Opinion/Mark Steyn: Of all the many meaningless election polls around at the moment, the one that tickled my fancy was an Associated Press thing from Friday. Here's the score: Bush 46 per cent, Kerry 45 per cent, Nader 6 per cent.
That's Nader, as in Ralph, the gadfly consumer advocate and declared "independent" presidential candidate. In the 2000 election, he got 3 per cent, which embittered Democrats say was enough to throw the election to Bush. Well, some of the embittered Dems say that. The really embittered ones say Bush got his poppa's judges on the Supreme Court to throw the election to him. But the point is, if 3 per cent for Ralph Nader was enough to throw a close election to Bush, 6 per cent will be enough to throw him a landslide.
That 6 per cent ranking notwithstanding, Nader's a little short of visible supporters this time round, particularly when it comes to leftie celebrities. Horrified by the last four years, the big-time Nader backers of 2000 are now running cease-and-desist anti-Nader campaigns with names like "No, Ralph, No", which sounds like a demure Democratic Party heroine squealing as the moustache-twirling Nader ties her to the tracks so that the Bush juggernaut can roll over her one more time.
This year, the Democrats have a tough, forceful candidate with a strong message: as John Kerry is wont to say, often and slowly, "I'm on your side against the powerful special interests that control the Republican Party." And the Dems don't want this message getting all muddled up with Ralph's message: "I'm on your side against the powerful special interests that control the Democratic Party."
Announcing his candidacy, Mr Nader accused the Democrats of being "too indentured to corporations" and being a "corporate paymaster minion". Last time round, he dismissed Governor Bush as "a corporation disguised as a human".
This time round, John Kerry is a corporation disguised as an anti-corporate human. The senator is a mass of contradictions: he voted to support the war but against funding the troops. Which he says means he was against the war but does support the troops.
To a certain type of Democrat, this is proof of how much more sophisticated Senator Kerry is: as the New York Times says approvingly, "he understands the nuances". But party chairman Terry McAuliffe and other operatives fret that his phony-baloney, strictly-showbiz populism might look like thin gruel alongside the more or less genuine Nader version.
They worry that Howard Dean has fired up a lot of young idealists who'll find demagogic equivocation too subtle a concept but might be moved by the retro chic of the elderly crusader.
He speaks to their youthful idealism. His entire foreign policy consists of a pledge to "support workers and peasants for a change instead of dictatorships". He's the only candidate still using the word "peasants" in a romantic, Marxist-Leninist sense. Unlike Kerry, Nader's demagoguery has a certain epic quality (Europe has "eliminated poverty").
And, of course, lurking in the Democrats' darkest nightmare is the spectre of November 2000. Mr Nader angrily denies he's a spoiler, claiming that what he brings to the election are groups who wouldn't normally vote. That's true. In a normal election, the Supreme Court wouldn't have wound up voting, but, thanks to Ralph's showing in Florida, they did.
The one-man third rail of American politics insisted last time that at least a quarter of his supporters were Republican. On the face it, taxing every stock transaction and doubling the minimum wage don't seem very Republican positions. But I've spoken to one Republican and two Democrats about Nader, and the Republican is the only one who's voting for him. He's my New Hampshire neighbour, he's a conservative, and he's annoyed at excessive homeland security regulation of his maple-syrup business. Seriously. The Feds are concerned the sap lines could be poisoned by terrorists. He thinks the choice this autumn is between unified government (i.e., a Republican White House and Congress) and divided government, and he believes in the latter because nothing gets done, and the best way to shut Washington down would be to elect President Nader and a Republican Congress. And, even if he doesn't get elected, if enough small-government conservatives think as tactically as him, they'll throw the White House to President Kerry, which would work almost as well.
The Democrat thesis goes like this: John Kerry surged when he had Howard Dean frothing alongside him and, by comparison, the Massachusetts droner looked like Mister Electable. Now the Vermonster's gone and the perception of Senator Kerry is in danger of reverting to the pompous, thin-skinned weathervane trimmer of a year ago.
What he needs is a Dean figure for the general election so he can intone portentously, "I reject both the extreme right-wing politics of George W. Bush and the extreme left-wing politics of Ralph Nader. In this election, I am the moderate, mainstream, centrist candidate." This sounds reasonable as a general proposition, but a little more problematic once you get specific: "Mr Bush supported the war in Iraq, Mr Nader opposed it. I'm the only candidate who's shown the bold leadership to support and oppose it, in both cases ineffectually. Mr Bush opposes gay marriage. Mr Nader supports it. I'm the only candidate with the courage to oppose it but not so much that I'll do anything about it. No, hang on, that's my position on Saddam. But the point is, sometimes real leadership means having the courage not to have any courage."
If I were the president, I'd call the Democrats' bluff on that one and demand Nader's presence in every debate.
I'm with Ralph to that extent: more choice is good. And the minimum choice Americans are entitled to this November is a chance to vote for a pro-war candidate and an anti-war candidate. Bush is the pro-war guy. Kerry is attempting an artful straddle of those who are explicitly anti-war and those who are just weary of the whole thing and would like to go back to the fluffy cocoon of Clinton-era touchy-feely micro-politics. That doesn't seem fair. With Bush, Nader and Kerry on the ticket, the warmongers, peaceniks and somnambulants will all have a candidate.
May the best man win, though by a wider margin than last time.