working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide; the william and flora hewlett foundation, helping people build measurably better lives; the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. t have any experience in running up a $4 trillion debt. i don't have any experience in gridlocked government. i don't have any experience in creating one of the most violent crime-ridden society in the industrialized world, but i do have a lot of experience in getting things done. - and a vote for conscience, a vote for your hope, those are the votes that you need to register, not a lesser of two evils, where, at the end of the day, you're still left with evil. when they call someone a spoiler, they're saying, "shut up." - as a nation, we've become used to the idea that running for president is a two-party affair, but that's not the way it has to be. and back in 1992, that meant ross perot, a short texas billionaire with a distinctive twang. now, perot launched his campaign on a lark, but as he shot up in the polls, his opponents, george h. w. bush and bill clinton, were forced to take him very seriously. now, on the other hand, ralph nader spent decades in the public eye and affected the lives of millions of people around the world as a consumer advocate. he's now probably best remembered as an independent party contender who may have changed the course of history. now, you can call these third-party candidates ornery. you can call 'em difficult, but whatever you do, don't you dare call them spoilers. - the interesting thing about ross perot was that he didn't really look and talk like a billionaire. - in plain texas talk, it's time to take out the trash and clean out the barn or it's gonna be too late. - he was a little guy and talked kind of fast, and people naturally liked him. he was from texarkana originally. his father was a cotton trader, so he didn't go from totally humble roots, but, you know, he definitely went to the top of the finance world. - people have asked me over the years, "how did it suddenly feel, after years and years "and years of having a very modest life, to realize you were rich?" and my reply is, "i was born rich because of the two parents i had." no child could have had two better parents than my sister and i had. that's so much more important than any financial wealth. - he had gone to annapolis. he was a graduate of annapolis. - that changed my life, right. i got to go to a great school, got a great engineering education, and was taught leadership. - after perot got out of the naval, he went to work for ibm, and he told ibm, he says, "well, look, we're selling these computers, but nobody knows how to operate 'em. why don't we provide services?" and ibm said, "no, we're-- we just manufacture hardware." - so he founded a company to provide that service called electronic data systems or eds. - and, of course, it took off and ultimately sold to general motors for $5 billion. - the story of my net worth, i never had a goal to make a lot of money, never have cared about money. my idea was considered so bad when i started that nobody else would touch it, and i had to bootstrap it, and fortunately it worked. - ross perot has been in the headlines of the news for the last 40 years. [all chanting] - during the collapse of iran and ayatollah khomeini's rise with the end of the shah's regime, some of perot's company employees were captured and held in a prison in tehran. - so he hired a former green beret to put a team together to go in and rescue 'em. - it was a very patriotic thing to do but also risky, because there was an argument that he was taking foreign affairs into his own matters, but to him, these were his employees, and he felt that it was his duty to rescue them. - the rescue is like the theft of a diamond. it's something that you plan very carefully. you wait for an opportunity and you do it. - ken follett wrote a best-selling book on it called "on wings of eagles," and that was turned into a movie. - hello, dr. kissinger. my name is ross perot. the iranian government has just arrested two of our eds executives. - he was a folk hero in that sense, you know, whereas people were kind of down on carter for being mired in the iran hostage crisis. you know, perot took action. he got it done. he got his guys out. narrator: in 1984, perot merged eds with the giant general motors, but almost from the beginning, perot and his people found it difficult to work in the gm environment. - i come from an environment where if, when you see a snake, you kill it. you guys see a snake, get a consultant on snakes, form a committee on snakes, think about it for a year, and by the time you do anything, there's snakes all over the factory. - in 1986, general motors had really had enough of you and said, "let us buy back the stock for approximately $700 million." how did you feel about that? - i made it very clear i thought it was obscene, because i think they closed 11 factories, laid off 30,000 people, on and on and on and on, and suddenly they were willing to pay me twice what my stock was worth just so that i wouldn't keep trying to teach the elephant to tap-dance. - well, what's he planning next? - he just started a new computer company. it's called perot systems. he says he's happiest down where the rubber meets the road. so i suspect that he'll continue with that, and we haven't heard the last from this extraordinary man. - the 1992 presidential election is one year from today. so this morning... - those days, both the democrat and republican parties knew there was a huge deficit building, but they had it off-budget and there had been very little discussion about it. it was not gonna be on the election agenda, and ross perot thought it ought to be on the election agenda. - there has been a rumor-- someone had mentioned to me, "do you think ross perot would run for president?" it was clinton and the incumbent, bush, and i asked him, and he said, "no chance." and then i asked him again, "is there anything that would get you to run?" and he said, "well..." - number one, i don't want to. - i know. is there a scenario-- - number two, you know, if you're that serious, you register me in 50 states, and if you're not willing to organize and do that, then this is all just talk. - wait a minute. are you telling me-- hold, hold, hold--wait, wait. - stay with me, larry. i'm saying