And of course, Nader not only stands for anger at the electoral process; he also symbolizes all of the anti-globalization, anti-corporate-influence, anti-whatever sentiment that has been growing in this country over the last few years. He is the standard bearer for a thousand and one movements; I've heard everyone from the International Socialist Organization to union members to gay rights activists to anarchists claim him as their man.

But Nader is no longer asking this of us. He wants us to see him as a leader, as a motivator. But he is none of these. Nader is a tireless consumer advocate and a great symbol, but as a person he is hardly the kind of guy to inspire cooperation from his opponents. He may have led Public Citizen, but that's a far cry from leading the American public.

He may represent inspiring ideals, but Nader himself is not inspiring; sure, he says interesting things about sweatshops and campaign finance, but what about when he has to deal with things like abortion or race relations, other liberal issues that he has yet even to comment on? His stances on racism, for instance, amount to little more than boilerplates against racial profiling and racist sports mascots; tough subjects like affirmative action go untouched.

Nader's Web site includes a thorough list of issues, from gay rights to labor, but while they all point out what is wrong, few of them provide specific solutions. And when they do, they are often grandiose, pie-in-the-sky schemes — a single-payer plan as the solution to our health-care ills.

The real point is not, however, whether what Nader discusses or proposes is possible or not; after all, Political Science 101 teaches us not to trust promises made on the campaign trail. But it is more than fair for us to ask whether we can imagine Nader winning the Saturday Night Main Events it would take for him to push his proposals through Congress.

In fact, much of Nader's recent claims to be running as a serious presidential candidate seem contrived and half-baked. He claims he chose his running mate (Winona LaDuke, a Native American activist) based on her strong and honest personality, yet Lewis Lapham writes in this month's Harper's that Nader knew little about her beyond his own press literature.

Nader has so far presented himself as a dream candidate, a "what if" scenario that people could indulge in without having to consider in concrete terms. We could imagine a world where everyone in the United States had health care, where there was no death penalty. But when it comes down to it, protest politics and Washington politics are two different things. Protest politics means using your vote to register a complaint; it means voting for Abbie Hoffmann's pig not because you really think the pig would make a great president, but because you want to tell the politicians you're pissed off.

Washington politics, on the other hand, is the reality we have to live with for the next four years, the reality in which political acumen and deal-making expertise are the key to advancing an agenda. Nader is the king of the former; he jeopardizes it all by making us think he has anything to do with the latter.

E-mail Clay Risen at risenc@yahoo.com.