Political Fix caught up with independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who zipped in and out of town for a news conference at the Renaissance Grand downtown.

Because we were the only ones to show up, it turned into a Post-Dispatch exclusive.

Nader’s chief message: That $700 billion bailout package for Wall Street should instead have been used for a infrastructure bailout around the country.

Nader is calling for a national program to “renovate, repair and upgrade” schools, clinics, bridges, sewers, levees, public transportation and the nation’s drinking water system.

“Instead of our government making war in the Middle East, we should be making strong levees in the Midwest,” Nader said.

Such programs would put average people back to work, and do more to relieve the nation’s fiscal ills — by attacking it from the ground up – than using the top-down approach of aiding the nation’s private financial  network, Nader added.

The Wall Street bailout, he said, represented “gross misplacement of priorities by the federal government.”

The oversight board, he said, was nothing more than “a vertical ‘old boys’ network of rubber stamps.”

Rather than using taxpayers’ money, Nader said the Wall Street problems could be addressed by a derivative tax of 1/10th of 1 percent on derivative trades.

At the beginning of the financial crisis, he said, “Washington had Wall Street over a barrel.” But because politicians caved in, “Wall Street stuffed Washington into a barrel and rolled it.”

This is the third presidential bid for Nader, 74, who made his name over the past 40 years as an activist against corporate misdeeds.

Nader said he’s not running for himself. “My concern is only building a political movement for social justice,” he said. “My concern is 47 million workers without a living wage.”

Nader lobbed all of his assertions in a calm  monotone. “I’m angrier than I sound,” he said.

He added that he also has no plans to give up. “My closet is full, but I don’t have a white flag in it.”