That`s 6-foot-4 Ralph Nader striding off the Washington-Chicago flight, carrying a bulging, battered vinyl suitcase, a bundle of manila folders stuffed into a bigger folder, and a New York Times. And when a 5-foot-4 reporter asks if she can give him a hand–she`s reaching for the newspaper–he hands her the suitcase.
It`s not that Nader is not a gentleman, it`s just that he`s on a Mission from God. There`s yet another consumer wrong to be righted–this time it`s an errant airplane ticket–and there`s no time for courtly behavior.
So Nader cuts through O`Hare and heads directly for the Western Airlines ticket counter. His grudge against the carrier is old and deep. He was in Los Angeles several months ago and arrived ”one minute late” for his flight to Washington. ”I never expect airplanes to wait for me,” he says, and this one didn`t. But Nader frothed as he watched airline employees walk on and off the aircraft for the next 15 minutes while they refused to let him board.
Now, you and I might have done a slow burn at such treatment. We might have made a scene. We might have even dashed off a letter to the airline. But Ralph Nader, the crusading consumer advocate who exposed the auto industry from grille to taillights with the publication of ”Unsafe At Any Speed” in 1965, what would he do?
”I spent three hours and shook that company to its foundation,” he says proudly. ”I called the president`s office and asked for a change of policy and an apology and a written letter stating that they would not do that again.” He also wanted Western to ”beg United” to accept his ticket without charging him an additional $250 as they had threatened. Nader got it all.
Today`s emergency centers on a prepaid ticket that was supposed to be picked up in Washington–”I stood in line for 10 minutes at the airport and it didn`t move”–but will have to be picked up in Chicago instead. Nader has been told he will have to pay a $10 surcharge. Western has a better chance of getting him to ride in a Corvair without a seat belt than of squeezing an extra 10 bucks out of him.
”Why are they going to charge me?” he asks indignantly. ”The ticket is in the computer. It shouldn`t matter where I pick it up.” Time and an interview stand still while Nader works it out. Guess what? Western doesn`t charge him! Next to a call from ”60 Minutes,” there`s nothing a company president dreads more than one from Ralph Nader.
To say it`s the principal that counts to Ralph Nader is like saying it`s the men that are important to Elizabeth Taylor. Of course! This is a man who once approached an airline concession stand, dime in hand, to purchase a Baby Ruth. When told that the 10- cent candy bar was 15 cents plus a penny tax, he said, ”Forget it.”
And he`d do the same thing today. ”That`s the way you send a signal,”
he says. But doesn`t he ever just want the candy bar–six cents be damned?
”Not more than I want to send the signal,” he replies. ”Everyone says,
`I haven`t got time for this kind of thing.` But if I haven`t got time, who`s going to straighten these people out?”
Some folks, it is noted, mellow a little as they get older. They don`t sweat the extra six cents on a candy bar, $10 on an airplane ticket. ”Not me,” says Nader. ”That`s a sign of age–mellowing. Who wants to recognize a sign of age?”
At 52, Ralph Nader, with a few signs of age showing around his temples and around his middle–he`s wearing his belt on a new notch–is still going strong. He attacks the world with his usual tunnel vision. He is a man with no small talk. ”Look at that skyline, Ralph!” a reporter orders on the ride into the city as the Loop first looms large in the East. Nader`s head swings left and right. No response. ”Gorgeous day, huh?” ”Very nice.” How can a man enjoy the day or the skyline while cars still don`t have air bags? Nader has been working to make them mandatory for 15 years. He believes he`ll achieve his goal by 1990.
In the course of one seven-hour day in Chicago, part of a promotional tour for his new book ”The Big Boys” (Pantheon Books, $22.95), which contains profiles of nine corporate leaders, he will bring up air bags a minimum of eight times. He will work them into each interview at least once.
Everything is the opportunity for a lesson in responsible citizenship when Nader is around. He climbs into the back of a taxi and fishes for the non-existent seat belt. ”I can never understand why the city doesn`t enforce seat belt laws in taxi cabs,” he says. When his tuna comes on whole wheat bread–not toast, as he had ordered–he harumphs over the ”coercion of the consumer” and foresees the day when supermarkets will sell ”predigested food. They`re geniuses at turning the tongue against the brain at an early age.”
During a 15 minute stop at The Tribune to have his picture taken, he leaves a pamphlet for the ”nuclear-weapons reporter.” While waiting for a clerk at Marshall Field`s to bring him copies of his book to sign, he compares illiteracy in the United States with that in other countries and says that in Denmark, a country of four million, it takes sales of 30,000 to make a book a best-seller. ”Really, Ralph? How interesting.”
Nader has a no-frills attitude toward life. In Kroch`s and Brentano`s, he zips right past Judith Krantz`s ”I`ll Take Manhattan” and Robert Ludlum`s
”The Bourne Supremacy” but stops to browse through ”Making Accounting Policy” by David Solomons. Yet he knows how to give his interviewers just enough charm to sugarcoat the dense 571-page book he`s pushing. He`s worked up some cute lines: The chairman of U.S. Steel, David Roderick, has ”a tough exterior, but inside there beats a heart of steel;” the most powerful tax lobbyist in Washington, Charls Walker, ”has drilled so many loopholes they call him the external revenue service.” Of Dow Chemical he says, ”a lot of Americans who have never heard of Dow, breathe Dow and drink Dow.” Of the current economic climate he quips, ”under Reagan, only small businesses have the freedom to go bankrupt, big businesses go to Washington.”
