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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 7 Num. 52

("Quid coniuratio est?")


RALPH NADER -- 03/24/96


Ralph Nader appeared on Meet The Press (a.k.a. "Meet The Depressed") on March 24, 1996, and was interviewed by Tim Russert.

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TIM RUSSERT:
We're back on Meet The Press. With us now, consumer advocate turned presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Mr. Nader, welcome.

RALPH NADER:
Thank you.

TIM RUSSERT:
Why are you running for president?

RALPH NADER:
Because we're part of a larger and longer-term political movement to build democracy in concrete ways; to strengthen the roles of the voter-citizen, tax-payer, consumer, worker, and shareholder; and to confront, and to give competition to, the two parties: Tweedledum-Tweedledee/Republican-Democrat, which are increasingly, essentially, a party of, by and for big business. The dominance, the supremacy of, these global corporations over our government, over our marketplace, over labor, over consumers, over small businesses through these franchise agreements, is getting completely out of hand, and on a collision course with democracy.

TIM RUSSERT:
Now on Tuesday, voters in California will find your name and the "Green Party". If you become the nominee of the Green Party on Tuesday, will you run as presidential candidate all the way through November?

RALPH NADER:
In all probability.

TIM RUSSERT:
What, what hesitation?

RALPH NADER:
The only... It's up to the Green Party.

TIM RUSSERT:
But as far as Ralph Nader's concerned, you're in the race all the way.

RALPH NADER:
Correct. Unless a lot of "Greens" volunteering all over California aren't in favor of that. But they make the final decision.

TIM RUSSERT:
Now people in the White House will say, "Listen. When it comes to issues, when it comes to the crunch, Bill Clinton has been there. When there was a bill which would limit the stockholders' ability to sue, Bill Clinton vetoed it. Just last week, when there was a bill which would limit product liability, ability of people to sue for defective products, Bill Clinton threatened to veto. Bob Dole would have signed both those bills. And Ralph Nader, if you run, in California, you're gonna drain votes from Bill Clinton and you may elect Bob Dole."

How do you respond?

RALPH NADER:
First of all, those two vetoes were unusually good news from the White House and President Clinton deserves to be commended for [it]. He took on big business contributors to his own campaign and did the right thing by wanting to keep the doorways to the courtroom open for people who've been defrauded or wrongfully injured.

However. In the first 3 years of his tenure, he's been consistently on the side of big business when it's conflicted with labor and consumers. Jerry Jarzinowski(?) of the National Association of Manufacturers said over a year ago to me that he really liked Clinton; that Clinton was strong on businesses' issues like NAFTA and GATT and he was pretty indifferent on issues close to Labor's heart, like raising the minimum wage, labor law reform, etc. What we have seen here is, not only Bill Clinton, but the Democratic Party, with Al Fromme(?) and the Democratic Leadership Council, pushing more into the corporatist "right" and away from the "progressive" wing of the Democratic Party.

And it really is of singular indifference what the impact of this "Green movement" is on Clinton and on Dole: they're perfectly free to adopt the "new democracy" tools, which we call the "Concord principles", that I ran on in a "none of the above" write-in candidacy in New Hampshire in 1992. There's no patent on it!

By the way, of the 6300 write-in votes in New Hampshire in 1992 that I received, 52 percent were Republican, 48 percent were Democrat. I think a lot of the people that are going to vote Green, many of them would've stayed home, and some of them would've been Republican and some of them would've been Democrat.

TIM RUSSERT:
But people are gonna say to you, Ralph Nader: "In the end, this is a real world. Would you prefer to have Bill Clinton, or Bob Dole, sitting in the Oval Office? Because one of those two men are gonna be president."

RALPH NADER:
I would prefer neither, in the "real world."

TIM RUSSERT:
Who would you prefer sitting in the Oval Office?

RALPH NADER:
That's why we're expanding this new political movement! So we get people who rise from a deliberate, established civic confidence in our country; who rise from the grass roots; who know where they come from; who don't just toss their hat in the ring, go to the fat cats, raise money, and say, "I promise you I'll do 'this, this' if you elect me president" -- and then all we see are broken promises.

Our democracy is deteriorating! And it's deteriorating because the political government is increasingly captured by the corporate government.

TIM RUSSERT:
It wouldn't bother you if you woke up in November of '96 and said, "Bill Clinton was not re-elected today because he lost the state of California to Bob Dole. And the reason was: Ralph Nader siphoned off 6 percent of voters who would've voted for Bill Clinton?"

RALPH NADER:
If that happens to Clinton because he refuses to adopt very important campaign finance reform, sponsor initiative referenda recall all over the country, have inserts in various company bills that are being bailed out for illegal monopolies to help consumers voluntarily to join their own consumer action groups, give tax-payers standing to sue the federal government, elect shareholders who own these companies to have some control, including the pension trust -- he deserves it! Because it's so easy to up-end Dole by moving with a vision of a concrete expansion of our democratic tools! Democracy solves problems. It's the best mechanism to solve problems I think ever devised. And democracy brings the best out of people in this country. We've got too many problems we don't deserve, too many solutions we don't apply. It's all open for Bill Clinton to move into that arena and reduce any challenge that comes to him.

TIM RUSSERT:
And if he embraced some of your visions, as you're talking about this morning, you would be then reluctant to challenge him all the way through to November?

RALPH NADER:
Not at all! Politicians always need an opposition that stays to its convictions and holds them to their promises.

[...to be continued...]


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