to the ordinary folks, if you're dead serious... - start committees in florida and georgia? - then i want to see some sweat. - and he called me the next day, and he said, "you know something funny? i got back to the hotel and the bellman gave me $10." that was his first contribution to his campaign. - ross perot stepped onto the larry king show and transformed american politics. - by three days later, it was a volcanic eruption that no one had ever seen the likes of before. the number of phone calls going into ross perot's business office made the phone line blow up. - and ross perot, that night, said he might be willing to spend some money, maybe $65 million, just to get people to talk about the right issues, and that was the beginning, as far as i know, of the ross perot campaign in 1992. - ross perot was an outlier. he was a tech genius. so you had this combination of plainspoken harry truman meets tech businessman who's obviously very, very successful. - just hold onto your hats now. in just five weeks, good people like you in all 50 states organized themselves, selected their leaders, and got down to the job. - so in 1992, bill clinton was up against george h. w. bush. - the country was unsettled. it had just gone through a deep recession. the deficit seemed to be out of control, and there was the beginning of a kind of alienation from both parties. - it was very clear from the beginning that my job was to have a campaign that was designed to make points, not to send him to the white house. he told me he did not want to go to the white house, would not go to the white house, and i said, "good, 'cause i don't want to go either." - it's very hard to come up with the resources to get on the ballot in all 50 states, but if you're a billionaire and are willing to help pay for it, and if you are a big enough name that you can get support, it is possible. - if you wanted me to run as your servant, i would run a world-class, properly financed campaign. you know, just put it down this way. i'm buying it for the american people. that's it. [cheering] - good evening. perot petition committee. - he gets you fired up, doesn't he? - 6 million people called his 1-800 number to volunteer to sign up, which is a gigantic number. - people were coming up to him and handing him $5, the maximum contribution he would take from everyone that could afford it, because he wanted them to have skin in the game. - it gave a way for people to say, "i'm fed up with the choices that washington usually comes up with." - we've got $4 trillion in debt that we're about to pass on to our children. that's wrong, and if you can live with that, we're on the wrong team. - the voters tend to like people who don't-- they don't feel who were bought, and so i think there's an attraction to these kind of characters like ross perot. - just, you know, look at all three of us, decide who you think will do the job, pick that person in november, because believe me, as i've said before, the party's over, and it's time for the clean-up crew. - unlike republicans, democrats, who automatically are on the ballot, independents and third parties must attain ballot access, because you can't vote for someone if they're not on the ballot, and every state differs, because these laws are actually designed to diminish competition. the major parties don't want a competitive third party. - he was using what we would call modern tools in the electoral ballots. he was talking directly to the citizens, trying to mobilize them in a way that had-- we hadn't really seen before. they were able to modernize campaigns overnight by simply using the base of both television and telephone. - we had no press plane. we had no press briefings. i mean, it had none of the trappings of a normal campaign. people in the press, mainly, took that as the eccentricities of some kind of kook. - everybody's accusing me of buying the election. [crowd chatters] and my reply to 'em is, "that's right." [cheers and applause] - ross perot's goal was to reform the two parties and to build a third political party. our answer was to hire classic political republican spinner, eddie rollins. we didn't tell him that we weren't trying to put ross perot in the white house. he tried to turn this campaign into one that worked, that would elect the president. - i saw something new, something exciting, and i saw this tremendous movement out there with perot, and i would often spend eight weeks in the wilderness with perot. - if you want me, then i will go as your servant. if you find somebody else you like better, that's fine with me too. - so once perot zoomed to the lead-- i mean, there was at one point, perot was ahead in 49 states. he was looking at an electoral landslide of untold proportions. that's how popular he was. - it was a very sensitive time for the country from a standpoint of racial politics. it was right after the l.a. riots. - you know, can we-- can we all get along? can we--can we get along? - i think the first time i met ross perot was on "the today show." we had call-ins. he was really interesting. he was a tough, kind of ornery guy, and i think, for many people, he was a breath of fresh air. - what i have a question on is on the l.a. riots. - if i had been in elected office, and i've said it before, the minute it occurred, i'd be headed for the airport, because i would want to understand why one of our cities erupted to that degree. - clearly he knew a lot about the economy, about business, about trade. i don't know in terms of really understanding policy in general how strong he was. - he had that speech before the naacp, and he said, "you people." - now, i don't have to tell you who gets hurt first when this sort of thing happens, do i? you--your people do. your people do. i know that. you know that. - "your people"? - what's the--i didn't understand you, sir. - "your people"? - thank you. - [shouting indistinctly] - members of the audience found this to be patronizing and condescending. he was put in front of a different demographic for the first time in a more overt way, and he faltered in that moment. - he serves as his own speechwriter. so under--most candidates would have been saved from their--that mistake because someone would have caught it. - ross perot declared that racial division is no longer acceptable in this country. - my message has been and is, to the