February 22, 2004

Run, Ralph, Run!

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- I’m conflicted.

Ralph Nader just announced his intention to run as an independent candidate for the presidency of the United States this November.

His basis, he pointed out over the second half of Meet The Press on Sunday morning, was to be a voice for the people of the United States who have been taken hostage by the two-party system. Those might not be his words, but it’s what I got out of his answers to Tim Russert’s questions.

"There's too much power and wealth in too few hands," he said. "They have taken over Washington."

That points to more than just the gap in who has the power to contribute to and run political campaigns, but who might run for political office.

One of his central themes during the interview was that Washington, D.C., is corporate occupied territory. The problem, he points out, is that both main parties, the Democrats and Republicans, are puppets to these corporate interests and haven’t held true to much of their own platforms in decades.

Nader faces hurdles of political acceptance and the ability to get on the ballot, not to mention be able to debate the Democrat and Republican candidates. Traditional third parties, such as the Green Party, Russert said, wished him seemingly sarcastic luck in getting on the ballots and being taken seriously as a third party candidate without running on one of the third party tickets.

Nader also faces opposition from groups such as Ralph, Don’t Run. This ideologically allied group is quickly willing to scuttle Nader’s goal of promoting a multi-party system to accomplish their primary goal of ousting President Bush in the 2004 election.

Ironically, Nader said, this attitude of trying to stifle his candidacy is an insult to the democratic process. The people must have the ability to choose who they want, and the process of attempting to limit which candidates take part in the election is an affront to fair practice.

"This is not a democracy that can be controlled by two parties in the grip of corporate interest," Nader told Russert.

"This country has more problems and injustices than it deserves," Nader said. He made clear during later commentary his disdain for the perversion of intelligence and the use of force to oust Saddam Hussein when it simply wasn’t called for in his opinion.

Nader went on about a number of things on which my opinion differs on several. But I agree that his candidacy in 2000 is not the sole reason that George W. Bush is our 43rd president. I blame Al Gore, actually. The race for the White House four years ago was his to win and he gave it away. Sure, Nader’s name of the ballot exacerbated the problem of two candidates who looked too much like each other, but Nader deserves none of the “blame” for the United States’ current situation of a Republican White House.

Let’s forget all this Nader candidacy crap for a moment. Forget Florida, forget New Hampshire, as Ralph, Don’t Run asserts might’ve also torpedoed Gore’s chances for the White House. What about Tennessee? Just think, if Gore carried his home state, would we be in this mess right now?

- Rich