Ralph Nader, whose work as a consumer advocate has inspired generations of student activists on college campuses, announced today on NBC News’s Meet the Press that he planned to run for president this year.
In an interview with the show’s host, Tim Russert, Mr. Nader said he would be making a bid for the White House because he sees both the Democratic and Republican Parties as dominated by corporate interests, while many Americans feel “locked out, shut out, marginalized, and disrespected.”
“One feels an obligation, Tim, to try to open the doorways,” he said.
This latest presidential bid is the third for Mr. Nader, 73, who also ran in 2000 in 2004. In 2000, he took 1.6 percent of the vote in the hotly contested race for Florida’s electoral votes, leading many Democrats to blame him for George W. Bush’s narrow victory. When interviewed today, Mr. Nader denied playing a pivotal role in President Bush’s victory, and said, “If the Democrats can’t landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form.”
In 2004, Mr. Nader received just 0.3 percent of the vote nationally. Many political analysts reacted to his announcement today by predicting that his impact on the current race will be limited, especially given the high levels of support Democrats have shown for their party’s two candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
In today’s interview with Mr. Russert, Mr. Nader did not state any positions on education issues, instead stressing how he differed from the other candidates in his willingness to vocally oppose wasteful Pentagon spending and corporate crime and to advocate for labor rights.
In his past campaigns, Mr. Nader has proposed limiting contractual agreements between corporations and college researchers, saying they skew colleges’ priorities and jeopardize academic freedom by forcing researchers to stay mum about their findings for proprietary reasons. He also has argued that the federal government’s research priorities should shift away from military and toward civilian applications.
In other areas, he has accused university agriculture departments of neglecting family farmers, has strongly backed the anti-sweatshop movement on campuses, and has been a harsh critic of the SAT and of states’ high-school exit tests, arguing that they are poor predictors of academic achievement in college.
Mr. Nader led the movement to establish Public Interest Research Groups on campuses during the 1970s. His 2000 campaign had more than 800 campus affiliates.
