Susan Jacoby has promoted a discussion of the Nader candidacy through a short post this morning entitled "Ralph Nader: Enter the Spoiler Redux." Her article begins with the sentence, "Here he goes again. Ralph Nader, the egomaniac (as distinct from Ralph Nader, the distinguished consumer advocate) announced Sunday that he will run as an independent candidate for the presidency in 2008." She later writes: "I don’t know whether Nader is just a self-centered fanatic or whether he really believes that there is no difference at all between the Democratic and Republican parties." While it is rare for me to agree with Susan Jacoby, I couldn't agree with her more on this particular issue.
An American friend who lives in France commented on my Nader post by saying: "I really hate to go against the grain here, but...I...well, voted for Nader during the election when people told me that I was taking votes from Gore. But, I felt that I ought not "play the game" of strategic voting, but vote for the right person: a person who would implement universal health care, call a spade a spade, and not worry about tired communist slander (for example). Now the dems have a real candidate in Obama (he is not a savior, but much better than I could ever imagine in the current climate). All in all, I want to think that Nader and his supporters are thinking nothing other than what an essential candidate he is for the country. Democracy has some crazy, but passionate, fringes...thank God!!"
I am reading a "voting on principles" argument here. There are many people who believe that every American ought to vote for the person who represents their views whether they have a chance to win or not. I could not disagree more.
In the Democratic primaries, Dennis Kucinich best represented the views of many progressives. I'll grant that. But were his true, personal views much different than Obama's or Hillary Clinton's? I doubt it. To take one issue as an example, Kucinich knew he didn't have a chance to win. He could say anything he wanted without a concern in the world for the general election. He could say he was for full, free universal health care. Obama and Clinton (especially Clinton after what she went through in the 90's, know that they cannot possibly get enough support for free universal health care with about 50% of the population being center-right, fully right-wing, or extremely right-wing. So, they make the pragmatic decision to try to move the government in a progressive direction. They can't get the whole deal done in one go, so they are pragmatic enough to try to get what they can get.
Kucinich, as well as Nader, could say that on principle he must run against Obama or Clinton because they've sold out on the ideal. Then we'd have not only Nader but Kucinich as well draining off votes from Obama and Clinton. Why not throw John Edwards in here, too? He stood more firmly for the American worker than either Obama or Clinton, and he legitimately had a chance to win. He could say that Obama and Clinton have not done enough for the American worker, and so, on principle, throw his hat into the ring as an independent candidate, too. Then we'd have Nader, Kucinich, and Edwards draining votes from the eventual Democratic candidate. But Kucinich and Edwards are pragmatic enough not to do that. Thank God, indeed! Edwards and Kucinich must realize that Clinton and Obama represent the best chance we have to move the country in the progressive direction they'd like to see achieved eventually. They must know that they lost at least in part because the country is not fully ready for the ideals they presented during the primaries, so the country would be even less ready for them in a general election.
A little pragmatism is called for on the part of Nader supporters for the same reasons.
I'm all for high ideals and principles, but there are limits to Kantianism. According to Kant, on principle, we should never lie. But the obvious critique of his ethics was the example of the mad man with a knife. If a mad man with a knife is after a loved one, should you honestly tell him
where the loved one is hiding? If one's moral principles suggest that one should not lie, then (on Kant's theory) you should tell the truth no matter the consequences. But most of us would say that's nuts! To me, it's the same here. The Nader supporter seems to be saying, "I don't care if my vote helps to elect someone who is diametrically opposed to everything I believe in, and will set causes I support back for another 4-8 years. I refuse to vote for someone who (largely out of pragmatism) won't say they support fully implementing my ideals tomorrow."For that reason, I not only think the argument is a weak one. I think it's morally unconscionable to act upon.
7 comments:
There is A LOT to unravel here. I am not really on form, but I will touch on a few things.
This is an intro.: I was talking to two Bush jr. supporters (dear friends, as it turns out) on my last trip to the states and they began to grill me on the “French stance on terrorism”. They asked, “Does the French government believe that it is right to just sit back and wait for the terrorists to come to France, or that they should go after them first?” I sat there slack-faced, dumbfounded that in any cultural/political milieu such a question could be seriously posed. This question was serious and of an attitude enforced by a kind of community discourse that I never knew existed. There was a real gulf between us. This I feel more and more in regard to my view of American politics. I am saying nothing other than I vote now (that I have lived in France for almost 10 years) very differently than I did when I lived in the states…community educates (or indoctrinates, depending on your point of view).