hardcore haters... we're stuck with one another. think about it. nobody's going anywhere, right? - so he said to me one day, he said, "i never got bad press till i hired you and hamilton jordan," who'd also run a presidential campaign. i said, "well, no one ever treated you as a serious candidate. you're gonna get scrutinized like a serious candidate." - reports of a nixon administration memo saying perot sought and got special treatment from government agencies for his business and in a personal tax matter. is the outsider really an insider? - perot blames what he calls the "bush dirty tricks crowd" for those reports. - the bush people said, "look, he's an insider. "he's made all of his money with all these sweetheart government contracts." well, it didn't hurt perot. it actually helped perot, because it convinced all of the perot supporters, "yep, he's gonna go to washington, d.c. he's gonna pick their pockets." so it actually was a boost to the perot campaign. - hamilton jordan said to me one day. "we've done some polling. he's at 39% in public polls." i mean, it's not-- that's not republican, democrat. he's leading all three candidates at this point in time, in first place. and jordan comes in and he said, "you know, this guy could win." - when we looked at those numbers, we said, "we could win enough states to throw this election into the house." that became very problematic for ross. he said, "i did not get in this to create a constitutional crisis." - and then he dropped out for some crazy reason. - i believe it would be disruptive for us to continue our program since this program would obviously put it in the house of representatives and be disruptive to the country. so therefore i will not become a candidate. is there anybody--a question right here, go ahead. - what would you say to the volunteers who are gonna be very disappointed about this and say, "you got us into this, and now you couldn't take the hint, "and you're a quit-- couldn't take the heat, and you're a quitter"? - well, people can say anything they want to say. i am trying to do what's right for my country. - we believed he was gonna be a presidential candidate. do you think that we would have taken our money out and try to help him? no, they didn't want to do that. so now what are we supposed to do? - there are conflicting reasons ascribed to why he abruptly suspended his campaign. many do believe it had to do with the media scrutiny, that for someone who was as image-conscious as he was, he simply did not enjoy being held under a microscope. i have a feeling somebody on the republican side, the dirty tricksters, got to you. - no, they didn't get to me. - doesn't it bother you that people are hurt? - oh, that breaks my heart, but i have to do the right thing. - i am well aware that all those millions of people who rallied to ross perot's cause wanted to be in an army of patriots for change. tonight i say to them, "join us and together we will revitalize america." [cheers and applause] - perot fired everybody, did not accept my resignation, and said i could go home but that he wanted me to work to try to get the clinton campaign to take our issues and our budget proposals, because we were gonna run these infomercials. - in the 1950s, even into the beginning of the 1960 campaign, we had half-hour speeches and occasionally half-hour documentaries as not simply the exception but often as the rule in politics. perot brings back the half-hour special. - good evening. now, i can't compete with some of these other entertainment shows, but please stay with me on this program tonight, because we're going to go down in the trenches and talk about your jobs and talk about why our country is in decline. - i get a call from ross, and he has just left one of the networks in new york, and they have told him he cannot run his infomercials. they were gonna sell that time to clinton and bush. they weren't gonna let perot have it, and i basically had to say, "the only way you're gonna get this done "is to become active again, "and when you do that, they're gonna say, 'you're crazy. "why'd you get out?' it's gonna impact you. "you won't have near the impact that you had, but you can't run all those nice infomercials." - my decision in july hurt you. i apologize. i thought it was-- i was doing the right thing. i made a mistake. i take full responsibility for it. the volunteers in all 50 states have asked me to run as a candidate for president of the united states. jim stockdale, our vice presidential candidate, and i are honored to accept their request. - well, hi. i'm ross perot, and i paid for this television time to address you, the american people. this week, i received the highest honor i ever could imagine when the volunteers asked me to jump back in and run for president. see-- see, now, i'm not a quitter. a quitter wouldn't jump back in the race, and that's just what i did, you see? you see that? so your premise that i'm a quitter, it's just bogus to begin with, see? - when he came back in, he went on "60 minutes," and he gave 'em all the reasons that he wouldn't let me explain back in july when he quit. - the story that the bush campaign was planning to sabotage his daughter's wedding. - i received multiple reports that there was a plan to embarrass her before her wedding and to actually have people in the church at the wedding to disrupt her wedding. - was it the bush-quail people? - this was the republican key people and their opposition research teams. you know, everybody up there panicked in may and june when i was leading everybody in the polls, and they went crazy, and they lost their good sense, and they started doing things like this. - and then in late july, perot says he saw another red flare. - people alert me that they're trying to wiretap my office. - he said it on "60 minutes" and he came off looking kooky. - the fact that ross perot made the deficit part of his big issue was resonating with economic conservatives who were concerned about out-of-control spending. - since we're dealing with voodoo economics, a great young lady from louisiana sent me this voodoo stick, and i will use it as my pointer tonight, and certainly it's appropriate because, as you and i know, we are in deep voodoo. - the only goal of ross perot was to build a third political party that would hold the other parties' feet to the fire and constantly