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WILL IRAQ MAKE RUSSELL FEINGOLD THE NEW HOWARD DEAN?
Withdrawal Symptoms
by Michael Crowley
Post date: 11.10.05
Issue date: 11.21.05

On a Friday night in late September, dozens of Democratic activists filled a slightly dingy American Legion Hall in Epping, New Hampshire. It had been less than a year since the last presidential election, but, in the Granite State, the 2008 campaign was already sputtering to life. Photo by Andy Manis/APAnd so, as people sat at long folding tables at the Rockingham County Democratic Committee Eleanor Roosevelt Covered Dish Dinner, picking at potluck offerings of varying edibility, a Democratic activist named John Rauh took the podium to prime them for their guest--Russell Feingold, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin. First, Rauh explained, "As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and subsequently in the full Senate, Russ voted against the war in Iraq." At this, the crowd, filled with bitter opponents of the war, burst into rousing applause. Then Rauh noted that Feingold had recently "voted with the majority" to confirm John Roberts as chief justice of the Supreme Court. "You may or may not agree with that. But I suggest that it indicates the deep degree of independence within his soul as he ponders leading this nation as a United States senator," Rauh said. Now the hall was silent; if people agreed with this interpretation, they didn't feel moved to say so. "Finally, as you reflect on Russ as a leader, be aware that he was the only member of the United States Senate to vote against the Patriot Act," he said. At this, the hall exploded into a long standing ovation.

This thundering ovation was one of many moments during Feingold's toe-dipping New Hampshire visit that illustrated this relatively obscure senator's rising political fortunes. Feingold's appearances drew large crowds of voters yearning for a Democrat who would speak out and stand on principle, who would risk career suicide to cast a lonely, unpopular vote. And, in Feingold, they had found their man. Here was a Democrat who unequivocally opposed the Iraq war and has proposed a specific timetable to withdraw U.S. troops. Such Democrats are in short supply. Feingold may emerge as the only 2008 Democratic candidate who voted against the Iraq war: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden, and Evan Bayh all supported the 2002 war resolution, while governors Tom Vilsack of Iowa and Mark Warner of Virginia are hawkish-sounding centrists. Wesley Clark might credibly challenge Feingold's antiwar mantle, but even he was famously inconsistent about Iraq in 2004.

For many of these New Hampshire Democrats, Feingold and his fearless approach reminded them of their last true love: Howard Dean. When Feingold appeared on a Manchester-area radio show, one man called in and said, "I think I'm hearing Howard Dean." After Feingold's speech in Epping, a Democrat in the audience named Kevin Bowe suggested to me that "he's clearly positioned to get that Howard Dean thing going." Meanwhile, on the Huffington Post blog--one of many liberal websites to celebrate Feingold of late--the leftist icon Tom Hayden recently asked, "Is Russ Feingold the Next Howard Dean?"

This is great news for a man clearly interested in running for president in 2008--and an ulcer-maker for the current presumed Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton. But the Dean-Feingold comparison has its limits. Dean almost always told liberals what they wanted to hear. Feingold, by contrast, has a track record of quirky independence that routinely alienates his ideological allies. His career is riddled with positions--from backing Roberts to supporting campaign finance reform to defending Bill Clinton's impeachment trial--that leave other Democrats wanting to wring his neck. His unpredictable political style "can be very annoying sometimes," says David Newby, a Feingold ally who is president of the Wisconsin afl-cio. Dean was never so complicated. At the moment, however, Feingold's future may hinge on one simple word: Iraq.



Last month, Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother crusading against the Iraq war, posted an open letter on the website of left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore. Her latest target wasn't the man she staked out last summer--George W. Bush--but the new villain of the antiwar left: Hillary Clinton. Sheehan's letter excoriated Clinton for backing the Iraq war and for her refusal to call for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops. "That sounds like Rush Limbaugh to me. That doesn't sound like an opposition party leader speaking," Sheehan wrote. "I think [Clinton] is a political animal who believes she has to be a war hawk to keep up with the big boys."

