Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism by Paul Sabin

Author:Paul Sabin [Sabin, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: non-fiction, politics
ISBN: 9780393634051
Google: PAEDEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0393634043
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2021-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Ralph Nader presses his former close colleague, Joan Claybrook, at a news conference in November 1977. When Nader urged her to resign her position as National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator, Claybrook refused. AP Photo/JD.

Cohen’s language underscored the slipperiness of the “public interest” idea. Public officials, following the technicalities of the law and navigating difficult politics, wouldn’t always pursue the right course. Public interest advocates needed to focus on establishing accountability mechanisms within government and opening government to the public. Consequently, public interest advocacy needed to be a permanent and independent part of the political process. “No matter how many public-interest veterans serve in government, there has to be a thriving public-interest movement.” The movement’s job, Cohen argued, was to “stretch the art of the politically possible” by working outside government and having allies within government.13

In her role at the highway safety agency, Claybrook found herself caught between industry and the consumer movement. Industry groups derided her as “the dragon lady,” while Nader complained that she had sold out and capitulated. Looking back on her relationship with Nader in a 1991 interview, Claybrook recalled that Nader sought to be a “counterforce” to industry by “criticizing us for not being tough enough.” Nader was “probably more critical of me than of anybody else in the Administration because he felt that I should have known better. And he had to scold.” Claybrook eventually figured out that she shouldn’t take Nader’s criticism personally, and she could even use it to her advantage. “When Ralph criticized me,” Claybrook said in 1991, “my mother called me up and said, you must forgive him immediately because that’s what he has to do. I felt that it was really helpful to have her say that to me. . . . I felt after that that I really took advantage of Ralph’s criticism of me.” Claybrook used Nader’s criticism as a way to leverage the agency’s position in relation to industry lobbying. This strategy reflected the newly emerging approach to governance that positioned the government not as the independent expert responsible for determining the public interest, but rather as a broker or mediator between industry and, increasingly, citizen advocates.14

Nader’s inability to come to terms with the compromises inherent in running the executive branch illustrated how hard it was for many 1970s liberals to figure out a new way to govern. Nader, Time magazine noted in the fall of 1977, should have been at the “zenith of his power.” He had a robust network of watchdog organizations and had “salted the Government with allies and former colleagues in regulatory posts.” Yet Nader appeared to be “losing rather than gaining momentum.” He struggled to get his vision translated into government policy. At the close of Carter’s first year in office, six former public interest advocates attended a Nader-sponsored forum to report on what the administration had accomplished. Nader criticized them as overly cautious. “There are no friends in government,” Nader said pointedly. There are “only people who use power properly or improperly.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.