Lucia

de Vernai

Read Lucia's bio and previous columns

February 25, 2008

Ralph Nader: No Civic Virtue, Even With a Clipboard

At one time or another most of us have been approached by civic enthusiasts with clipboards. They like to lurk around public library entrances, grocery stores (right by the carts) or coffeehouses patronized by people who get four-figure tax returns. “Are you a registered voter?” and “Do you have some time for gay rights/the environment/campaign reform?” they ask.

Well, technically I do, but I’d rather check my gmail/go to the bathroom/get my $6 coffee in a self-gratifying post-consumer cup. Most of us mumble something without making eye contact and keep on walking, with a mixed feeling of guilt and admiration for the relentless volunteers who are willing to risk frostbite for overgrazed land.

I gave in recently to sign a petition for placing the Arizona Green Party on the official ballot. I chatted up the young man who held my Americano as I wrote my address down. To distract him from my Starbucks cup which he was eyeing with mistrust, I asked about how the campaign is going. He animatedly told me about how the last guy who signed the petition gave him a hard time for not being a volunteer but a paid employee. Uncharacteristic for the party that prides itself in anti-capitalist approach, I thought, but maybe that’s what it takes to get commitment in the midst of a two party race.

I felt warm and fuzzy for signing. Giving someone the right to be heard is not hard when you know they will not speak loudly enough. The Greens are a shady crowd, but I never expected that they were gearing up for an ambush.

Then I found out that Ralph Nader is running for president of the United States. Again. No, I don’t know why, except maybe to put John McCain in the White House. Perhaps he knew that the American media can only handle one old guy with delusional grand plans at a time and waited for the Ron Paul hype to die down. Touché, Ralph, touché.

For all those brave souls who collect signatures for pet issues and the idealists who can’t believe their luck: No more Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Thanks to Ralph Nader, America now has an alternative. After all, who else to bring diversity to the presidential race than a Princeton- and Harvard-educated white male?

The only true difference that Nader has made in elections is siphoning off votes from Democrats. His winning 2 percent of the popular vote is not big enough to win his party the election but is significant enough to cost the Democrats their bid. Just when we thought that the system is so set in its ways that there is no point trying, Nader has come back yet again to prove us wrong. He also proves that civic participation is not always a productive or desirable process.

It turns out that the ardent supporters out to get your vote and make you feel like a terrible citizen and human being have a guilty conscience. Change for the sake of change, principles with no compromise and action with no other purpose but to “establish a presence” are all selfish goals of people who have little civic virtue at their core. Even if they have a clipboard.

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