Me and Ralph

...For some time Sanford had been trying to get hold of an audit of Nader's organizations, at one point promised by Nader but never released (again, Sanford suggests that Nader has been keeping donations for his own use but he does not prove this, either...

...It looks like tit-for.tat in other words, a retaliatory request no doubt initiated by Nader, although once again Sanford doesn't prove it...

...American business now has the opportunity to form alliances with millions of pensioners and older workers, who, in order to protect the security of their retirement assets, will want to guard against inflation and make sure that economic productivity advances...

...But there were good reasons why no one would buy New York bonds, and Drucker argues that the pension fund managers violated their trusteeship by making such unsound investments...

...My God, there was this fellow in Washington who still believed in something, who worked at it so hard that he didn't even have time to date, who was going to save the country from the big corporations, and he badly needed converts--helpers who would have to work hard in his crusade if they were to prevent the corporations from taking over America...

...It's very much as though Sanford went after Nader in the same spirit as that General Motors detective who did so much to put Nader on the map...

...I see him coming and going at odd hours nearly every day...

...Hard work, tiny pay, long hours, and Nader will be on your back almost every minute of the day...

...But as Drucker never tires of pointing out in all his books, scientific and innovative management has successfully handled problems that were thought insoluble: in particular, at the end of the nineteenth century, it put clown the flames of what seemed to be unavoidable class war...

...Nevertheless, Sanford's book is an interesting effort: brief, well written, undeniably an entertaining read for anyone not actually on the Nader payroll nor dedicated to the immediate overthrow of capitalism...

...Nader is, just as much as the chairman of GM...

...Then there's the episode of the Suspicious Caller...

...Similarly, I imagine, this book may do little more than enhance Nader's reputation...

...But still, there's no doubt that Sanford is out to " g e t " Nader for reasons that are rather obscure, inasmuch as the actual idea of consumerism doesn't distress Sanford--in fact he endorses it, strangely enough...

...I have never seen 26 The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1976 anyone behave so strangely around his own home...

...According to Drucker, such schemes tie workers too closely to the fortunes of one particular company, which might easily decline...

...What is more, one can make a good case that existing tax laws greatly benefit pensioned workers: the assets of pension funds may be hurt by corporate inc(.,ne taxes, but corporate contributions to the funds are a tax-free fringe ber.e~?t to employees, and partly as a consequence corporations now pay more in pension fund contributions than they do in income taxes...

...Nothing would neutralize him more quickly...

...The growth of pension funds will create great problems in generating new capital, particularly the right kinds of capital...

...One can't help getting a certain amount of pleasure out of seeing Icon Nader under assault from the chic Left (in passing, the book includes a remarkably unflattering portrait of Gil Harrison, the former owner of the New Republic, who comes across as an effete snob...

...Everyone is a consumer...

...He argues, for example, that because workers own more and more stock, the corporate income tax is "highly regressive," and that "nothing would so effectively promote greater equality of income as to eliminate the corporation income tax, or at least that part of it which is levied on the holdings of the corporate pension funds...

...But he does little to alter that image...

...And the converts have been falling off...

...His attack on Nader is almost entirely ad bominem, which is perfectly justifiable, of course, and in fact the correct approach in Nader's case...

...In the next generation, Drucker believes, the critical problem before pension funds will be how to protect their assets from government interference --how to keep governments from raiding the funds in order to make up for their own fiscal irresponsibility, how to keep governments from requiring investment in "socially useful" and probably unprofitable activities...

...The trouble with that is it merely adds to the Nader legend...

...neighborhood some years ago, and Sanford reports that Nader has been seen coming and going...

...But as we have seen, the workers do not "own" the holdings of pension funds, which are financed by corporate contributions...

...Now Sanford tells us that Ralph's brother Shafeek bought an $80,000 house in a fashionable D.C...

...There are so damned many of these drones today, and they are multiplying at such a rate, that Sanford was probably right to worry a couple of years back that they just might sweep Nader into the White House as their leader...

...What this argument neglects is that Nader is his movement-they are inseparable...

...And of course that's why he was able to attract so many disciples...

...7.95 Tom Bethell This all-out attack on the patron saint of consumers by the managing editor of the New Republic is a peculiar effort...

...A neighbor said: "Ralph lives there...

...Nader the Saintly, as we all have been told a million times, lives in an $85 a week rooming house near Dupont Circle, walled in with piles of old newspapers and government reports which he reads sixteen hours a day...

...BOOK REVIEW Me and Ralph by David Sanford / New Republic Book Co...

...Undeniably cranky, it is also hostile to Nader in a way that suggests someting approaching bitterness on Sanford's part...

...Reading between the lines, one gets the impression that Sanford is resentful of Nader's fame, and (perhaps even more) saintly image...

...Of course Nader did all these things...

...And needless to say, Nader has not lacked for pally reviewers in the media ready to lash out at Sanford for being disrespectful...

...These non-productive consumers constitute Nader's true constituency because he reassures them that whatever seems to be wrong with their lives at any given time (quite often nothing more than guilt feelings induced by looking in the mirror, of course), is most likely the fault of the producers--no doubt multinational in structure...

