Nobody symbolizes all that is inimicable to Nader, the anti-charismatic American icon and presidential candidate of the Green Party, more than Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

``He's the Senate bag man. No senator has shaken down corporations so brazenly as McConnell,'' Nader says after being informed of this missed opportunity, caused because the candidate was too busy lecturing a passer-by about the future of the Supreme Court.

Nobody else recognizes McConnell. But many pay their respects to Nader, the unrepentant consumer crusader whose no-frills wanderings about the land threaten to have an impact on the tight presidential race between Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore.

In states such as California, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Alaska and Maine, Nader is registering support in at least the mid-to-high single digits. In places such Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin, key electoral battlegrounds, especially for Gore, such Election Day totals could possibly swing a state, likely to Bush.

Gore supporters downplay his impact. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., concedes the unease with Gore but thinks Nader will be a catalytic force who brings out many more Wisconsin voters on Election Day. Meanwhile, Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., suspects that many Nader backers in his Seattle district will switch to Gore if they do believe Nader is a spoiler.

Spoiler. All along, Nader instantly discounts the inevitable, seemingly Pavlovian question from reporters at every stop about his undermining Gore since, for sure, he will draw more from the Democrat than the Republican.

``Spoiler? How can you soil a system spoiled to the core?'' he responds during a local TV interview, exactly the sort of free media attention he, like all longshot and underfunded candidates, craves.

A mix of Democrats disaffected with Gore, independents and even pro-environment Republicans are intrigued by the iconic true believer who for nearly 40 years has led often successful crusades against unsafe cars, food, drugs, smokestacks, pesticides and television sets, as well as dirty rivers, inaccessible government records and, these, days, burgeoning world trade organizations and agreements.

``He's the most influential private citizen of the 20th Century,'' claims Phil Donahue, the former talk show host and an ardent supporter.

For Nader, Gore and Bush are two political peas in a pod. He scoffs at journalists describing ``sharp differences'' between them, claiming those exist on precious few matters. They are joined at the wallet, similarly beholden to corporate America, in particular for the campaign dollars freely flowing their ways.

He has a relative pittance of just over $5 million in donations, no campaign plane, a traveling entourage of one (his 20-something nephew, his sister's son), precious few ads (and radio ones at that), and an hourlong stump speech on ``the politics of joy and justice.'' That speech is much heavier on justice than joy, lacks humanizing touches about his own life and is so encyclopedic on certain domestic and world ills, it would inspire apoplexy in any soundbite-sensitive modern political consultant.

He attacks the growing power of corporations as he calls for universal health care, full public financing of elections and crackdowns on corporate ``crime and abuse,'' such as what he flatly calls the criminality of the Firestone tire scandal.

Bemoaning that American families are undermined as parents work longer and harder for stagnant wages, Nader goes on at length about repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, as if most in an audience have a clue that he refers to a 1947 amendment to federal labor law, outlawing certain union tactics, expanding the definition of unfair labor practices and restricting some strikes.

In an age when the personal anecdote is an oratorical staple, Nader, 66, seldom says a word about himself.

And yet, it all seems to strike some chord. Without buses, free food, bands or cadres of advance staff to drum up crowds, he has lured 10,000 and more to arenas across the country (with the help of some celebrities, like Donahue and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, among others), most recently in Chicago and New York.

Clearly, it reflects some unease, even as prosperity dampens the impact of the anti-corporate, anti-globalism message that both Nader (who's never even been into a McDonald's) and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan (whose polling support is nearly invisible) make, albeit starting from wildly different ideological poles.

And like Buchanan's political liaison with the Ross Perot-inspired Reform Party, Nader's with the Green Party, founded in 1984 and with few candidates nationwide, reflects mutual pragmatism.

Opposition to globalization is not a high priority for most of the Green Party's environmentally concerned members, as is also true for issues such as labor law reform and public funding of elections. But on the environment, notably, there is obvious accord. And then there is the cachet of Nader, whose exploits and idiosyncrasies form an enduring image.

He is at the heart of the citizen-action movement of the last 30 years, having been a righteous scold of government and industry. Indeed, wherever one treks with him, one unavoidably realizes that he's consumer activism's version of an academic giant, like a John Maynard Keynes or Sigmund Freud, having spawned a body of thought and armies of acolytes.

``He was pivotal to my life,'' said Sally Foley, a trademark and copyright attorney at a Nader speech later this day at the Detroit Economic Club. In the 1970s, Foley worked on public housing for the elderly with ``Nader's Raiders'' in Washington and, ``because that was on my resume,'' later got a job doing consumer protection and antitrust enforcement with the Michigan attorney general. Foley knows that major laws, including the National Traffic and Motor Safety Act, the Clean Air Act and the Freedom of Information Act, partly reflect his handwork.

It helps explain how, when commentators like PBS's Jim Lehrer question Nader about his lack of actual government service, he can retort that ``half of Washington has worked for me, the other half I've sued.''

Nader is tending to concentrate on traditionally Democrat bastions, like Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as spending time in the Bush bastion of Texas and California. Flying coach on commercial flights, he is picked up by either volunteers or one of the just under 100 full-time staffers that mark a guerrilla campaign run from the nation's capital by Theresa Amato, who is on leave from her job as executive director of the Citizen Advocacy Center in Elmhurst, Ill.