One Democratic strategist told me he thinks Clinton's problem is not ideology but authenticity--a sense among people like Sheehan that Clinton's positions are based more on politics than principle. Authenticity will never be a problem for Feingold. To the extent he's known outside of Washington, it's for standing on principle. And no issue has symbolized this like his opposition to the Iraq war. That was clear when Feingold visited a Service Employees International Union (seiu) office earlier that Friday for an informal roundtable with about a dozen key party activists, including union leaders, local politicians, and state party officials. In the parking lot, several cars still bore Dean bumper stickers. (Tellingly, I saw no Kerry signage.) As people grabbed chocolate-chip cookies and apples, Kathy Sullivan, the state party's executive director, hit all the key notes from Feingold's bio: Harvard Law. Rhodes Scholar. Campaign finance reformer. Then she looked up from her notes and got to what may have been the real reason people were there. "He's especially interesting," she added, "because he's really led the way on the position that I think Democrats should have on the Iraq war."

It's hard to say how Iraq will look once intense primary campaigning begins in late 2007. But it's safe to assume that the war will shape the campaign's early dynamics. Indeed, Feingold's Iraq position is already causing friction between Clinton and the left. According to The Village Voice, in late September, a group of 30 New York antiwar activists wrangled a meeting with a Clinton legislative aide. The purpose of the meeting was to "pressure" the aide to embrace a Senate resolution setting an exit timetable--Feingold's resolution, that is.

Feingold seems aware that he's onto a good thing, politically. In New Hampshire and in a series of Senate speeches, he has regularly reiterated his opposition to the war, his frustration with Democrats who aren't speaking out, and his call for a withdrawal timeline. At the seiu roundtable, he was eager to steer the discussion along these lines. "How deep is the sentiment here in New Hampshire about Iraq?" Feingold asked.

Paul Hodes, a party activist who is running for Congress, spoke up. "In our base, the sentiment I hear is very strong for 'get out now.' That's what I'm hearing from people as I go around the state," Hodes said. "I was in Littleton last night. The message was very strong, saying, as Democrats, 'Iraq was a mistake, and get out right now.'"

Feingold has not called for the United States to get out of Iraq "right now." But he is the only major congressional Democrat to set a specific withdrawal timetable. The impetus for his proposal was a trip he took to Iraq in February with a small Senate delegation that included, of all people, Hillary Clinton. Feingold had never visited Iraq before, and he was appalled by what he saw there. "We couldn't stay overnight in Iraq," he said recently. "We couldn't drive from the airport to the Green Zone. When we went to the Green Zone, the helicopters had to go just over the palm trees so they wouldn't get shot down. We never got to go out to see the rest of Baghdad, because they couldn't take us out safely. We wore flak jackets and helmets in the Green Zone. And people are worried about chaos if we leave?"

Conditions in Iraq are certainly nasty. But Feingold has long harbored wariness about U.S. military action. When Republicans forced a 1995 Senate vote to cut off funding for U.S. military forces in Bosnia, for instance, he was the sole Democrat to join 21 conservatives in support of the resolution. As other Democrats waxed idealistic about human rights, Feingold fretted about Vietnam parallels and worried that "our attempting to police the world threatens our own national security." By 1997, he was fighting to cut off funding for military operations in Bosnia and to begin an early withdrawal of U.S. forces. "What they haven't done is define a concrete exit strategy for our American troops," he said at the time. "This administration needs to sit down and work with Congress to map out a specific schedule for bringing our troops home, or they will be there for a very, very long time." Likewise, Feingold cast just one of three Democratic 'no' votes against the 1999 Kosovo bombing campaign. "It's a compelling notion that the American government has an obligation to stop brutality and genocide. I can't dispute that," he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in March of 1999. "But how can we be acting in Bosnia and Kosovo and not Rwanda, or Sudan, or East Timor, or even Tibet?" Feingold even told me that, during the 2000 presidential campaign, "I liked some of the things George W. Bush said about nation-building."

When it came to Iraq, Feingold concluded in the wake of his trip there that the occupation was doing more harm than good--both to the future of Iraq and to America's global national security interests. He soon began urging the Bush administration to offer a more detailed exit strategy. On August 18, he went a step further, delivering a speech in Marquette, Wisconsin, setting December 31, 2006, as the target date for the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq. Feingold stresses that his deadline comes "with flexibility," a caveat that some critics say renders it close to meaningless. But that's almost beside the point. What is most significant is the way Feingold, as he himself says, "broke a taboo." Previously, no other mainstream congressional Democrat had proposed an Iraq exit strategy. Fearful of being called weak or taking a position that could consign Iraq to chaos, even liberals in the House have generally held their tongues.