Given all that you said, I think that all political distinctions, possibilities, get collapsed into Democratic or Republican ones. On the surface there is the assumption that all “progressives” are democrats of one stripe or another. I do not think that all left wing politicians are really the same, nor right wing. Nader is not a democrat. Nader would have never thought of supporting the war (like the 81 who did) for example!!!!!! Perhaps a more profound public debate platform ought to be considered in order to give these differences some wings and a chance to get off the ground.
Perhaps Nader and his supporters feel that there would be no real progressive movement with some democratic candidates. I felt that to the back teeth with Gore, but not with Obama. There were a lot of complex reasons for my vote, reasons that could not be shelved in order just to get a politician with a “democrat” button in the White house. Perhaps then there is no idealism motivating a presidential campaign for Nader, but a kind of hard-hitting pragmatism that motivates him to run for the white house and citizens to vote for him. He may have to run in order for anything of substance to have the possibility of seeing the light of day from his perspective. This is a matter of vision, some see what Nader sees while others do not. Those who don't can't see why his supporters just don't vote for their candidate, the DEMOCRAT, who has a real chance of winning. If we ought to vote for whomever in the democratic party has the possibility of winning, then we run the risk of getting to debate questions such as, “who looks the most presidential?”
So, given the above, the reason that the use of the critique of kantian ethics does not work here is because you say that a madman is looking for (say) my wife, but I look up confused, because I’m not married. The fact that you assert is real, can be seen otherwise.
Okay. If you can not see a significant difference that matters between Obama and McCain, cast a protest vote for Nader.
However, I'm as dumbfounded by this view as you were with the Bush supporters.
Nader is not even slightly appealing to me, so maybe that's part of the problem.
There is plenty of room for someone like Nader to run for the Democratic nomination, but he knows he can't win a single primary, let alone the general election. So he runs as an independent. He can only play spoiler, and given the importance of the upcoming election, that is beyond detestable to me.
"The mad man" has made this country (and the rest of the world) so much worse off in the last eight years. I am confident that Obama or Clinton could stop the madness, even if, given the views of the American public, they can only move incrementally in a progressive direction.
As for the war, Obama was against the war. And those who voted for it were fed a pack of lies by "the mad man" and his allies. They manipulated intelligence data to gain an unfair advantage. What politician could afford to vote against the war when they were being given intelligence estimates that said that Saddam was manufacturing wmds and had contacts with the Al Qaeda? That's why even Obama, early on, admitted that he didn't know what he'd have actually done if he were being given those intelligence estimates. As it was, he was an Illinois State Senator who was against the war.
As for the French and your discussion with the Bush supporters, I doubt seriously that French officials, given sound intelligence information that said a major terrorist attack was about to occur, would sit idly by and do nothing about it. Police actions, and that's what real counter-terrorism is about, are taken all the time. Sometimes they are taken with the cooperation of other governments and sometimes without. The problem with Bush is that it's all a pretext for going into a war that they wanted to start even before 9/11. The whole "preemptive war" business was a lie.
I do see a huge difference between McCain and Obama. Obama is my candidate and ceratinly not McCain. Did you see McCain's performance on the John Stewart Show (not really a hard hitting news show to be sure, but he literally wilted under the pressure of questions concerning the Iraq war)? But, if one liked Nader more than the others and cast her vote for him, it could be nothing more than casting an honest vote (this perhaps is naive in the grand scheme of electing leaders, but I do not want to say that it necessarily is linked to ideals/idealsm). It is in this kind of case (I THINK) that I am not willing to raise the objection that she is neglecting any moral duty to the rest of us. We need the details of the vote, the context of it and reasons for it, to understand what it amounts to. In some contexts we may well feel obliged. However, it could be a sincere difference in vision. The Muslim and Christian want a lot of the same things (peace, respect for human life and so on). If I disagreed (as a Christian) with some actions by a muslim it would become very delicate and sketchy if I raised my Moral indignation about his moral practices. This CAN be akin to viewing Nader-voters as just sour trouble-making DEMOCRATS-at-heart.
We assume that they are in our camp completely.
