Play It Again, Ralph

Like leap years and the Summer Olympics, Ralph Nader’s presidential bids appear quadrennially with unfailing reliability. In every presidential election since 1992, Nader has thrown his hat into the ring, hoping his long-shot candidacy will reshape the American political landscape. Last Sunday, we found out that 2008 will be no exception, as that esteemed elder statesman of presidential politics (at 74 years of age he makes John McCain look youthful) announced that he would enter the fray once more.

Nader has his reasons for making another try at Pennsylvania Avenue—he thinks many significant issues like military spending, labor reform, and “cracking down on corporate crime” have been largely ignored in mainstream political dialogue—but one almost feels as if he’s mainly running because he can. In an interview with The New York Times following his announcement, Nader claimed, “If there was no other reason to run—other than the civil liberties, civil rights issue of ballot access—it’d be worth it.” (He’s a little miffed that Democrats campaigned so hard to keep him off the ballots in 2004, spoiling what otherwise would have been a glorious triumph.)

Perhaps it’s difficult to break a habit after 16 years of perennial candidacy, but if Nader truly cares about the future of “ballot access” and third-party presidential bids, he might do well to sit this one out.

Ralph Nader has become the great tragicomic figure of American politics: tragic because he may have indirectly delivered the 2000 election to George W. Bush, who has worked tirelessly to oppose virtually everything Nader spent his life promoting, and comic because every four years, he seems to forget what happened last time and trot back out, blissfully unaware of the impacts (or lack thereof) of his previous attempts. And this image, in turn, has become the face of third party candidacies in America. Every time he runs, Nader further assures the voting public that independent candidates are benign, irrelevant eccentrics at best, and truly pernicious egomaniacs at worst.

The animosity Nader engendered among liberals in 2000 by cavalierly proclaiming that George W. Bush and Al Gore were two sides of the same coin in an election ultimately decided by fewer people than it takes to fill a large movie theater will not disappear anytime soon. Shortly after his announcement, Democratic presidential candidates were quick to issue their condemnations, with Barack Obama quipping that Nader’s “function as a perennial candidate is not putting food on the table of workers” and Hillary Clinton adding that, “It’s not good for anybody, especially our country.”

In this environment of overt hostility, it is unclear exactly what Nader hopes to accomplish other than further molding the American perception of third parties in his own image: cantankerous, irrelevant, and naively ignorant of practical consequences. But Soldier Ralph continues to fight on, like a houseguest who has overstayed his welcome by a decade or two. Maybe he’ll come to his senses and finally bring an end to the unfortunate dénouement of an otherwise distinguished career in public service.

If not, there’s always 2012.

Daniel E. Herz-Roiphe ’10, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Adams House.