...Here, however, we immediately notice that not everyone is a producer...

...Nice Guy in his middle age, and that life in the Nader monastery is less strict...

...It was marvelous fun for a summer or two, before economic reality began to exert its pressure on the young idealists...

...One hears, for example, that Nader is becoming- Mr...

...Friar Ralph, beware...

...He takes on the boarding house legend for example, but merely tantalizes...

...Now Drucker does not mean to imply that pension funds will supply only headaches...

...Sanford himself seems to miss this point at times...

...Nader denies that he lives there, or that he owns the house...

...Make no mistake about it, when the bright young things flocked down to Washington from the Ivy League law schools to work for Nader in the early seventies they did so because of Nader's reputation for monkish zealotry...

...Failing that, one senses that Nader is probably a spent force anyway, even though San.ford's missile doesn't really hit its target...

...Besides, he would say, solving problems is what business executives are paid for...

...And so our Knight of Woeful Tidings emerges with renewed lustre, precisely because these lesser mortals have been sniping at him once again...

...Consumerism never really had very much to do with it, in my view...

...And since corporate revenue finances these pensions, Drucker believes that workers will begin to realize the extent to which their retirement security ultimately depends on the continued health of corporate profits...

...Although Sanford fails to make much of a dent, as I say, his ad bominem approach is correct...

...But the growth of pension funds, which make diversified investments, gives workers a stake in the success of the corporate system and the long-term stability of the economy...

...That suggests the most desirable scenario, in the event Carter wins in November, that he will put Nader on the public payroll...

...come up with much, and Sanford doesn't...

...This is because Sanford made one notable miscalculation...

...But this is a minor quibble about a major argument...

...The concept of the consumer is so specious that I'm surprised no one seems to have called for a little truth-in-labelling...

...Nader had been observed to "bury his head in a newspaper as if he didn't want to be recognized, and hurry into the house...

...The point about consumerism that Sanford never makes but which seems worth pointing out is that it is an idea with special appeal to a particular class of people in this country: those who don't produce anything...

...Then the New Republic started getting phone calls from a lady requesting the magazine's subscription list and other data not normally requested by casual callers, and in true gum-shoe fashion, Sanford found out that the caller was a next-door neighbor of one Charlene Divoky, who runs Public Citizen, a tentacle of the Nader octupus...

...But I see that Nader and Jimmy Carter have been palling around lately...

...Private pension plans cover over 30 million workers, and are mostly so generous that they will provide most of their beneficiaries' retirement income--with Social Security payments as only supplementary...

...The government had long ago been coopted and put out of action by the corporations, so that just left Nader as the thin red line...

...The vision here is much broader than that of the "Kelso plan" and other profit-sharing schemes--proposals that would encourage workers to invest in the companies they work for...

...Oh, I know all those dreary reports and books were turned out under Nader's name, creating a front of activity, but they are about as unreadable as it is possible for books to be and it's a fair bet that they are just accumulating dust on library shelves, a testament of sorts to Nader's peculiarly negative obsession, and to his considerable powers of persuasion...

...It wasn't consumerism they came for (although no doubt that sounded sufficiently progressive and worthy, something vaguely in the background they would be working on...

...Fortunately it won't happen...

...So of course they came and they took vows of poverty and enrolled in Dupont Monastery under the Abbot Nagger Nader...

...To do this, pension funds must develop strong management institutions, including boards of directors with clear accountability...

...He is a man of vision, and he sees in their emergence the opportunity for business to regain a sense of legitimacy...

...But if you take that approach you risk looking mean-spirited if you don't Tom Betbell, an editor of the Washington Monthly, is writing a book on George Lewis, the New Orleans dam'netist...

...It's no longer "in" at Harvard to go work for Ralph...

...Won't you come and help...

...He hardly puts a dent in Nader's armor...

...To be sure, Drucker's use of the term "pension fund socialism" sometimes leads him to exaggerate the identity of interests between corporations and pension fund beneficiaries...

...droves of government drones, and assorted members of the mediacracy who are paid handsomely in return for telling the rest of us how to lead our lives...

...The Catholics, too, found that when monastic discipline was loosened, the supply of novices dried up...

...Here I must disagree with those pious reviewers of this book who have complained that Sanford spends so little time scrutinizing the details of Nader's programs, and so much time on Nader personally...

...Some people produce little or nothing: college students, for example, and a goodly number of their professors...

...For instance, he tries to attack Nader by claiming that he treated his volunteer corps badly, calling them up every fifteen minutes to check on the progress of a report, expressing dismay that they were taking weekends off, seeing their wives, going to movies, etc...

...it's his home...

...The category merely serves to demarcate another group--that of producers...

...But the whole episode is recounted in considerable detail, and it somehow typifies the book...

...There are a number of reasons wily corporate income taxes might desirably be reduced, but one should not imagine that the result would be egalitarian...

...Sanford Can't see what a tremendous appeal this had to the children of our permissive society...

...Overall, it's not an edifying book...

...Business must welcome these millions, develop effective management for their pension funds, and invite their representatives onto corporate boards...

...The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1976 27...