Feingold's speech was an instant hit across the liberal blogosphere. Already a minor hero for his lonely vote against the Patriot Act, Feingold was suddenly hailed as a Democratic savior for 2008 at major "netroots" sites like Daily Kos and MyDD. In particular, the blog crowd loved the way Feingold's critique of the war displayed his "spine." Some argued Feingold's bravery, in and of itself, was at least as important as his substantive position. "I think many Americans are less attracted by ideas and positions on the issues and more attracted by backbone, tenacity, and the ability to stand up for beliefs," wrote one commenter at MyDD. The notion was also echoed by David Sirota, a former House staffer turned liberal blogger, who argued in one dispatch that Feingold "continues to courageously take on the Washington, D.C. Democratic Establishment and its weak-kneed fear of taking any sort of serious stand on Iraq. Be sure not to miss that profile in courage, Sen. Joe Biden, as he provides a perfect example of why the public believes Democrats stand for nothing. Feingold, by contrast, seems to understand the need for his party to take strong stands--especially on the most pressing national security/foreign policy issue facing our country right now." Even when Feingold was walking down a Manchester, New Hampshire, street, a stranger walked up to him to declare, "You're a man of courage!"

Almost immediately after his speech, Feingold's numbers began climbing in monthly online straw polls staged by MyDD and Daily Kos. Such polls aren't exactly the Iowa caucuses, of course. But they're still good barometers of sentiment within the crowd that helped turn Dean from protest candidate to near-nominee. Clark, who is still surprisingly popular, routinely wins these polls. But Feingold now places second nearly every time--and his numbers are growing. In an October straw poll, he won 23 percent of the vote compared with Clark's 31 percent. His next closest rival was last year's vice presidential nominee, John Edwards, at a mere 12 percent. Hillary Clinton polled just 7 percent.

That suggests Feingold is capturing the high-octane Internet power that fueled the Dean phenomenon. But much of what these bloggers know about him is based on his votes on Iraq and the Patriot Act. The rest of his career might surprise them.

Throughout his weekend in New Hampshire, one question dogged Feingold like a nagging cough: Why did you vote for John Roberts? The question came up twice during a listening session Feingold held at Dartmouth College in Hanover. Overall, it was a welcoming crowd; one organizer called the turnout--around 130 people early on a Saturday morning--"truly astounding." But Roberts was the fly in the ointment. Arguing that "his jurisprudence led to the decision in" Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the 2004 Supreme Court case ruling on the rights of suspected terrorist detainees, one questioner (among three who mentioned Roberts) asked with a touch of indignation, "Is it acceptable that the judiciary is going to accept my country's systemic use of torture and violation of habeas corpus? And, if that's unacceptable, how can we suggest that John Roberts is mainstream?"

While Clinton struggles with questions about her authenticity, Feingold will likely be forced to answer questions about his sense of "principle." Throughout his Senate career, Feingold has taken stances that leave fellow Democrats befuddled and angry. Often that's thanks to his fixation on the integrity of the political process--which he sometimes values above his partisan and even ideological imperatives. Unlike Democrats eager to torment Bush at every possible turn, for instance, Feingold believes the Senate should defer to a president's choice of nominees. Thus, he infuriated liberals in 2001 by voting for the confirmation of John Ashcroft as attorney general. And, at a time when other potential 2008 contenders--even moderates like Indiana's Bayh--said they couldn't bring themselves to vote for Roberts, Feingold did, saying Roberts was well-credentialed and the best Democrats could expect from Bush.

Feingold's emphasis on process flows from the Wisconsin Progressive tradition--exemplified by the state's political icon, "Fighting" Bob La Folette--which battled to reform the political system. He was raised in a middle-class Wisconsin town, tutored in politics by a lawyer father who ran unsuccessfully for local offices as a Progressive and who taught him, as Feingold once told a local paper, "that honest and decent politics is an honorable profession." Feingold idolized John F. Kennedy as a boy and spoke openly about his own political aspirations. After college at the University of Wisconsin, followed by a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford and Harvard Law School, he became a white-collar lawyer until he ran for the Wisconsin state legislature and won. When he first ran for U.S. Senate in 1992, his focus was tellingly process-oriented: Feingold posted a list of campaign pledges on his garage door, which included pledges to attend every vote, maintain his Wisconsin residence, and refuse pay raises and most out-of-state campaign donations.

