Thinking About Ralph and Al

I was an early convert to political activism. At the ripe age of fourteen I was propelled by the Vietnam War into a small local campaign office for a Senator named George McGovern who was challenging President Richard Nixon's re-election on an anti-war platform. I lived in Nixon's California hometown, Whittier. Despite my spending most of my after school afternoons walking door-to-door on his behalf (and getting bit by dogs, twice), Senator McGovern lost badly. But my commitment to activism didn't fade.

As I pondered my future as a young man I ran into a fork in the political rode. Which of my two political heroes of the time did I want to emulate. One was Senator McGovern, who came to Whittier and told us that running for office was noble. The other was Ralph Nader, who wouldn't touch running for office with a ten foot poll, but who was piling up an impressive array of important victories as an advocate – from seat belts to clean water.

A politician or an advocate?

I suppose now, in retrospect, that I made my choice on that a very long time ago. I was the chief aid to a popular California Assemblywoman and well positioned to be her successor – the first rung on a long ladder of ambition. But the games that politicians had to play proved more than I could stomach. So I switched sides. I quit and became the state lobbyist for Common Cause in California, a political reform group. I still remember the stunned looks on the faces of my friends in the Capitol when I told them.

All of which brings me back to Ralph (Nader) and Al (Gore).

Al Gore was also an early convert to politics; his father was a U.S. Senator. Elected to Congress at 28, to the U.S. Senate at 36, making his first run for President at 40, and becoming Vice President at 44, it is hard to find a politician in the U.S. who committed to elected office as early and who rose up the ladder so fast.

But then, after being elected and not elected President in 2000, thanks to the U.S. Electoral College and the U.S. Supreme Court, Gore chucked it. He went silent for two years and came back a consummate outsider. He was an early (2002) and articulate opponent of President Bush's disastrous Iraq adventure and, of course, the most visible champion in the fight against global warming.

Ralph Nader, on the other hand, went the other direction.

Nader has so many godchildren in public interest advocacy in the U.S. that it isn't worth counting. The whole culture of research-based public interest advocacy owes most of its existence to Ralph. He pioneered the vision of having organizations and citizens versed in the facts – able to take on any politician, corporate lobbyist, or journalist toe to toe. He continued to be a hero of mine for a long, long time and I was honored in 2002 when he wrote an endorsement for the cover of my last book.
Every four years some small group of fans would try to coax Ralph into running for President and he would demur, saying it wasn't his method of making change. Then in 2000, understandably frustrated by the impotence of both Democrats and Republicans alike to champion environmental and consumer rights, Ralph went boldly where he had never gone before, running for the presidency, with the Green Party.

The results of that history are hard to argue. Florida handed the presidency to George W. Bush by a margin of 543 votes. Nader pulled more than 97,000. If Ralph had stayed an advocate, George Bush would likely just be the retired Governor of Texas and the history in the world since would look very, very different.

Ralph Nader as an advocate was not only a political powerhouse but paved the way for thousands that will follow in his formidable footsteps for decades to come. When he moved from advocacy to candidacy his public influence virtually evaporated overnight and even groups with which he was no longer formally associated, like Public Citizen, had to fight against the evaporation of their own support base as well.

Al Gore, after trading in candidacy for advocacy, has increased his influence and impact far beyond anything he had in all but the highest office in the nation. That influence reached a new peak today with his receipt of the Nobel Peace prize for his efforts to alert the planet about the dangers of global warming.

All this reminds me of a scene in the Woody Allen film, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask. A mad scientist engages in an experiment in which he declares, "I am going to transplant the brain of a lesbian into the body of a man who works for the telephone company!" In 2000 Gore and Nader's separate public trajectories met and it is as if they traded places. The advocate became the candidate and the candidate became the advocate.

There is little question today which of them made the better strategic choice. Few of us will provide public leadership by running for office, though it is good that many good people give it a shot. Far more of us have the chance to change our world for the better as citizens, informed and active ones.

That is what so many of us admire so deeply in the legacy of pre-candidate Ralph Nader. Today it is what the whole world is admiring, deservedly, in Citizen Al Gore.