OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2000, page 15

Year 2000 Elections

Disgruntled Democrats

Though Arab-American, Ralph Nader’s Foreign Policy Views Remain Somewhat Of an Enigma

By Mitchell Kaidy

It has never happened before in American presidential electoral politics. I’m not alluding to the vice presidential candidacy of Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, although that obviously is a first as well.

I’m anticipating the prospect of the first Arab-American to be considered a serious presidential candidate—Ralph Nader.

Almost alone, Nader virtually invented consumerism in the United States and throughout the world. Moreover, his positions on economics, consumer safety, international trade and workers rights are in line with many Americans’ views and have made him an icon of personal probity and independence.

But so far as anyone knows, Nader has never articulated broad views on foreign policy. And unlike a candidate such as Sen. Joe Lieberman, who dotes and prospers on his religious faith, Nader dreads revealing personal matters such as his religious (if any) or his ethnic roots.

At a Public Citizen convention I attended in Washington a few years ago, the lid was lifted slightly when Nader’s mother spoke of his upbringing in Connecticut. He was raised in a Christian Lebanese family. But that discussion was before a select—and limited—audience of his supporters; Nader has rarely referred to such matters in his speeches and writing.

However, it is not Nader’s Lebanese ethnicity or his Christian background that are paramount. If he is to be taken seriously as a presidential contender, he must demonstrate informed and balanced positions on foreign affairs—especially about the Arab-Israeli powder keg in the Middle East. Is he apprehensive that, should he advance a policy statement, he then might be demonized as an Arab terrorist by America’s pro-Zionist media?

Such an eventuality is not inconceivable. So far, the media haven’t probed for, and Nader hasn’t volunteered, major foreign policy positions. And, because he has chosen to campaign almost exclusively on domestic issues, he should pray that he’ll not wind up debating the major candidates in nationwide broadcasts, in which he has insisted he should be included. If that were to happen, Nader would have to morph into an overnight expert on foreign issues that he consistently has avoided.

Though I’ll vote for Nader on the Green Party line in November, I must acknowledge that his chance of winning is minuscule. I have voted for every Democratic candidate for president since 1952, and most of them have won. But with the rise of third parties since Ross Perot, I see the Nader candidacy as promoting broader citizen participation and setting an important precedent in opening up the exclusionary political system to a member of a reviled and demonized minority.

So there won’t be any automatic vote for the Democrats from me this year. Voting for Ralph Nader will accomplish a number of goals: it will make third parties more credible; advance new ideas and positions into the national debate; promote peace in the world; and, most important, symbolically reject the anti-Arabism of the Al Gore/Joe Lieberman ticket and its militaristic approach to the rest of the world.

There is, however, a price to pay. In voting for Ralph Nader I have to acknowledge that, as a lifelong Democrat, I’m going to cast, in effect, a vote for George W. Bush. Will he be any freer of hard-line Zionist domination than Al Gore? I can only hope and dream that he will be.

A journalist, Mitchell Kaidy campaigned for Congress through the 1982 and 1984 primary elections in New York’s 28th congressional district.