Anyway, the reason that I am replying again is that something I said was, as you saw, obviously not right. My Bush-loving buddies actually asked about the French people and what they thought ought to be done about terrorism...go after them in a home country (the famous Bush doctrine), or wait to spoil the attack in France? I said that they asked about the government's position instead, and as you pointed out as obvious, governments do what has to be done (or what they think has to be done) to stop an attack before it happens. For crying out loud, the French government under François Mitterrand (I think) sunk a green peace boat. But in terms of the concepts floating around in the media and in the heads of French people, the Bush doctrine is/was not in the cards. It simply was not thinkable.
Good. Then you won't waste a vote on Nader.
Thanks for referring me to the Stewart discussion with McCain. I didn't know about it, but have now seen it. Stewart's actually harder hitting than the news reporters because he doesn't have to appear to be without an opinion on these matters. He's sharp.
I never meant to imply that the Nader supporter was insincere... just unwise. A sincere vote for Nader instead of Gore in 2000 cost Gore the election over Bush just as much as an insincere vote would have.
And again, it seems to me that the French government would go after terrorists in their "home country" if they're as sane as I think they are. But it would be a police action. They'd try to get the cooperation of the host country. If that didn't work, they'd try to get international cooperation in taking action against the group. As a last resort, some kind of special forces mission might be run without the cooperation of the host country.
George Bush and his closest advisers (Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld) wanted a war, and terrorism was an excuse for one. Launching a full-scale preemptive war against a country on the basis of misrepresented, weak intelligence is the problem. And before this administration did so, I would have thought it to be unthinkable in America as well.
I never intended to suggest that the French would not go after terrorists in their country (I said "home country" in my post and you were right to put it in quotation marks...it has such a shabby, jingoistic, smarmy quality to it, sorry. I just wanted to be clear that many terrorist groups can't really be assigned a nationality because they operate in countries foreign to their own.) before an attack took place in France. They would do what they thought had to be done. I think what you said about the French government's response sounds about right.
A Nader vote may well seem to be unwise. Wisdom has been scarce this decade: a quality lacking in the American public and the administration for sure. Electing Bush twice is a good place to start a list. Many, whom I know, did so merely because of his good ol' boy, "I'm just a simpleton too", personality!
There is of course the stifling of intellectuals who began to raise warning signs about the direction, "tone", of the executive branch right after the terrorist attack in 2001 by the media (and the power structure which buttresses it). I looked into this because when Bush appeared at "ground zero" for the first time I gasped for air. He addressed the workers, and American people, like a high school football coach before the big game against the cross town rivals!! I wanted to know if anyone else was appalled . Indeed, many intellectuals were met with scorn, and accusations of a lack of patriotism, when suggesting that we really needed to be calm, prudent and wise and not react with a "get a rope boys" form of bombast.
There is the organization and point of the Gore campaign also. Neither can we forget the planting of "journalists" in press conferences to lob softball, feel good questions for our elected officials to knock out of the park. Somewhere in an exhaustive list (if that were possible to compile) of unwise decisions one would find government sanctioned torture, kidnapping (aka, "extraordinary rendition") and the ROUTINE humiliation of "detainees"/prisoners of war (as we hear from interviews of several dismissed officers, intelligence analysts and interrogators in Abu Ghraib and elswhere.)
The manifestations of wisdom seem to be bleak indeed. Obama is the brightest form of light that we have, and have seen, for quite some time.
So, as for my voting, as in this post, I have drifted from attention to Nader. Thanks for you patience.
I think that with this last comment, we are in complete agreement. The current administration's actions have been criminal.
The fact that so many Americans can't see that is very disturbing to me. I used to believe that Americans couldn't tolerate this type of behavior. Now, I am concerned that many supporters of Bush have so little concern for the ideals that I thought were endemic to American society. Then again, from the time of the first slaves, to the Trail of Tears, through the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Act, the South of the United States has shown itself time and again to be a thorn in the side of what many of us hold dear. The ideals of civilization are apparently scorned by many who prefer to bully their way through life and support others like themselves.
I am with you one hundred percent. I do not understand the lack of outrage!!! This scares me quite a bit...very unnerving.
I fear intensely that all of this - after the election and HOPEFULLY the removal of the sources of support for this administration - will be forgotten about.
It is the American way (this is not really snotty comment, but fact), to sidestep long drawn out processes to reach a form of justice. That is, to show and explain to the public why X can't be tolerated. This would be uncomfortable for sure (perhaps one reason why dissent wasn't relentless in the media)...people don't want to spend time thinking about what criminals they elected to the white house.
In some of my more desperate moods I am ashamed of the US in this respect. But, as religious people, you and me, we must keep the hope alive!
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