The ghost at the feast in Boston

IN THE slogan-filled years of the 1960s and 1970s, he was a hero to Democrats. He bullied General Motors into making safer cars; he extracted the Freedom of Information Act from a reluctant government; he confronted the nation's polluters with the Clean Air Act; he prepared the ground for a consumer-protection agency. But now, in the words of one black Democratic congressman, Ralph Nader is just another “arrogant white man” telling others what to do. Many other Democrats at the party's convention in Boston next week will share the feeling.