urge them away from character assassination elections, from huge amounts of spending. - the governor talks about all these dramatic improvements in employment and jobs and what-have-you that he's created in arkansas. let's take a quick look at it. one out of five jobs in the last 12 years created in arkansas has been created in the poultry business. now this is not an industry of tomorrow. this is honest work. it is hard work. the people that do it are world-class people, but if we decide to take this level of business-creating capability nationwide, we'll all be plucking chickens for a living. - he attracted the audiences, increased the likelihood that the deficit would be put on the national agenda. it also increased the likelihood that he would hold enough of his constituency to get into the debates. - it was only about a month before the election. he was at 7% in the polls, and a key factor when perot reentered the race was to be in the presidential debates. if a third-party candidate is not in the presidential debates, you have a significant problem in credibility and the wasted vote syndrome. - the bush campaign foolishly let him back into the debates, and they thought as a tactic that they would much rather have a three-way debate, thinking bush couldn't handle the head-to-head with clinton. - now, all these fellows with thousand-dollar suits and alligator shoes running up and down the halls of congress that make policy now-- the lobbyists, the pac guys, the foreign lobbies, what-have-you--they'll be over there in the smithsonian, you know, 'cause we're gonna get rid of them, and the congress will be listening to the people, and the american people... - what he picked up in the electorate was a frustration about losing jobs, and, at the time, there was this big trade agreement called nafta that was being pushed by the clinton administration. - to those of you in the audience who are businesspeople, pretty simple-- if you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory south of the border, pay $1 an hour for your labor, have no health care-- that's the most expensive single element in making a car--have no environmental controls, no pollution controls, and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south. - those two national debates were really what put him back in the game. - to the american people, i am doing this because i love you. that's it. - don't waste your vote on politics as usual. vote for ross perot. - perot campaign officials say the number of calls is way up, 90% to 95% positive. it is the renewed enthusiasm following perot's performance in the debate. he's drawing big crowds. - here's the real secret. that stray dog you sent up there spoke from the heart. i talked about what i believed in. - he was in all three debates and a week before the election, he was about 12 or 13, and pundits were saying, "he'll go"--the night before-- "he'll go back down to eight or nine, maximum." and he achieved 19%, a historic accomplishment by a third-party candidate. - and ross perot is holding at 19%. - perot cost bush the election. i'm sure that 80% of perot's vote would've gone to bush. - you know, at the end of the day, by the time we got to november, perot was hurting clinton and bush pretty much equally. so i don't think that it actually-- you know, i know conventional wisdom is perot tipped the scales for clinton. i think, at the end, he didn't. i think the result would've been the same. i think clinton would still have been victorious. - in my view, it was a very, very productive investment, because it brought the issues that he wanted addressed to the fore in the political debate. - he really brought the budget into the debate in a way that it would not have otherwise been talked about, and, if you remember, following that election, both parties went to work on a budget, and for the first time in a long time, they actually did achieve a balanced budget. arguably, that would not have happened, had it not been for ross perot. - he was the best independent candidate that ever ran. i think, to this day, he may regret having dropped out. i think--i can't tell how that race would've come out. - was he too thin-skinned, though, to be a serious contender? - yeah. a lot of politicians are thin-skinned. sometimes politics is rough to take. - i think that americans are attracted to somebody who's different, somebody who's going to shake up the status quo and kind of rattle cages, and i think that's why he did so well. - well, ross perot came close, and he created a party of his own, the reform party, with its own infrastructure, and, you know, later on other people ran under that banner, and there have been other third parties, but they've been very minor. none of them have really been able to capture the kind of support or build the kind of infrastructure that you need in order to really compete with the two major parties. he probably came the closest. - we can be a purposeful and thriving country, building bridges instead of building debt. we can be a country where, once again, the diversity of our people is our greatest strength instead of division being our greatest weakness. we can be all of these things tomorrow if we will make the tough choices today. together, we can do anything. - ♪ oh, i want to be in that number ♪ ♪ when ross perot goes marching in ♪ [cheers and applause] - i actually don't know of anyone in american history with as much impact over time. - why do we have a two-party system? i mean, that just seems like-- you have more choices of toothbrushes to buy than you do of presidential candidates in this country. - it's time to roll up our sleeves and mobilize a movement that tells 'em what to do! - if you combine someone who has an over-the-top iq with a 20-hour-a-day work ethic with a vision of what he wants to do, you come up with ralph nader, which is why he's one-of-a-kind. - well, i was a citizen advocate, consumer advocate, environmental, labor, in washington, and we got a lot of bills through. - are you hopeful that the little person can ultimately fight and beat the system? - american history has shown, again and again, if 1% of the people in this country want something changed and that something is supported by a majority of the people, nothing can stop them. - ralph nader was a force of reform and courage. he was original in his approach