Ralph Nader officially announced his candidacy this weekend. He has said that he will run for president as an independent. He is credited with weakening Al Gore's bid in 2000. For the average guy on the street, his candidacy means we will have to endure endless refrains of "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush," and "you're throwing your vote away." But hard-core Democrats are worried that he will change the equation, taking votes from their candidate.

At first glance (and I assume I'm speaking for many) Nader looks like a nut. He only got around 2.5 percent of the vote in 2000 and to the politically naïve his rhetoric seems too extreme. "There's a for sale sign on the door of every government agency. ... Big corporations own the government." On closer inspection, it's more than a little reminiscent of Kerry's promise to run big corporate special interests out of the White House.

Television analysts this weekend could not fathom Nader's view that there's little difference between Democrats and Republicans on selling out to big corporations. He gave Republicans a D- and Democrats a D+. In fact, soon after John Kerry attacked Republican "special interests" he was nailed for his own special interest support in Congress and for the widespread practices of his own party.

One television analyst predicted that the networks will ignore him; taking the side of Republicans and Democrats – we don't want no stinkin' third party candidates or independents interfering with the two-party election process. (Well, maybe one who's taking votes from the main opponent.) But that in fact is what created one of Nader's greatest hidden strengths. There's this thing called democracy that is not well served by extreme limitations on political choice. To many Americans, democracy – at least in theory – is a good thing.

There are people who believe that voting for either of the two-party candidates is throwing a vote away. It's voting for dysfunctional democracy. For them, the lesser-of-two evils argument has worn out its welcome. They are desperately tired of choosing between two brands of evil. The two-party system has created a very large constituency of disenfranchised eligible voters. The turn-out on election day has sometimes rivaled middle eastern countries during an election boycott. Whereas in Sweden for example, which has a healthy multi-party system, 85 percent would be perceived as low turn-out.

The thing that gets me about Nader is how easily (logically at least) he could switch from being a Democrat spoiler to an opponent of everything the Democrats stand for; if he just recognized the extent of corruption within agencies in a different way; fraudulent accounting practices, paying consultants to lie, strong-arming corporations to fit in or get forced out, misrepresenting the need for and success of their programs to Congress and the people in order to keep them going and bid for more funding.

But Nader's initial 15 minutes of fame came as a government insider; a consumer advocate demonstrating that government intervention is a positive force against uncaring corporate greed. Who leads the cancerous growth of corruption? To Ralph Nader, a more powerful government must be the solution rather than the cause of the problem.

In my opinion: Ralph Nader is not crazy. He's a man who has capitalized well on his 15 minutes of fame. What is needed is not to keep Ralph Nader out of the presidential election, but to focus attention on another third party or independent candidate who can balance the equation. A Ralph Nader opponent might be good for democracy. Perhaps then we can talk about what's really going on and inform young voters (future Democrats) rather than indoctrinating them with far left ideology.