Difference between revisions of "Ralph Nader"
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| − | '''Ralph Nader''' (born February 27, 1934) is a [[liberal]] politician and pundit. He ran unsuccessfully for President of the United States in 1996, 2000, and 2004. | + | '''Ralph Nader''' (born February 27, 1934) is a [[liberal]] politician and pundit. He ran unsuccessfully for President of the United States in 1996, 2000, and 2004. |
==Unsafe at Any Speed== | ==Unsafe at Any Speed== | ||
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Nader sued GM and won $425,000, which he used to found liberal activist organizations that helped push through a staggering series of consumer and environmental reforms, most of them in the late 1960s and early 1970s. | Nader sued GM and won $425,000, which he used to found liberal activist organizations that helped push through a staggering series of consumer and environmental reforms, most of them in the late 1960s and early 1970s. | ||
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| + | ==Presidential candidacy== | ||
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| + | Nader's most successful run for President was in 2000, when, as the Green Party's nominee, he garnered 2.7% of the vote, and was blamed by many liberals for the loss of [[Al Gore]] to [[George W. Bush]], the reasoning being that most of the people who voted for him would have preferred Gore to Bush, and that thus Nader's candidacy may have tipped the election in Bush's favor. [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0626-04.htm] | ||
Revision as of 21:19, May 8, 2007
Ralph Nader (born February 27, 1934) is a liberal politician and pundit. He ran unsuccessfully for President of the United States in 1996, 2000, and 2004.
Unsafe at Any Speed
Nader's 1965 publication, Unsafe at Any Speed was an expose of the safety features of the Chevy Corvair. Nader's campaign against the Corvair showed that he believed not only that the Corvair was dangerous but that General Motors (GM) knew it was. Nader convinced liberal Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff into investigating whether GM had lied about what it knew in testimony before Congress. Nader alleged that he had inside sources and documents that would reveal this conspiracy. Ribicoff assigned staff to the case, and they spent two years chasing down Nader's leads. None of them panned out. The investigators found no evidence that GM knew of the Corvair's safety flaws.[Citation Needed] The failure to confirm Nader's suspicions enraged him. "He could not let go of the Corvair issue," one of the staffers would later say. "He was fixated. And, if you didn't accept or believe the same things he did, you were either stupid or venal."[Citation Needed]
In 1971, Nader pressured one of his associates, Lowell Dodge, to doctor his study Small on Safety: The Designed-in Dangers of the Volkswagen.[Citation Needed] Nader insisted that Dodge rewrite the conclusion of the study so that it began, "The Volkswagen is the most hazardous car in use in significant numbers in the U.S. today." Objecting that "the conclusion is not reflected in the data," Dodge left the project, allowing others to take credit as principal authors. "I have always carried around considerable guilt about what I regard as the extreme intellectual dishonesty of that conclusion," he later concluded.[Citation Needed]
Nader sued GM and won $425,000, which he used to found liberal activist organizations that helped push through a staggering series of consumer and environmental reforms, most of them in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Presidential candidacy
Nader's most successful run for President was in 2000, when, as the Green Party's nominee, he garnered 2.7% of the vote, and was blamed by many liberals for the loss of Al Gore to George W. Bush, the reasoning being that most of the people who voted for him would have preferred Gore to Bush, and that thus Nader's candidacy may have tipped the election in Bush's favor. [1]