to violations of human dignity and safety on the part of corporations. - he's all about helping regular people. he is insulted by injustices in the world. - his parents are lebanese immigrants. the mother was extremely value-driven. the father was community-driven, always wanted to clean up his hometown of winsted, connecticut. - before they left for school, the parents would give an assignment, like, "what do you think of parking on main street?" and, when they came home from school, at the dinner table they would talk about the problems of the parking on main street. ralph's family was very civic-minded. - and even though he goes to kind of very traditional schools, princeton and harvard law school, he stands out there, both for his brains and his earnest wonkiness. contrary to the zeitgeist of the 1950s, he came out of that itching not to do well but to do good in the form of public service. ralph was unknown in 1965. his now-famous book, "unsafe at any speed," was a very detailed, earnest book about an auto industry that didn't put safety first. - this is the sizzling corvair monza spyder, with a whopping big 150-horsepower turbo air engine. - ralph's accusations were about safety of the corvair. the car companies weren't gonna make as much money if they had to pay attention to safety. so they didn't want ralph around. it wasn't very glamorous to talk about safety in cars. - general motors famously and stupidly sent women to entrap and embarrass and ruin him. ralph didn't bite. he reported what had happened, and the united states senate held a hearing where general motors chairman james roche, the head of a company that was larger than any country except for three at the time, apologized to ralph nader. - i want to apologize here and now to members of this subcommittee and mr. nader. i sincerely hope that these apologies will be accepted. - he went from being unknown to being catapulting to 90% recognition in a day because of the notoriety of those hearings. "unsafe at any speed" was doing okay until general motors was exposed, and then the book became one of the hundred most influential books in american history. - if you get things out in the open, you'll get some action. there's no place for secrecy anywhere in traffic safety. - and it really changed our society, because that made it very clear why we need federal regulation of auto safety. 3 1/2 million people are not dead today because of the auto safety act of 1966. - when ralph won more than $400,000 in a settlement from general motors, he put that all into starting public interest groups-- public citizen, the litigation group, health research group. - and in the '60s and '70s, you'd get something done. congress had hearings. the regulatory agencies believed a little in enforcing the law. lyndon johnson signed a lot of bills-- freedom of information act. even nixon signed the epa bill, the osha bill, product safety commission bill. - i actually don't know of anyone in american history, other than presidents, who has as large a body of work on as many issues with as much impact over time as ralph, but his impact is not only law-by-law or book-by-book. it's the ethic that you can fight city hall or you can fight corporate america. he did it and he won. - he inspired thousands of public interest lawyers, advocates, organizers. - they weren't really in that hippie-dippie-doodle, crazy, civil rights, vietnam movement. they were the radical nerds that were sitting there, doing stuff in front of congress. - nader's raiders published fiercely and smartly. they really created a new form of political activity, which was consumer activism with smart, professional help, and there was a reform mood, even though nixon, by now, was president. so all in all, he attracted a great deal of energy and inspired people. - he's been called "the man who makes waves." here's ralph nader. - when ralph was on "the mike douglas show," he said he didn't want to run for president because he was fighting for the people, and john lennon, of course, and yoko were on that "mike douglas show" with him. - would you ever consider running for president? - no. everybody says, "vote," and they think of presidential candidate. what you have to do is step back and help organize people and trying to get them to see citizenship as a profession. - did you think about doing it? - no. in fact, i rebuked it. yeah, because, those days, if you had any political ambitions, it weakened your advocacy. increasingly, big government is becoming a handmaiden of big business, and it's hard to tell the difference between the two. but then, starting when the democrats were persuaded they could raise money from corporate interests, about 1980, you could see the decline of congressional hearings, the decline of regulatory enforcement. - nader has taken a consistent line throughout his career that both parties are too beholden to corporate interests. his own views are so outside the establishment, so hostile to corporate influence in american politics, he doesn't really see huge differences between the republican and democratic party. as far as he is concerned, they're both basically fronts for big business. - he was once asked, "i thought you said that you'd never run for office unless there was an invasion from mars." he said, "well, there was an invasion from wall street." - what drew you to politics? - it was 1992, and i went to new hampshire as a write-in candidate for the "none of the above" line. so i would address large audiences in new hampshire, saying, "i'm ralph nader and i'm not running for president. "i want to give you a choice. "if you don't like the candidates on the ballot, "you can vote for 'none of the above,' like a protest vote." and lo and behold, i got almost as many democratic votes as republican votes. - what was the ambition when you entered the '96 race? - so in 1996, i decided to try a little more ambitious one and signed up with the green party. republicans and democrats, both parties, would not talk about full medicare for all-- not even discuss it. they wouldn't talk about a living wage, cracking down on corporate crime or corporate tax reform. the military budget was draining money away from rebuilding america's public works, and that's what we thought we could do. - it becomes very clear that what's coming out of his mouth is gibberish. why would anybody