Unhappy at Any Speed

It’s easy to pity Ralph Nader. Not because his Green-party presidential candidacy took a nosedive the moment Vice President Gore hit the comeback trail in August, or even because he now appears unlikely to top a few percentage points in November—although either of these might have been reason enough. No, it’s easy to pity Nader simply because he looks so sad—all the time. He rarely smiles. The dangling bags beneath his eyes make him appear permanently hagridden. His stooped shoulders seem to carry a crushing, invisible weight. Writing in The Nation, Ruth Conniff compared Nader to Abraham Lincoln, and there’s something to it: He’s tall and lean, his face is worn and wrinkly, and his clothes are constantly rumpled. If he grew a beard and put on a stovepipe hat, he’d be at home in one of those doleful Mathew Brady photos of Old Abe.

Nader is now trying to turn people’s pity for him into a political advantage. He’s running as a victim candidate: Everywhere he goes, he grumbles in his deep voice about being locked out of the presidential debates between Gore and George W. Bush. On September 25, the day about 100 minor celebrities formally announced they were supporting Nader, their message was: Let Ralph on stage. Nader wants to save the public from having to watch, as he routinely puts it, “the drab debate the dreary.” Why not include the droopy?

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.

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It’s easy to pity Ralph Nader. Not because his Green-party presidential candidacy took a nosedive the moment Vice President Gore hit the comeback trail in August, or even because he now appears unlikely to top a few percentage points in November—although either of these might have been reason enough. No, it’s easy to pity Nader simply because he looks so sad—all the time. He rarely smiles. The dangling bags beneath his eyes make him appear permanently hagridden. His stooped shoulders seem to carry a crushing, invisible weight. Writing in The Nation, Ruth Conniff compared Nader to Abraham Lincoln, and there’s something to it: He’s tall and lean, his face is worn and wrinkly, and his clothes are constantly rumpled. If he grew a beard and put on a stovepipe hat, he’d be at home in one of those doleful Mathew Brady photos of Old Abe.

Nader is now trying to turn people’s pity for him into a political advantage. He’s running as a victim candidate: Everywhere he goes, he grumbles in his deep voice about being locked out of the presidential debates between Gore and George W. Bush. On September 25, the day about 100 minor celebrities formally announced they were supporting Nader, their message was: Let Ralph on stage. Nader wants to save the public from having to watch, as he routinely puts it, “the drab debate the dreary.” Why not include the droopy?

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.