Is Ralph Nader Irrelevant?

Ralph Nader speaks to the media following an appearance on ABC News’ Sunday talk show “This Week” Sunday, June 29, 2008, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Ralph Nader entered a conference room at Georgetown University last month to address a group of people a fifth of his age, high-school students participating in the Presidential Classroom civic education program. When he entered the room, the group was instantly on its feet, giving him a unanimous standing ovation. But from my vantage point in the back of the room, the students didn’t exactly seem to leap to their feet. It was readily apparent that the ovation was anything but an expression of admiration for the activist, author, and former presidential candidate. Instead it was reluctant, orchestrated by the micromanaging adults who had arranged the chairs in neat rows and had asked the high schoolers and the filler audience members like me to wear business attire. It was a dynamic which spoke volumes about the attitude of today’s youth toward an important-yet-flawed activist from a previous generation.

Nader’s half-hour lecture was on the topic of "civic engagement," punctuated with many diversions (the freewheeling speech touched on everything from financial regulatory reform to government corruption to public lands to health care to the military-industrial complex to fast food to Gandhi).

"How many of you have been to a shopping mall? And now how many of you have been to a town council meeting?" Nader asked, trying to illustrate a point about the ubiquity of commercial culture. About half raised their hands, looking bored. When Nader revisited a rather convoluted metaphor involving "a gigantic, pitch-dark cavern" for the third time (to explain: we can choose to illuminate said cavern with either a "tiny flashlight" or a "searchlight," and what kind of light we use, according to Nader, "determines whether we can free our minds"), they tittered in response. When Nader said, "All you’ve got to do is read the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and other radical Marxist publications," the audience responded with a long, awkward pause. He had to explain, "That’s a joke." It was like seeing a famous comedian crash and burn.

In the subsequent question and answer period, the students seemed to view his determination to reform politics with a mix of both incomprehension and ridicule. Some of the students asked him whether he felt remorse for his unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign. Others criticized the way in which he had canonized the Western European welfare state in his remarks. Not a single student asked about the brand of populist advocacy on which Nader’s political reputation is founded, nor did they ask about the specific policy issues he’d brought up in his speech.

Nader, the activist who had such an impact on a previous generation’s Washington, has been relegated to the status of ineffectual old eccentric. For the Millennial Generation, Nader is not so much the consumer advocate as he is a tertiary figure in one of the first great political events many of us born in the early ’90s can remember: the election of George W. Bush in 2000. It is that legacy that has largely shaped the world we live in today.

Yet Nader had important messages to impart. He spoke about some of the most salient legislative issues of the Obama age, arguing that it is within citizens’ power to get health care reform passed; that the economic crisis has demonstrated that banks and corporations wield too much power; and that—most refreshingly unequivocally—"some of the greatest violations of our laws occurred with Iraq and torture."

Today’s youth aren’t interested in listening to a call to arms from an older white man who hasn’t been on the front pages since his great 2000 electoral stumble. It’s understandable; the public figures and the media that engage with young people today are not only more dynamic, they speak a different language. The Obama campaign, for instance, is statistically the most successful political outreach to young adults in decades. It did not use phrases like "break the chains," "participation in power," or "big business and the government who works for it." Perhaps Nader should have anticipated the audience’s blank stares in reaction to his words. Perhaps he should have anticipated their disinterest in the face of a new political movement that is more diverse, more interactive, and ultimately highly successful at encouraging young people to work within the present legislative system than to actively oppose it.

But as Nader concluded before he left the stage, it was impossible to ignore the irony in one of the key themes of Ralph Nader’s speech as the disciplining adults told the audience of high schoolers to shuffle into “caucus groups.” He had urged his teenage audience "to fight against being manipulated and controlled."

Emily Rutherford is a staff writer and editorial intern at Campus Progress. She is a sophomore at Princeton University.

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