What Does Ralph Want?

For most Democrats, Ralph Nader evokes such a strong aversion instinct that it's difficult to try and imagine his motivations. Aside from the visceral first name response, there is a strong feeling of betrayal: here is a person who claims to believe many or most of the things we do, openly and unapologetically furthering the enemy agenda.

Never mind the shallow dishonesties - that there is no real difference between the parties, that he didn't really influence the results, that his candidacy "pulls" the Democrat to the left. I don't think Nader believes any of these, and certainly I don't.

The usual explanation is that he is a narcissist with a messianic complex. That fits a lot of the known personality facts: the monk and the fanatic, for example. I suspect, though, that there is more.

Nader and the Bushies share a very important trait: they don't want to reform the US, they want to destroy it and build it anew. The Bushies, apparently, want to establish a post-medieval oligarchy, so they strike at the foundations of modern democracy: voting rights, public education, and social security. Nader is more of a guess, but he would seem to be one of those stern utopian socialists who knows how everyone else ought to live.

For the revolutionary of every stripe, the reformer is enemy number one. The revolutionary doesn't want the system reformed, he wants it destroyed. Thus, for Nader, the catastrophic policies of Bush could be seen as a necessary step to promote the revolution, while Gore would have just delayed revolution with reform.

He may hope to play the same role with Obama or Hillary. Or maybe he really is just another senile narcissist, doomed to keep playing the same role as it transitions from tragedy to farce to an ultimately contemptible pathos.