Then he essentially does what he's reflexively done for decades, treking to colleges, universities, community centers and dozens of TV and radio studios. He does so with an unabashed, even brazen, desire to provoke. He has a thick skin built up after being himself attacked so often as a radical and utopian, freed from the necessity to compromise that marks the lives of the political class he skewers.

Nothing underscores his natural bent more than the lunchtime appearance at the Detroit Economic Club, whose members naturally include many auto industry executives. Their collective absence (one dealer shows up on the dias) is expected since Nader, who came to fame with his 1965 attack on the Big Three, ``Unsafe at Any Speed,'' is their most famous critic.

``The auto safety agencies have become consulting firms for the auto industry,'' he tells several hundred people in attendance. His rhetorical assault is unrelenting. He asserts that Ford Motor Co. and Bridgestone/Firestone committed crimes in the tire fiasco, then goes on to bemoan how fuel efficiency standards have not changed since the 1970s while attempts at a variety of safety improvements and improving overall vehicle stability standards have all been sabotaged.

And as for as the industry's home town, ``You proud of the mass transit, of the streets, of the taxi cab fleet? I think it's all a disgrace.''

There is an arguable irony that his campaign is also testament to the failures of the citizen action movement, which is both part of the national fabric and, arguably, less potent than it was years ago. The concentration of power and wealth he rails against is what he fought and made initial inroads against. Meanwhile, he concedes that increased public passivity makes it harder to rouse citizens on many issues.

Nader's is a potent intellect. He is a voracious newspaper reader, who annotates daily papers, marking up most stories (''energy,'' ``campaign finance,'' ``Gore'') so they can later be filed.

He'd be a perfect ``Who Wants to Be A Millionaire'' contestant, given a daunting ability to spit out facts on most anything: utilities systems in California, unions, even his beloved New York Yankees (Lou Gehrig, whose career symbolized talent and durability, is a hero).

For all his reading, there are topics he has little political use for, which is why the Nader campaign, even while tackling macro matters like globalization, is narrow. He says little about abortion, race or civil rights. When pressed by Chicago television reporter Mike Flannery about the huge impact on Illinois farmers of his desired changes in trade treaties, Nader is short of persuasive.

There is, for sure, the caricature of a weird, monklike ascetic. And there is something to it. A vegetarian and a bachelor, he doesn't have a credit card (potential invasion of privacy, he says), car, cell phone or beeper. He is forever looking rumpled, with his dark suits, blue button-down Oxford shirts, red necktie and heavily worn shoes.

He has holdings in excess of $4 million (much of it initially gained through his thousands of speeches, his main source of income) but lives on about $25,000 a year, giving 80 percent of his earnings back to his organization and charities. He lives in a small Washington apartment, without a television, and still uses manual typewriters, sleeping little and tending to be ferried places by friends and aides (he does have a driver's license).

Yet the humorless scold image is errant. He is droll and flippant, ever ready to poke fun at himself. His recent appearance on ``Saturday Night Live'' was his fourth. When WTTW-Ch. 11's Phil Ponce asked him about his experience in foreign affairs while taping ``Chicago Tonight,'' Nader quickly smiled and spit out phrases in Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic.

Later, he is in a small room above a Greektown restaurant doing a joint MTV interview with Pearl Jam's Vedder. He fully appreciates the incongruity of the pairing. Leaving, he smiles and admits that his musical tastes run to Joan Baez and Linda Ronstadt.

Nader is on the ballot in 43 states and the District of Columbia and hopes to corral 5 percent of the national vote so the Green Party can be automatically eligible for federal funds in the 2004 campaign. If that happens, he believes, it could become a third-party force.

In stops in Michigan, Illinois and Kentucky, the reasons for potential Gore chagrin are obvious.

At Teamster Local 705 in Chicago, whose largest employer is United Parcel Service, union steward Joe Allen says politically active members see ``Gore as a stopgap at best. Their hearts are with Nader, even if their votes are with Gore.''

In Louisville, Thomas Payne, 47, a worker for the state's Department of Family and Children, surfaces at a City Hall rally and says he voted for President Clinton in 1996 and would vote for him again if he could. But he won't go for Gore.

``Mr. Nader seems to be the only one who is trying to get rid of corporate money taking over campaigns,'' Payne says. ``I've read about him since the 1960s and he's always been one of the heroes for the consumer.''

For sure, Nader can't help looking at or touching most products, big or small, without venturing an opinion. Returning to Washington after a 48-hour trek, he suspects that a small commuter jet is Brazilian-made and, as he departs, confirms that fact with the pilot.

``You ought to tell USAir to can it,'' he tells the pilot, then turns and departs the craft.

The presidential candidate then surprises a reporter traveling with him by indicating he will catch a taxi to go home but, for some reason, not heading toward the regular taxi stand area at Ronald Reagan National Airport.

America's most famous consumer activist is going to the upstairs level where cabs drop off passengers. By circumventing the usual rules, he'll save the $1.50 airport fee.

Welcome to the politics of joy, justice and thrift.