Ralph Nader plays the percentage game

Here's a good one for the angry taxpayers' lobby: Bill Clinton has travelled to California more than 20 times during the three years of his presidency. That's a lot of frequent-flier miles racked up by Air Force One. That, conservative critics acidly maintain, is more visits than Ronald Reagan made during eight years in the White House - and he is from the Golden State itself.

Some of the Clinton trips were for normal presidential reasons, such as providing support to victims of the Los Angeles earthquake, visiting defence facilities - and having the odd dinner with Barbra Streisand and other friends. Others centred around his attendance at fund-raising events.

But one thing each trip to California had in common was electoral politics. From the day of his inauguration in 1993, Mr Clinton has had his eye on November 1996, and specifically the role California will play in his re-election.

That is why he pushes hard for overseas contracts for the state's aerospace and military-industrial companies, why he agonises over local military base closings, and why he recently ordered another B2 Stealth bomber, even though many agree the project is a billion-dollar lemon.

California is the big prize in each presidential campaign. America's rather quirky electoral system is based on a college, in which the candidate getting the most votes in any state takes home all of that state's electoral college votes. With California having the biggest single slice of college votes - 54 - even a one per cent margin of victory there can make the difference between the White House and early retirement to the world of the dinner circuit. Although Mr Clinton carried California in 1992, the state has voted solidly for the Republican nominee in most post-war elections, since it actually contains one of the country's hardest conservative kernels. Analysts contend Mr Clinton is so hated in many southern states that to win back the White House, it is imperative he takes California again. That projection is open to question, since he could also prevail by taking the swing states in the industrial Midwest; but the notion has already seen Bob Dole plotting to wrench the state back.

At the moment, Mr Clinton has a healthy lead in the California polls. But enter a new factor in the political equation: Ralph Nader.

Mr Nader, the most famous consumer rights advocate in the US, announced he would be on the ballot in California - and possibly Maine, New Mexico and other friendly states - as the Green Party candidate. That might not lose the Clinton camp one second of sleep, it would seem, but if Bob Dole pushes Mr Clinton to the wire, it could be Mr Nader who opens the back door of the White House for the elderly senator.