Crashing the Party: Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender

Crashing the Party is Ralph Nader's raucous and righteously indignant account of his Green Party candidacy in the 2000 American presidential election. Nader weaves an anecdotal recounting--virtually speech-by-speech--of his exhausting, 50-state campaign with impassioned summaries of his political opinions. Primarily, Nader sees the current political structure as ominously flawed: a two-party system, he says, exists in a "drowsy equilibrium," and the parties--both in thrall to corporate interests--are concerned less with the people's needs than their own self-perpetuation. An equal-opportunity critic, he slings arrows not only at what he sees as a myopic, lazy media and Republicans (he calls former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman a "latter-day Marie Antoinette"), but organized labor, prominent Democrats, and certain fair-weather Hollywood friends as well.

Though overly strident at times, Crashing the Party is a noteworthy, thoughtful addition to the literature of muckraking. --H. O'Billovitch