et them compete. Week in and week out, that is the most consistent theme you will find in this space, whether it is the banks, the hospitals, developers, even the courts and who will provide our water.
What I have come to believe over the past 20 years covering business is that the virtues of competition are imperfect, but far outweigh the alternatives over the long term. Innovation comes most often not from the biggest companies but the smallest, and the threat they pose to the entrenched is often the linchpin of change.
Now, positioned as we are between the Republican and Democratic conventions, it is hard to understand why what has been so good for our economy wouldn't be good for our political system. Either Al Gore or George W. Bush is going to be our next president, but Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan need to be heard, too.
In particular, the liberal hysteria over Nader's candidacy is astounding. Does Nader realize that he could cost Gore the election? What about the Supreme Court? Doesn't he care? At bottom, the arguments - articulated most ardently in The New York Times editorial pages - are largely about the need to keep a Democrat in the White House, not the issues Nader champions.
But Nader should not walk away. Whether you agree with him or not, Nader represents issues, big and small, that no one else does. (Name another presidential candidate who has come out against a new Fenway.) There are clear-cut differences between Gore and Bush this year - on tax policy, on abortion, on Social Security - but Nader is offering something decidely different.
At its heart, Nader's message comes down to this: Corporate America has bought and paid for Washington, and it owns us, too - through our jobs, our culture, our dreams. And it owns our political parties, too. Nader's is, ultimately, a dark world, too dark, in my view.
Trade is the clearest example of why Nader should be in the race. Not only are Bush and Gore solidly in the free-trade camp, but so were their rivals, John McCain and Bill Bradley. Only Nader has been willing to question the orthodoxy on free trade, arguing there can be no free trade with countries that aren't free. If Nader does not make the argument that free trade must be balanced against the needs to protect workers and the environment, then who will?
In explaining why he is running, Nader refers me to the words of Louis Brandeis, Boston lawyer and great Supreme Court jurist: ''We can either have a democratic society, or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few. We can't have both.''
Nader deserves to be heard, but that's the last thing Gore wants. Right now Nader is under 5 percent in most of the polls, far below the 15 percent he will need to get in the presidential debates this fall. But with Bush and Gore racing each other to the center, it seems to me more important than ever that we find a way to get Nader and Buchanan onto a stage with Bush and Gore in at least one debate. It is not Nader and Buchanan who are being excluded, but the views they represent.
Politics as usual is working for fewer and fewer people. Politics seems less and less important with every passing election; business is what is changing the world, the place to be today. Nowhere is that more evident than in election numbers: 63 percent of the voting-age population turned out in 1960; just 49 percent voted in 1996.
No one would want Ralph Nader as a president, but as a gadfly he is without parallel. If Nader can help get people to the polls who would have stayed home, he will have served a useful purpose. If he can, in fact, help build a party that is willing to go where the Democrats and the Republicans increasingly dare not, then he will have built a legacy worthy of the remarkable life he has lived.
You can reach me at (617) 929-2902 or
bailey@globe.com.
