First, we pass Sept. 11. Then the inauguration of George W. Bush. Then the crazy Florida recount. And finally, we arrive at a time that seems far more distant than it actually is: Sept. 23, 2000.

On that day, Nader drew 8,000 paying supporters to Seattle's KeyArena for an enthusiastic rally in support of his Green Party presidential bid. He was on a roll, having drawn 10,000 people in Portland the month before and 12,000 in Minneapolis the previous day. The loud Seattle crowd was a sign that Nader's rebellious third-party run had momentum.

It is such moments of pride that Nader refers to frequently in his new book, "Crashing the Party — How to Tell the Truth and Still Run for President," which he will be promoting tomorrow evening at an appearance at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. The book tells a story whose ending everyone already knows: Nader managed to get only 2.74 percent of the national popular vote in the 2000 election, Bush won and Nader was accused of stealing votes from Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore.

Pockets of support

But in running, Nader also put the Greens on the American political map and showed he had pockets of support in places such as Washington, where he received 4 percent of the statewide vote. He got 4.7 percent in King County.

That means quite a few people around these parts are probably interested in hearing Nader's take on the race, and judging from the length of his book alone — 368 pages, including 11 appendices and a list of suggested readings — he's got a lot to tell them.

The 67-year-old Nader, speaking by phone recently from another stop on his national book tour, said among the purposes of writing the book "was to give people the sense, historically and otherwise, of how rigged the political system is and what it takes for the people to change it."

"It wasn't just a memoir," he added. "It's sort of a contemporary history of what third parties have to go through."

Nader is most bitter about what he believes was inadequate campaign coverage from the mainstream media, accusations that he stole the 2000 election from Gore, and his exclusion from the presidential debates.

It's that last obstacle that upsets him most. Nader was not allowed to participate in the debates because the organization that sponsors them, the Commission on Presidential Debates, declared in January 2000 that a candidate had to have at least a 15 percent average of support in five major polls in order to get into the debates. In his book, Nader describes this rule as creating "an intentional catch-22."

All the polling companies the commission chose were owned by major, mainstream media outlets. But the major media outlets, Nader writes, barely covered third-party campaigns. Therefore, he said, third-party candidates such as he had a hard time rising in the polls, and the media companies used his low poll numbers to justify not covering him in the first place.

Nader directs most of his ire at the commission and says he plans to take it on in the same manner that he famously took on American automakers with his exposes of lax safety standards and his 1965 book, "Unsafe at Any Speed."

"First of all, we're investigating them," he says of the debates commission. "We're gonna lay it on the line. By the time we're done with them they won't have the reputation of a bad used-car dealer."

A 'people's commission'

He also wants to create a "People's Presidential Debate Commission" that would work with the national media to create more open debates. If the media don't go along with the idea, he said, "it just shows you that they are basically entrenching a two-party-controlled gateway to tens of millions of voters."

His limited access to the television "gateway" during his campaign, despite the fact that he says he drew crowds larger than either major presidential candidate drew outside of their nominating conventions, is another source of dismay for Nader.

As he was putting on his rallies, he said, "one day it sort of popped into my head that here I am campaigning as no other candidate that year ... before the largest arena-filled audiences, and all I was essentially doing was reaching 1½ percent of the voters and begging the media to convey my message to the other 98 percent of the voters."

All this difficulty that a third-party candidate has in reaching the American people, he said, "is an extremely serious development that would have prevented many of our finest presidents from having a chance at the voters in the past."

Fighting terrorism

Although his 2000 campaign focused almost exclusively on domestic issues, Nader said he could have handled the challenges in international relations and security that Bush faces. To begin with, he said, the Sept. 11 attacks "wouldn't have happened if I had been president" because the hijackers wouldn't have been able to get into the cockpits of the hijacked planes.

"We have been for 30 years pushing the airlines to do what some foreign countries have been doing, which is toughening the cockpit doorways and latches," he said. "That's what happens when you don't regulate. Not enough attention is being paid to the airline's resistance to these proposals year after year after year and the way they own the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration)."

Now, he says, "we've embarked on a move that is burning a haystack down in order to find some needles. We haven't found the needles but thousands of Afghans have suffered terribly and many have died."

"We have a one-track president who is high in the polls and is not paying attention to domestic problems and injustices as he asserts the role of a west Texas sheriff and talks about 'gettin 'em' and 'smoking 'em out.' Not even Nixon would talk that way."

In other words, as Nader prepares to return to Seattle he is feeling as prickly and contrarian as ever. He said he hopes his new book will serve as an inspiration to expand Green efforts from college campuses to legislatures, as well as to remind people that "cynicism and withdrawal are not options."

Could the book also serve to maintain momentum for another Nader presidential bid with the Greens in 2004?

"It could serve that purpose, couldn't it?" he says. "A book is a many-splendored thing."

Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company

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