Consumer movement at a crossroads

The woman largely responsible for that is Joan Claybrook, who announced last week that she's stepping down as president of Public Citizen after 27 years at the helm of the consumer watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader.

Claybrook, 71, who served as head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under President Carter, told me she'd been thinking about leaving for the last few years. But she said she was unwilling to walk away while President Bush remained in power.

"The Bush years have been very, very tough for consumer rights," Claybrook said. "Finally, it feels like we have some breathing room."

The consumer movement is at a crossroads. After becoming a force in the 1960s with Nader's rise to prominence, it has since struggled to connect with the media and public.

"In many ways, there's less of a movement now," Claybrook acknowledged. "Now there are specific advocates for specific issues.

"Consumers still have power, but it's dispersed. When Ralph started his work, there wasn't really a consumer movement. It was just Ralph. Now there are a number of groups, but it's not centralized."

When I relayed Claybrook's comments to Nader, he was more pessimistic.

"We used to put out press releases and they'd be on the evening news," he said. "Now you can't even get them on cable."

Nader's consumer advocacy, of course, has been overshadowed by his political ambitions (for which he still has a lot to answer for, if you ask me). But he makes a good point.

There's so much clutter in the media marketplace, so much noise from competing interests that it's increasingly difficult for a nonprofit group to get its message across, much less stir up sufficient outrage to catalyze political action.

"The indications are very bad," Nader, 74, said of the future. "We all thought the Internet would give us a resurgence. The big hope was that you could band people together quickly and cheaply, but it hasn't worked out."

At least Claybrook, who will end her duties at Public Citizen in January, prepares to depart with her head high.

Aside from air bags, other achievements in which Public Citizen played a key role include changes to congressional ethics and lobbying rules, campaign finance reform and the filing of hundreds of lawsuits to hold companies more accountable for their products and services.