March 16, 2007

A Candidate Who Was Unreasonable

To the Editor:

As we approach Year 5 of the Iraq disaster and Year 7 of uninterrupted glacial melting, lamebrained diplomacy, inequality of Gilded Age proportions, and all-around know-nothing bravado, it takes breathtaking faith to exalt the virtue of Ralph Nader, as Michael Nelson does, echoing a new exoneration film, An Unreasonable Man ("Giving the Left Somewhere to Go," The Chronicle Review, January 26).

To give his fatuous gambit an empirical gloss, Nelson refers to an