rationally believe that the green party, which has no base outside a few states where there are a lot of college-educated, green-ish sort of people, which tends to mean whitish kind of people, could succeed in breaking up the democratic party and creating a new alignment in which the greens would face the republicans? - back in 2000, the republican nominee was george w. bush, and the democratic nominee was the sitting vice president, albert gore. - like, there wasn't anybody standing up and saying, "let's fight for the people. "let's fight congress. let's fight wall street. let's--you know, let's go for it." - 2000 campaign was my first official campaign, which means that i was willing to spend more than $5,000 to register with the federal election commission, and so we went all-out. i welcome and am honored to accept your nomination for president of the united states. - remember, we're not dealing with a calculating politician. he's an authentic radical who wants to shift society and politics in a more progressive direction, and he thought that his candidacy as an independent was the way to do it. - it's time to go beyond rhetoric, which the two parties are very good at, especially the democratic party. the phony phrases of compassionate conservatism, the phony phrases of al gore when he says, "i'll fight for you." - the parties are, they're really the engine of our presidential system, but every once in a while, you've got to allow the people to kick that engine a little bit to say, "actually, you can't control us. we have a right to express our ideas outside of it." - when ralph called to ask if i would run his presidential campaign, i thought, "well, how hard can this be, right?" the day i started in 2000, there were approximately 400 phone calls on a voicemail box. we had no office. we had a handful of people, and we had under $40,000. we started, really, from scratch and with the imminent pressure that all third-party candidates have of getting on the ballot. - a third-party candidate is starting from a huge, huge disadvantage. the two major parties are set up. the kind of infrastructure that they both have is the 50 state parties in each of the 50 states. they raise money. they are able to amplify the message of whoever the candidate is. if you're a third-party candidate, that kind of infrastructure does not exist. - ballot access laws in a lot of states are a high bar. you've got to get a lot of signatures. requirements vary from state to state. - people don't understand how very difficult that system is, because what it requires is attention to the election codes of every single state, filled with minutia and curlicues about where the staple has to go. - let us not, in this campaign, prejudge any voters, for green values are majoritarian values. the irony was our agenda in the green party polled very high in terms of, "do you support full medicare for all, "raising the minimum wage, law enforcement against corporate crooks and wall street?" our issues polled much higher than a lot of the democrat and republican party issues, but i was not under any illusion that the people who polled 70%, 80% on these issues are gonna go to the green party. there weren't enough african americans and hispanics, which is something i can never understand, because they're the ones who really need to hear this. - it's always so interesting to me when candidates who don't understand communities of color, who have never done anything to reach out to communities of color, are then surprised that they don't have any support from communities of color. as a latina democrat, it's kind of amusing, actually. you can't just come in and say, "you people are interested in these issues, so you should vote for me." it doesn't work that way. ralph nader, i include in that bunch. a lot of republican candidates i include in that bunch, as well. - as a generalization, black and latino voters have tended to be very practical. they have tended to see the democratic party as the protector of their interests and seen the republican party as on the other side. and so the pressure to go with the democrat and keep the republicans out of power and not waste their votes on a futile gesture is something that i think has been particularly powerful among african american and latino voters. - a vote for conscience, a vote for a higher expectation, not a lesser of two evils, where at the end of the day, you're still left with evil. - as we started to get on the ballot in 2000 in more and more states, then more attention started to be paid to our campaign. i saw that the enthusiasm for the third-party run was growing. we hosted rallies around the country. we called them super rallies. when it came time to think about new york and renting madison square garden, it was a lot of money for the campaign to put out for one event, and thinking, "if we don't fill madison square garden, we are going to be broke." [cheers and applause] - ralph nader has sold out madison square garden! [cheers and applause] - patti smith sang "power to the people," and all kinds of celebrities were there to show their enthusiasm for ralph, including susan sarandon, tim robbins, bill murray, michael moore. - who designed this economy, anyway? i think it's time to have it designed as if people matter, not as if general motors, exxon, dupont, or the other corporations matter. - it's a memory nobody who was there will ever forget. - and what happened after that? - i worked every day. i went into every state. i took stands on local issues, community issues, neighborhood issues, which the big candidates never do, because it's too complicated, too controversial. i didn't take any pac money. most of the money was in small contributions. - nader was trying to point out is you can't wear both hats effectively. one, to govern on behalf of the people, while at the same time, you have to do fundraising from very large corporate interests with an understanding that they are going to have to be some sort of exchange in its place. - when our candidacy was creating a lot of momentum and buzz after labor day, the people started to mobilize around the fact that ralph was being excluded from the presidential debates. - campaign ads filled with half-truths. $10 million. promises to special interest groups. over $10 billion. finding out the truth. priceless. there are some things money