From our local paper.
This country has long owed Ralph Nader a debt of gratitude. His many years of agitating helped lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety & Health Administration. He inspired a generation of citizen activists. He put issues like consumers' rights, corporate crime and environmental stewardship on the national agenda.

Strangely, his proud legacy is now in danger of being eclipsed by his Harold Stassen-like insistence on running for president as a third-party candidate every four years.

In 1996, he ran as the Green Party candidate and won 0.71 percent of the vote. In 2000, when he famously told Americans there was no difference between George Bush and Al Gore, Nader received 2.74 percent of the vote, just enough, many Democrats maintain, to swing the election to Bush. In 2004, Nader received just 0.3 percent.

Nader's 2008 campaign, announced Sunday on Meet the Press, is the most quixotic of all.

America is in the midst of the most marvelous presidential campaign in more than a generation. Young people are energized. Voters, particularly Democrats and independents, are coming out in droves. States that rarely play a meaningful role in primaries are suddenly important and engaged.

Democratic voters are poised to make history, nominating either the first African American or the first woman to head a major party ticket. On the Republican side, John McCain is poised to take the nomination despite his campaign's being nearly left for dead less than a year ago. He has bested better-funded rivals - and done so without too much pandering to the far right wing that has long dominated his party.

All three are running to change the ways of Washington. Obama and Clinton want a wholesale reversal of the Bush legacy - a different approach to foreign policy, health care, the environment, the economy, the Supreme Court. McCain says he will be a federal budget hawk, cracking down on wasteful projects and deficit spending, and he supports a comprehensive and humane approach to illegal immigration. With the large exception of McCain on the issue of Iraq, all three express eagerness to change course, and quickly.

In this atmosphere, there is little evidence that voters are pining for another option on the November ballot, be it Nader, Michael Bloomberg, Al Gore or anyone else.

In an interview Sunday, Nader, who turns 74 this week, argued that most voters are disenchanted with both parties. He cited the war and tax policies that have hurt lower- and middle-class families. "You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut, out, marginalized, disrespected," he said. "You go from Iraq, to Palestine/Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of the Bush administration to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts."

He is right, of course. Congress is no more popular than President Bush these days. And despite their large mandate for a change in course in 2006, the Democrats in charge of Capitol Hill have had little success in forcing the president's hand - on Iraq, health care, education, or a range of other priorities.

The major-party presidential candidates have gotten the message. Nader will not win the election, but his scolding is a sobering reminder to candidates and voters that true change is sometimes slow, sometimes incremental and almost always difficult.