideal to aspire to, it is there, and Ralph Nader embodied it in a way few candidates ever do.
