Ralph and Pat: A Voter's Guide

By Michael Kinsley

Now, I don't mean to brag. Well, of course, I really do mean to brag. After all, few Americans outside Iowa and New Hampshire have met even one presidential candidate. By contrast, I am fortunate enough to have worked closely over several years with two of them. As the race gets serious and the fringe candidates fade away, this amazing coincidence gives me a unique perspective on the question all Americans will soon have to face: Nader or Buchanan?

There are those who say this choice is unsatisfactory. They plan to stay home on Election Day or cast a protest vote for Al Gore or George W. Bush. But that is taking the easy way out. Serious citizens will study the serious candidates and make a serious choice. Both men proved their seriousness this week. The Federal Election Commission ruled that Buchanan is entitled to the Reform Party's $12.6 million in matching funds, which makes him one of the nation's larger welfare mothers. And a federal judge ruled that Nader may continue running a TV commercial that parodies those of MasterCard. Given the continuing controversies over Gore's fund raising and Bush's commercials, it is obvious which are the two serious candidates.

You might think the choice should be easy. If you favor strict federal regulation of how much milk you may put on your cereal in the morning, vote for Ralph. If you favor the death penalty for anyone referring to Reagan National Airport as National Airport, vote for Pat. But the differences between the two are not as great as they seem.

Consider leadership, the most essential quality for a President. In the early '90s, with time off (for him) to run for President, Buchanan and I were co-hosts of the CNN program Crossfire. A mentally handicapped friend of mine was a big fan of the show. (Don't snort. O.K., go ahead and snort.) My friend can't begin to comprehend a talk-show discussion, but his lack of comprehension allows him to see the underlying social dynamic more clearly than those of us whose vision is fogged by understanding. He said to me once, "Mike, is that guy Pat your boss?" And what is leadership if not bossiness? Buchanan is bossy.

Nader has often been called bossy as well. And he actually was my boss for several years in the 1970s. It's a different kind of bossiness--more an insistence that you see reason and therefore give up all frivolous pleasures in life and less a brutal demand that you bend to his will. But I have seen Nader convince a roomful of young adults, albeit briefly in most cases, that they want to dedicate their lives to irritating others for the general good. Whereas Buchanan's general approach is to aggravate the irritations you are feeling about others.

Politically, also, there are weird similarities. Pat evolved during our Crossfire years from a free trader to a protectionist and from a Reaganite internationalist to an America First isolationist. Styling himself the tribune of the workingman has led him down other paths that even he probably finds surprising. If it were anyone else, you'd say his views have become more complex and subtle, even tentative. But Pat manages to retain the certitude of simplicity even as his opinions evolve.

Nader's politics have changed over the years in a different way. In his early days, he disappointed many admirers by refusing to take an active stance against the Vietnam War for fear of reducing his effectiveness as a consumer advocate. In fact, he was thought of as somewhat apolitical, and the very notion of consumer advocacy was regarded by many on the left (and there were indeed many on the left back then) as an antipolitical elevation of trivial, bourgeois concerns. Seat belts? C'mon, there's a war going on.

Now Ralph takes positions on all issues, and they add up to a fairly conventional left-populist world view. But that bizarrely puts him and Buchanan in just about the same place on, for example, the evils of multinational corporations.

In running for political office, Nader is also answering the most important complaint about his previous modus operandi--an overreliance on lawyers and lawsuits. Important social-policy decisions should be made by the voters and their representatives, not by unelected judges. So now Ralph is saying, with Buchananesque bravura: You want the voters to decide? O.K., bring 'em on.

And what about "character"? Which is American democracy's way of saying, "Please give us some dirt about their private lives." The answer is "Good luck finding any." Meaning not just any dirt but any private lives. One more thing Ralph and Pat have in common is that both are consummate public men, dedicated to causes. Their inner (or even private social) lives, if they exist, are buried deep. In all the years of professional proximity, I've had exactly one purely social meal with each of them. (Not together, needless to say.) That's too bad, because despite Ralph's austere image and Pat's snarly one, they're both strangely good company and great talkers.

The debates should be terrific--if those two other guys don't get in the way.

Michael Kinsley is the editor of Slate.com