When he closes his eyes at night, what does Ralph Nader—consumer advocate and Al Gore killer—dream about? Maui, it seems—a lush veranda with breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean. But in Nader’s fantasy, perhaps only in Nader’s fantasty, there’s no palm fronds, no poolside umbrella drinks, no bathing beauties. What he does dream of: a gathering of more than a dozen aging men, mostly white, and all super rich.
There’s Warren Buffett, the investor genius, leading a discussion with a Cherry Coke in hand. There’s Paul Newman, miraculously risen from the dead, toasting Buffett with a glass of Newman’s Own Lemonade, naturally. Over there is Ted Turner, George Soros, Bill Gates’s dad. Barry Diller, owner of The Daily Beast’s parent company, is also nearby. Adding an air of foreboding, Yoko Ono has joined the crowd, as has Ross Perot. All them, plus a few other leaders of the universe, live in Nader’s mind, plotting to save the world.
“People are demoralized. This is moral uplift. This goes into fantasies, not exactly romance novel type stuff, but it does lift people up.”
That’s the dream scene laid out in the erstwhile presidential candidate’s new book out Tuesday, called Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!
Nader’s aim is to smuggle his policy proposals into prose, hiding the pill of his prescriptions in a pudding of fiction. He describes the possible schemes of aging corporate pooh-bahs who turn into revolutionaries. It does take a certain talent to take Paul Newman and present the actor without a scintilla of excitement. The resurrected Cool Hand Luke tells his fellow super-rich, “You know, this reminds me of William James’ phrase ‘the moral equivalent of war.’”
Back in 2005, Nader fired up his Underwood Standard typewriter to begin turning this fantasy into a book. He’d write any time he got the chance. His inspiration for the book was earlier accounts of social utopias, particularly Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, which Nader would remind you sold a million copies and helped jump-start the Progressive Era.
But, Nader told The Daily Beast, people have stopped writing utopian works, what he calls “political science fiction.” The reason, he said, is the same reason President Barack Obama’s health-care plan is flagging—a lack of vision.
“Look at the health-care debate,” Nader said Monday, speaking from his office at his D.C. think tank. “Look at how it’s imploding. It lacks the vision of what it should be. Obama can go on television all he wants but it is not going to change people’s minds. He doesn’t have a horizon.”
“You can’t aspire to something if you don’t imagine it,” Nader said.
Nader said he hopes his imagination of what elderly, wealthy, and enlightened moguls could do if they became goo-goo crusaders would catch the imagination of readers as well.
“You can’t do that with a nonfiction book,” Nader said. “Fifteen policy recommendations make people very drowsy.”
Nader said he found certain features of his book, particularly the introduction of a parrot, Patriotic Polly, as a national television star, funny.
“In some ways, it is hilarious,” Nader said.
But the book is long. It takes Nader 733 pages to tell his story. Does he think that people will finish it?
• Take The Daily Beast’s political novelist quiz: Can you match the politicos to their prose?“I don’t know. They read huge novels. The book on Rumsfeld that just came out is 100 pages longer. This one is big print. It could have come in at 600 pages, but I didn’t want small print. If they give themselves a chance and start getting into it, they will stick to it.”
Nader is still unhappy with the way business is done in Washington—singling out Obama’s abandoning the goal of getting a single-payer health-care system and how the finance system continues to resist regulation.
Americans are in need of a little uplift these days—the kind, Nader said, his book can provide.
“People are demoralized. This is moral uplift. This goes into fantasies, not exactly romance novel type stuff, but it does lift people up.”
Nader said it was “too early to say” whether he would run again for the White House in 2012.
“I would like to give other people a chance,” he said.
Like who?
“If you get a billionaire running like [New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg, yes, I would like him to run. I want more multiparty candidates….I think that’s how the three-party race is going to occur, with an enlightened billionaire…If Bloomberg runs, he gets instant credibility.”
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Samuel P. Jacobs is a staff reporter at The Daily Beast. He has also written for The Boston Globe, The New York Observer, and The New Republic Online.