can't buy. without ralph nader in the presidential debates, the truth will come in last. - if you can't get on the stage for the debates, you're gonna have a harder time increasing your name recognition. the media doesn't spend a lot of time covering people who are below 5%, and so it's very, very difficult for those candidates in a two-party system, when the two parties control all the rules of the system, to make any sort of headways. - most of the people in this country never knew i was running. they have a corporation called the commission on presidential debates where they decide who gets on and who doesn't, and here it is, a private corporation funded by the likes of at&t, anheuser-busch, ford motor company. - why do we have a two-party system? i mean, it just seems like-- you know, you have more choices of toothbrushes to buy than you do of presidential candidates in this country. i mean, why can't we choose who we want to choose? - i welcome you to the first debate between governor bush and vice president gore. - ralph went to the debate to sit in the audience to watch, and they were gonna be interviewed by fox news. the state troopers are standing there telling 'em they can't get into the debate, and ralph's like, "what?" - you were warned once before that if you returned you, were gonna be placed under arrest for trespassing. is it your intent to be arrested? - in my entire career of advocacy, i prefer being a plaintiff to a defendant. i prefer suing. i have no understanding of why you are being instructed to do this. we have an official invitation from one of the major television networks. - well, they're not allowing you access to the grounds. - who's not allowing, the debate commission? - debate committee. correct, sir. - so of course they sued, whatever. anyway, the commission wrote an apology letter. big deal, and they did win a bunch of money. - until late in the campaign, i couldn't believe that al gore, vice president, could not defeat a bumbling governor from texas who couldn't put six sentences together. - i said i would make sure that, uh--that, uh-- that women would be safe who used the--used the drug. - everybody in washington predicted, "oh, he'd roll over george w. bush in the debates, 'cause he really knows how to debate." well, you know, george bush came on, folksy, shrugged his shoulder, was easy in the saddle, and al gore was tense. - it's not only, "what's your philosophy and what's your position on issues?" but, "can you get things done?" and i believe i can. - and he paid a price for that. - what about the dingell-norwood bill? - democrats basically wanted to, first, keep us off the ballot, and they harassed us and threatened our petition gatherers. it was a pretty bad scene. - did the vice president ever call you himself to try and say, "hey, ralph, back off a little bit"? - no. i was willing to have a joint press conference with him, contrasting our agenda that we agreed on, with the republicans, and they wouldn't even consider it. - 12 days before the presidential election, the race between vice president al gore and texas governor george w. bush is so tight that ralph nader has become a real cause for concern. in at least three states, polls show nader with enough support to potentially cost gore critical electoral votes and tip the race to bush. - but like any candidate, he wanted votes and he wanted 5% so he would qualify for matching funds in any future election. - it's suggested that it might be a very close race, and he said, "oh, gary." he said, "don't you worry. "pat buchanan's gonna take as much from the right as i take from the left." - some nader raiders banded together and released a petition denouncing him. - i formed a website, www.nadersraidersforgore, and much to my surprise, i've had over 11,000 hits as of this morning. - i would rather stab myself in the eye than stab him in the back after the years i spent with him. i wouldn't sign, i didn't sign, but i explained to him, at the least, he should avoid popular states that could go either way. - he pledged he would not campaign in states where he would make a difference. he has broken that pledge, and it's with a really heavy heart that all of us have decided now that we can no longer support him. - it was pretty clear that florida was gonna be one of the knife edge states, that it could very well be decisive. nader had no business being on that ballot-- absolutely no business. - this is decision 2000 election coverage. - the election night, we had been watching the polls, and we knew that in some states ralph was getting double-digit returns, and in other states we saw our polls go down. we thought that the democratic party had been very effective at telling people, "we're glad you got excited about the nader campaign, "but now it's a crucial time. "the race is going to be close. please vote for al gore," and i think a lot of people did that. - we call florida in the al gore column. - stand by. stand by. cnn is moving back to "too close to call." - 565 votes separating the two men in florida with this much still to go. - uh-oh. something's happened. - george bush is the president-elect of the united states. he has won the state of florida. - it was just too much variance in the way that the ballots were counted. - officials decided to count all of the ballots by hand. - with particular attention, of course, to those ballots that the machine had counted as "no vote." the punch hole is called a chad. there are categories that were not counted as votes, the dimpled chad and the pregnant chad. - you had ballots that were designed poorly, and so people thought they were casting their vote for al gore, but they cast their vote for pat buchanan instead because of the way the lines matched up on the ballots, the notorious butterfly ballot. - in 2000, a lot of people that were, you know, in their 50s, 60s, whatever, they had grown up thinking ralph was this american hero, an american icon for safety and health and everything, and they were disappointed in him. - gore would have won decisively if nader hadn't entered the race. - really? - of course. what nader people would have voted for bush? - did you think to yourself, "did i cause something to happen that i didn't want to have happen?" - no, because the republicans stole the election in florida. the democrats did a lousy job in tennessee, the