He`s comfortable sticking to his favorite responses. Every time Channel 11`s John Callaway asks him a personal question, he deflects it. Finally, Callaway calls him on it. ”There isn`t much personal there,” says Nader.
Ralph Nader has never been married. ”My gosh,” he once said, ”you can`t do two things at once.” His publisher has warned reporters not to ask him about where he lives. (In a boarding house.) He knows what his reputation is: ”this dragonslayer–mordant, acerbic, humorless. . .”
He swears the humorless part is not true and is prepared to tell a joke to prove it. He`s been suffering from Bell`s palsy, a temporary facial paralysis, for the last several months, and he can`t move the left side of his face. The joke he selects concerns his infirmity and one of his latest causes, insurance liability reform.
”I have to tell people what`s wrong with me,” he says, ”otherwise, they might think I`ve had too much to drink, so I say, `I`ve got a pinched nerve but it does have its compensations. The insurance industry can`t accuse me of talking out of both sides of my mouth.” Nader laughs heartily. At least the right side of his face does.
In ”The Big Boys,” Nader interviews the heads of some of the country`s most important corporations. He finds them ”a little pathetic,” motivated by ”money, success, and power.” His own motivation is ”trying to improve society. That`s the highest work of human beings on earth.”
It`s also the most time-consuming although he denies he ever worked the hours the press said he did. ”If you hear anyone described as working 18 hours a day, that`s nonsense,” he says. ”There`s no one who works 18 hours a day.” Then how many hours does he work? ”Sixteen. Two shifts.” He takes a few hours off on weekends. He has no time to socialize and has kept senators waiting for lunch dates for up to seven years. He considers his inability to socialize his second worst fault (the first is never being satisfied with anything he does).
”Some people need a lighter environment in which to contemplate things,” he says. He knows if he could lighten up a little he might accomplish more but he can`t. He reads four newspapers a day, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Journal of Commerce; 28 trade magazines a month covering the auto industry, banking, broadcasting, advertising, housing, and technology; and four books a week unrelated to what he`s working on. He spent the July fourth weekend writing an essay for the Washington Post on patriotism.
No barbecues, no boats rides on the Potomac?
”No.”
Doesn`t that sound like fun to you?
”No. When you have a heightened sensitivity to the travails of the world, what is fun to a lot of people just isn`t important enough to be fun, given what you could be doing,” says Nader, and then adds, ”I`m talking about me.”
Are you happy?
”What`s happy? Happiness is applying your ideals.”
What do you do when you want to be good to yourself? Reward yourself?
”I achieve goals. I set subgoals that are achievable. I want to get alar out of apples. It`s a cancer-causing chemical that`s in half the apples we eat. It makes them shiny.”
That`s how you`re good to yourself?
”Yeah, it`s kind of like a hobby.”
Do you know you`re very strange?
”Haven`t you ever heard of monks? Did you ever hear of idiot savants?
Hobby freaks?”
The 20th anniversary of ”Unsafe At Any Speed” last year was the time for a series of where-is-he-now? portraits of Ralph Nader. He`s become less visible. Nader belonged to the `60s and the `70s, when everyone wanted to pull down the system. He was a hero then. When he hosted ”Saturday Night Live” in 1977, the show had its second biggest audience. But the `80s? With its yuppies and Dove Bars and gourmet cat food? He doesn`t fit. Nader dosn`t make the most-admired lists anymore.
For the next 20 years of his life, Ralph Nader has set new goals. He`ll encourage consumers to band together to throw their weight around. ”Let`s face it,” he says, ”economic power is political power.” He envisions a nation-wide chain of citizen-training centers, ”like Arthur Murray dance clinics.” He wants to redefine consumerism on a worldwide basis. ”If we could clean up the drinking water, we could save 2 million children. That`s a consumer issue. It isn`t just K–Mart.” He is a little hurt that when people think of a consumer advocate today, they`re more likely to envision TV`s David Horowitz squeezing the Charmin than Ralph Nader lobbying for air bags. ”It`s become extremely trivialized,” he says.
But he knows no matter what he accomplishes in the future, history will remember him for work he did 20 years ago. ”I`m like Neil Armstrong,” he says. ”He landed on the moon. What do you do for an encore?”
After his Callaway interview, Ralph Nader is back at O`Hare, his righted ticket in the pocket of his shapeless gray suit. There`s a thread hanging off the jacket. His hair looks like it was cut with a pocket knife. His tie is facing East. His socks are worn thin in the heels. His glasses are held together with Scotch tape. He`s on his way to Montana this evening.
While businesses continue to dump their wastes illegally, while the disabled are treated like second class citizens, while cars still don`t have air bags, while there is injustice anywhere, he will not rest.
