Nibbling at the Nader Myth

Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader has long been assailed by conservative politicians and officers of corporations that have been gored by his crusading zeal. At the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller made him the target of one of history's most labored puns (he claimed that Candidate Jimmy Carter's appearance at a Nader gathering meant that Carter was trying "to pass himself off as one of the Nader-day saints"). Now the lean, intense folk hero is coming under fire from a few of his former admirers--liberals who applaud his service to a noble cause but deplore the way the myth is altering the man.

Nader's revisionist critics claim that his emotional commitment occasionally overwhelms his acute powers of reasoning. In an unusually vivid public display of bad manners, Nader a month ago fortified that claim. Apparently frustrated by resistance to his pet auto safety device, the inflatable air bag, Nader laced into Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman Jr. during hearings on the subject. The issue "is whether William T. Coleman has the guts to stand up to General Motors and the Ford Motor Company as he had the guts to stand up on civil rights years ago," Nader said bitingly.

Coleman, a black who is regarded as a topnotch Cabinet member and no pushover for the transportation industry, sensed a racial slur in Nader's remarks. Angrily, he termed them "bigoted." He later apologized. Nader did not, and even the Washington Post, a longtime fan, headlined its editorial WINDBAGS AND AIRBAGS.

The burden of the attacks on Nader is that he is something of a tyrant to work for, a lousy administrator, overly secretive and paranoid about his enemies. Some critics suggest, without conclusive evidence, that he lives less ascetically than he claims and that his organizations are wealthier than is indicated by their pitches for funds. Occasionally Nader is also portrayed as a wild-eyed Savonarola intent on forcing his own puritanical concept of the public good on a subservient nation.

Ruth Darmstadter, a former Nader staffer writing in the Washingtonian, charges that "the popular image of a band of 60 to 70 dedicated idealists working in happy concert with Nader is, quite simply, a fiction. When you couple Nader's incompetence as an administrator with the importance of employees remaining in his favor, you have the formula for a poisoned atmosphere." One dramatic expression of that atmosphere was the mysterious, nighttime removal of a personal diary from the office of Ted Jacobs, a high-level Nader associate, who says he was then fired by Nader for "misconduct."

A compleat anti-Nader catalogue has been assembled by David Sanford, former managing editor of the liberal New Republic who once collaborated with Nader on a book (Hot War on the Consumer). In a slim 135-page critique, Me & Ralph, Sanford seems obsessively concerned about his personal problems in editing the prickly Nader's syndicated newspaper column and about Nader's deteriorating relations with the New Republic. Sanford and Nader fell out over these not uncommon editor-author frictions in 1973. Sanford thereupon completed an anti-Nader article for Esquire, but was dissuaded from publishing it by then New Republic Owner Gilbert Harrison, a Nader man. Nader has not talked to Sanford since. He is not likely to do so soon, especially given some of the less than cosmic questions raised by his quondam collaborator:

> Does Nader really live in the house on Washington's Bancroft Place that his brother bought in 1971 for $80,000 rather than in the spartan $85-a-month room he claims as his residence? Sanford found a local resident who says he sees Nader in the neighborhood "at odd hours nearly every day." That is hardly conclusive evidence.

> Did Nader once ride in former New Republic Writer Andrew Kop-kind's convertible without fastening his seat belt? Apparently so.

> Did Nader jump into Washington Lawyer Simon Lazarus' Corvair after a party, then warn the attorney not to mention that Lazarus had been stopped by a cop for exceeding the speed limit because Nader feared the headline: RALPH NADER CAUGHT SPEEDING IN CORVAIR? Undoubtedly he did.

Sanford's point is that Nader needlessly either denies or tries to conceal such trivialities out of his obsession with protecting the myth of an unblemished David in mortal combat with a corrupt Goliath.

More substantively, Sanford contends that Nader is as secretive about the finances of his consumer groups as are the corporations he repeatedly attacks. Nader does, for example, refuse to divulge the names of all contributors to his causes, contending he does not want them harassed. Sanford further claims, convincingly, that despite Nader's poor-mouthing, his major lobbying organization, Public Citizen Inc., had a net worth of $1.3 million as of 1974, the date of its most recent public report.

Although it is often catty and petty, Sanford's book nevertheless does seem to have a point about one of Nader's fund-raising tactics: the Public Interest Research Groups raise money on many college campuses through an automatic fee that all students must pay, applying for a refund if they do not wish to be assessed. Yet Nader has sharply assailed the practice of book clubs that send volumes monthly to members unless they ask the clubs in writing not to do so.

Sanford does concede that Nader has made an invaluable contribution to U.S. society. But, he quickly adds, "he's become arrogant and self-important. You cannot be the sixth, or whatever, most admired man in the world, receiving the mail that he does and the press attention he gets, without being changed by it."

Nader dismisses the Sanford book as "a consumer fraud." Connecticut's Democratic Senator Abe Ribicoff, whose subcommittee hearings on auto safety first thrust Nader into prominence, offers a more eloquent rebuttal. "I read that people are kicking Ralph Nader around," Ribicoff told TIME. "He's still a man of great influence. He's got integrity. He takes on causes that very few people want to take on. They are all controversial. He's right some of the time. He's wrong some. But he's willing to take them on."

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