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Not to Be Loved. Nader's gift is not one of personal mien. His narrow-lapelled, ever rumpled suits and too short sideburns make no concession to the generally young, liberal audience he addresses. What Nader radiates is pure purpose, an almost fanatical sincerity. He asks nothing for himself, financially or politically, and is virtually monastic in his private life. Though he earns more than $100,000 a year in honorariums, he lives on less than $5,000 in one room of a boardinghouse, minus a car and television. The rest of the money goes into his investigations.
Isn't this ascetic existence carrying things a bit too far? "Dollars have never been the prime thing," Nader says. "It's always been boring to think about money. What we're doing is getting along on the sheer power of the idea; the idea of more justice for, and less exploitation of, the ordinary individual.
"If you want to be loved, you'll be co-opted. People often ask me how I choose people to work with me. Well, you start off by saying they have to be bright, hardworking, the usual traits. But the one key probably is how willing they are not to be loved. We've had raiders who will start off on an investigation, say, of the Food and Drug Administration; and after a while one or two come back and say the people over there were so nice to them that they just can't write reports that are critical."
How can he detect someone anxious to be loved before hiring him? "You can't. But there's no problem of easing them out. They ease themselves out. They can't perform."
To Love. But can Nader be so harsh, almost unfeeling in his dedication? Just as it begins to appear so, he sits back and muses: "It's more important to love than to want to be loved. What would happen to me if I went out to Jim Roche's [chairman of the board of General Motors] house to dinner, for instance? Well, pretty soon it's Ralph and Jim, and pretty soon there's a report coming out on G.M., and someone says, 'You know you can't do this to Jim. Remember those great dinners at his house. Not to good old Jim.' Well, there it is —the most important quality for this kind of work is to have no anxiety to be loved."