Is Ralph Nader an Unreasonable Man?

What Is Ralph Nader's Legacy? An Unreasonable Man tries to answer this question as it chronicles Ralph Nader's life and career as a public interest attorney, consumer advocate, and presidential candidate. The two-hour documentary opens with a George Bernard Shaw quote: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." This is the theme the film is intent on proving -- that Nader is a man of uncompromising principles and it is those principles that have guided his decisions throughout his career.

The first scene shows Nader announcing his 2004 presidential candidacy followed by James Carville's response, claiming that there was no other person on the face of the earth for whom he had greater contempt than Nader. Nation magazine columnist Eric Alterman proceeds to thank Nader for the Iraq war, the tax cuts, the destruction of the environment and the destruction of the Constitution. Alterman and journalism professor Todd Gitlin later describe Nader as a "megalomaniac" and "intellectually dishonest," among other things. Ouch.

Clearly, many people blame Nader as the reason Al Gore lost the election in 2000, and they were even angrier when he decided to run again in 2004. Directors Steve Skrovan and Henriette Mantel, who formerly worked for Nader in the late '70s, set out to remind us of his career as an unparalleled advocate for consumer protection and to examine whether Nader deserves to be the Democrats' scapegoat.

Over the years, Nader has crafted a stunning track record on behalf of consumers, including the establishment of government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the passage of landmark legislation, including automobile safety laws, the Freedom of Information Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, as well as the founding of numerous public interest organizations. He and his various public interest organizations have been responsible for numerous consumer protections, such as making air bags and seatbelts standard car features and product labeling de rigueur.

The most fascinating part of the film begins with his 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed, which exposed the lack of safety in the design of the Corvair, a car manufactured by General Motors. We see clips from the Congressional hearings that resulted from the book's publication. And we learn that he successfully sued General Motors for invasion of privacy when the corporation hired detectives to find information that could damage his reputation. However, they didn't find anything -- to this day his personal life remains a mystery even to his friends -- and he used the settlement money for future advocacy work. Nader's storied career as a consumer activist was launched.

His work inspired scores of college students (dubbed Nader's Raiders) to work for him and write reports on a plethora of consumer issues ranging from water pollution to the FDA's weak oversight of the food industry. Archival footage of enthusiastic students offers a glimpse of how inspiring Nader was. Many former Nader's Raiders fondly recollect their experiences working for him.

By the 1970s, he became a cultural icon, appearing on the cover of People magazine and hosting Saturday Night Live. And he became a Washington insider, working with Carter administration. He was so esteemed and trusted that people were writing him from all over the country, asking for his help on any number of things. They believed that he could solve their problems no matter what they were. One woman even sent him the drive shaft to her car in the hopes that he could find a way to fix it.

The film briefly slips back into his childhood growing up in Winston, Connecticut, where Nader family dinners were a time when everyone had to come prepared to discuss that night's assigned topic. Nader recounts that when he was 10 years old his father asked, "Did you learn how to believe or did you learn how to think?" after he came home from school.