Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is an American lawyer and political activist involved in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. He is a perennial presidential candidate. His 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed, which criticized the automotive industry for its safety record, helped lead to the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966.
The son of Lebanese immigrants to the United States, Nader attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School. He quickly developed an interest in vehicle designs that were hazardous and contributed to elevated levels of car accidents and fatalities. Published in 1965, Unsafe at Any Speed became a highly influential critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers, focusing on General Motors' Corvair automobile in particular.
Following the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader led a group of volunteer law students—dubbed "Nader's Raiders"—in an investigation of the Federal Trade Commission, leading directly to that agency's overhaul and reform. In the 1970s, Nader leveraged his growing popularity to establish a number of advocacy and watchdog groups including the Public Interest Research Group, the Center for Auto Safety, and Public Citizen. Two of Nader's most notable targets were the Chevy Corvair and the Ford Pinto.
Nader made four bids to become President of the United States, running with the Green Party in 1996 and 2000 and as an independent in 2004 and 2008. In each campaign, Nader said he sought to highlight under-reported issues and a perceived need for electoral reform. He won nearly three million votes at the 2000 United States presidential election, but there were allegations that his campaign that year helped Republican candidate George W. Bush win a close election against Democratic candidate Al Gore. In 2006, The Atlantic Monthly, calling Nader one of the hundred most influential Americans in history, said: "He made the cars we drive safer; thirty years later, he made George W. Bush the president."
A two-time Nieman Fellow, Nader is the author or co-author of more than two dozen books and was the subject of a documentary film on his life and work, An Unreasonable Man, which debuted at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. He has been repeatedly named to lists of the "100 Most Influential Americans", including those published by the magazines Life, Time, and The Atlantic. He was described by The New York Times as a "dissident".
Early life and education
Ralph Nader was born on February 27, 1934, in Winsted, Connecticut, to Rose and Nathra Nader, both of whom were Antiochian Greek Christian immigrants from Mount Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley in Southeastern Lebanon. After settling in Connecticut, Nathra Nader worked in a textile mill before opening a bakery and restaurant. Ralph Nader occasionally helped at his father's restaurant; he also worked as a newspaper delivery boy for the local paper, the Winsted Register Citizen. Nader graduated from The Gilbert School in 1951, going on to attend Princeton University. Though he was offered a scholarship to Princeton, his father forced him to decline it on the grounds that the family was able to pay Nader's tuition and the funds should go to a student who could not afford it. Nader graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1955 after completing a senior thesis titled "Lebanese Agriculture".After graduating from Princeton, Nader enrolled at Harvard Law School, though he quickly became bored by his courses. While at Harvard, Nader would frequently skip classes to hitchhike across the U.S. where he would engage in field research on Native American issues and migrant worker rights. He earned a Bachelor of Laws from Harvard in 1958. Nader identified with libertarian philosophy in his youth, but gradually shifted away in his early 20s. Although Nader acknowledged that he "didn't like public housing because it disadvantaged landlords unfairly", his viewpoint changed when he "saw the slums and what landlords did". After graduating from Harvard, Nader served in the U.S. Army as a cook and was posted to Fort Dix.
Career
Early history
In 1959, Nader was admitted to the bar and began practice as a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut, while also lecturing at the University of Hartford and traveling to the Soviet Union, Chile, and Cuba, where he filed dispatches for the Christian Science Monitor and The Nation. In 1964, he moved to Washington, D.C., taking a position as a consultant to Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan.''Unsafe at Any Speed''
Nader gained national attention with the 1965 publication of his journalistic exposé Unsafe at Any Speed. The book, critical of the automotive industry, argued that many American automobiles were generally unsafe to operate. For the book, Nader researched case files from more than a hundred lawsuits then pending against General Motors' Chevrolet Corvair to support his assertions.The book became an immediate bestseller, but also prompted a backlash from General Motors, which attempted to discredit Nader. GM tapped Nader's phone in an attempt to obtain salacious information and, when that failed, GM hired prostitutes in an attempt to catch him in a compromising situation. Nader, by then working as an unpaid consultant to United States Senator Abe Ribicoff, reported to the senator that he suspected he was being followed. Ribicoff convened an inquiry that called GM CEO James Roche who admitted, when placed under oath, that the company had hired a private detective agency to investigate Nader. Nader sued GM for invasion of privacy, settling the case for $425,000 and using the proceeds to found the activist organization known as the Center for the Study of Responsive Law.
A year following the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, Congress unanimously enacted the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John William McCormack said the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act was brought about by the "crusading spirit of one individual who believed he could do something: Ralph Nader".
"Nader's Raiders", Public Citizen and Center for Auto Safety
In 1968, Nader recruited seven volunteer law students, dubbed "Nader's Raiders" by the Washington press corps, to evaluate the efficacy and operation of the Federal Trade Commission. The group's ensuing report, which criticized the body as "ineffective" and "passive" led to an American Bar Association investigation of the FTC. Based on the results of that second study, Richard Nixon revitalized the agency and sent it on a path of vigorous consumer protection and antitrust enforcement for the rest of the 1970s.Nader's Raiders became involved in such issues as nuclear safety, international trade, regulation of insecticides, meat processing, pension reform, land use, and banking.
Following the publication of the report, Nader founded the watchdog group Public Citizen in 1971 to engage in public interest lobbying and activism on issues of consumer rights. He also served on its board of directors until 1980.
Nader founded the Center for Auto Safety, which for 40 years, published an annual guide on new car safety ratings, preventative maintenance and repair costs, fuel economy, insurance costs, warranty coverage, and complaints: "The Car Book".
1970s–1990s
By the early 1970s Nader had established himself as a household name. In a critical memo written by Lewis Powell to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Powell warned business representatives that Nader "has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans".Ralph Nader's name appeared in the press as a potential candidate for president for the first time in 1971, when he was offered the opportunity to run as the presidential candidate for the New Party, a progressive split-off from the Democratic Party. Chief among his advocates was author Gore Vidal, who touted a 1972 Nader presidential campaign in a front-page article in Esquire magazine in 1971. Nader declined the advances.
In 1973, Ralph Nader was plaintiff in the case against acting attorney general Robert Bork, who under orders of President Richard Nixon had fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, an action that was ultimately ruled illegal by federal judge Gerhard Gesell.
In 1974, Nader received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen.
In the 1970s, Nader turned his attention to environmental activism, becoming a key leader in the antinuclear power movement, described by one observer as the "titular head of opposition to nuclear energy". The Critical Mass Energy Project was formed by Nader in 1974 as a national anti-nuclear umbrella group, growing to become the largest national anti-nuclear group in the United States, with several hundred local affiliates and an estimated 200,000 supporters. The organization's main efforts were directed at lobbying activities and providing local groups with scientific and other resources to campaign against nuclear power.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, through his ongoing work with Public Citizen, Nader continued to be involved in issues of consumer rights and public accountability. His work testifying before Congress, drafting model legislation, and organizing citizen letter-writing and protest efforts, earned him direct credit for the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Clean Water Act, Consumer Product Safety Act, and Whistleblower Protection Act.
Nader testified in the 1994 hearings for the nomination of Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court, arguing against Breyer's confirmation. He criticized Breyer's record on antitrust law.
In the late 1990s, Nader accused Microsoft of being a monopoly and organized a conference featuring Microsoft's critics from the tech world.
In 1999, Nader was unsuccessfully approached by Nike to appear in an advertisement. The firm offered Nader $25,000 to say "another shameless attempt by Nike to sell shoes" while holding Air 120 sneakers. After Nader turned down the offer, the corporation hired filmmaker Spike Lee.