home state of al gore. you know, all these electoral crimes and all these sine qua non causes for al gore losing should not be blamed on the green party. we didn't tell 250,000 democrats in florida to vote for george w. bush. we didn't tell secretary of state katherine harris not to violate election laws in 20 different ways and help steal the election. that's the scapegoat problem of the democratic party. they didn't want to look at themselves in the mirror and say, "we should've land-slided this man from texas." they had every advantage, and instead of admitting their blunders, mistakes, stupidities, blame the green party, blame ralph nader. - it's not just ralph nader as a self-deluded wild man. it's ralph nader as an expression of the worst element of left-wing politics, moralistic self-approval, moralistic rigidity, moralistic "my way or the highway." - the nader campaign didn't really get either the democratic or the republican parties to take up his issues. what he became was a symbol for a lot of liberals of self-defeating purity, because a lot of liberals concluded that the country could have been spared george w. bush and his conservatism if only nader hadn't played the role of the spoiler. - you did have a tough reaction to someone deeming you a spoiler. - i always thought the word "spoiler" is a politically bigoted term because they apply it to someone in a third party who is exercising his or her first-amendment rights-- the right to speak, the right to petition, the right of assembly. so when they call someone who's exercising their constitutional rights a spoiler, they're basically saying, "shut up." the whole political system is spoiled, right? and they accuse someone who wants to change it, open it up, clean it out, give people more truth, opportunity, participation, a spoiler. that is an example of the decay of the two-party tyranny. - i was so angry at ralph nader for giving us george bush. you enabled this buffoon, this incompetent, this corporate suck hack to be in power. - well, ralph said he didn't care what his legacy is. he says, "what are they gonna do, tear seat belts out of cars?" he just wants to keep making america a better place. - if you're looking at the ledger of a life, you have to look at both sides, and whatever people think about ralph's role in that year 2000, the number of injuries avoided and lives saved because of regulatory laws inspired by and enacted because of ralph nader is in the tens of millions. that has to weigh on the scale of history and justice, as well. - we should have a government of the people, by the people, for the people. you don't want to vote for the least worst. you want to have high expectation levels. you want to vote for the candidacy that, year after year, has fought for your health, safety, and economic well-being. woman: he was an artist. his medium is electricity. he powered the modern world. woman: many of the things that nikola tesla predicted are being brought to reality. the transmission of pictures and sound, real-time. but his visionary genius would lead to his downfall. man: he really wasn't in this to make money. woman: tesla's basic idea was to give energy for free. "tesla," american experience, next, only on pbs. let me help you, ms. ferraro. iran--we were held by a foreign government. - you can see her face tightens up. - let me just say, first of all, that i almost resent, vice president bush, your patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about foreign policy. - the next vice president of the united states. - we didn't know if the rocket was gonna blow up on the pad or get all the way to jupiter, but none of us could resist the idea of lighting the match. - sarah palin. - who? female announcer: "the contenders: 16 for '16" is made possible in part by the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide; the william and flora hewlett foundation, helping people build measurably better lives; the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. pbs ♪ you can be a new man ♪ in new york ♪ you can be a new man ♪ new york ♪ new york ♪ just you wait ♪ alexander hamilton - hamilton's america is really like nothing you've seen before. it's the story of alexander hamilton's life, as filtered through the musical, and the journeys of the actors, and creative team that brought it to broadway. ♪ oh alexander hamilton ♪ alexander hamilton - you know alex horowitz started running a camera on me before we even knew we were going to broadway. - pretty early on i said to him, you don't know exactly what you're making. he said he wasn't sure if it was a concept album, or a show. i said, i don't care, but i'd like to start filming the process. wherever you end up, i think we've got a story here. ♪ it's the greatest city ♪ in the greatest city ♪ in the world ♪ in the greatest city in the world - we use lin, and the journey of his show as the lens through which we tell that same history that he does in the richard rodgers theater. ♪ mr. jefferson welcome home sir - what i think you get from the film is how lin takes this history, and figures out how to make drama out of it. ♪ so what did i miss - i really hope that viewers watching this learn a lot of history. and that helps them feel even closer to hamilton, our musical. - that distant history of ours is actually not so far removed as we think. ♪ alexander hamilton ♪ alexander hamilton - this is a great way of seeing how hamilton meets the world. hamilton was a real person, and the founding of our country is an incredible story. ♪ there's a million things i haven't done ♪ but just you wait ♪ what's your name man ♪ alexander hamilton (audience cheers and applauds) your favorite pbs shows ready to watch, when you are anytime, any place find more ways to explore than ever before at pbs.org slash anywhere narrator: in 1891, a serbian scientist demonstrated his latest inventions before an awestruck audience at columbia university. "tubes held in the hand of mr. tesla," a reporter wrote, "appeared like a luminous sword in the hand of an archangel representing justice." nikola tesla was already famous-- the scientist whose experiments with electricity were destined to transform daily life in the 20th century. man: we live in an electrical world. we take it all for granted. we have light bulbs, we run our refrigerators, our air conditioners, our electrical motors.