In Washington, Feingold has maintained his processorientation--to the frequent dismay of his fellow Democrats. The most obvious example is his relentless advocacy of major campaign finance reform in the late '90s and early '00s. When he teamed up with John McCain to pass new campaign finance restrictions a few years ago, many Democratic party officials felt near-panic over the legislation's ban on "soft money" fund-raising by the national parties, a cash stream that was far more important to Democrats than to Republicans. (McCain-Feingold's long-term effects are still uncertain, though the rise of Internet fund-raising has spared Democrats for now.) But Feingold didn't care: This is a man who demanded that the Democratic party stop running ads in support of his own 1998 Senate campaign because he opposed soft money-funded ads in principle. "Get the hell out of my state with those things," he said at the time. "It was kind of frustrating," says his friend Newby of the afl-cio.

Within the Senate, some Democrats see Feingold as less a noble reformer and more a holier-than-thou prig. He once tried, unsuccessfully, to bar members of Congress from making personal use of frequent-flier miles earned on their official travels. He is totally ascetic about the influence of lobbyists and has fought to ban lobbyist gifts for lawmakers. He also requires his own staff to observe stricter limits than Senate rules dictate, forbidding them from accepting the most token gifts from outsiders. Even junior aides--including interns--are prohibited from snacking and drinking at the countless Capitol Hill receptions held by various trade associations and happily mobbed by hundreds of Hill staffers.

On its own, this would be enough to give Feingold a hall-monitor reputation. ("He's like the kid in class who tattles on everyone else," says one Democratic Hill aide turned lobbyist.) But maybe nothing annoys Feingold's colleagues as much as his fights against annual cost-of-living raises granted to senators. Such raises now kick in automatically by law, but Feingold has tried to change that, and he routinely battles to force an invariably embarrassing Senate debate--and recorded vote--on them. "It's not my favorite time of year in the Senate," Feingold concedes. (Although Feingold is a pauper by Senate standards, he refuses pay raises and donates anything over his $162,100 starting salary for deficit reduction--more than $50,000 so far.)

Maybe the ultimate Feingold heresy came during the 1998-1999 Clinton impeachment fight. When Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia offered a resolution to dismiss the charges against the president, every Democrat voted for the resolution but one: Feingold. Again, the issue was process. Feingold argued that Republicans deserved a chance to make their case and put it to a vote and that the Byrd resolution would "in appearance, and in fact, improperly short-circuit this trial" and "call the fairness of the process into question." The vote was a disaster among his Democratic constituents, according to the Wisconsin Democratic Party chairwoman, who told The Washington Post: "We're getting a lot of very upset people calling. ... Elderly people crying, other people yelling. ... They're just mad as hell." Feingold ultimately voted against impeachment. But watching him explain his interim vote promises to amuse. One adviser to a potential 2008 rival said he could envision cutting a "Feingold favored impeachment" ad. That's hardly a winning position with the Democratic base--not to mention a touchy debating point on a stage with Hillary Clinton.

Nevertheless, in New Hampshire, Feingold rarely missed a chance to slam his fellow Washington Democrats for mounting a timid opposition to the GOP. "We, as Democrats, have to provide a genuine alternative to the Republican Party," he said in Epping. "We cannot just be what I like to call Republican lite. That will not work." At various points, I heard Feingold denounce Democrats as being "too timid" on Iraq, complain that they provided votes to pass a GOP energy bill this summer, and even boast that he was the only Senate Democrat to criticize the "Gang of 14" compromise that averted the Senate "nuclear option" showdown this spring. (Feingold said the compromise conceded too much to the Republicans.) It was a striking echo of Dean's vow to represent "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party"--made all the more impressive coming from a man who has to work every day with the same Capitol Hill Democrats he was bashing.

All of which makes Feingold something of a loner in the Senate. Although respected for his intellect and integrity, Feingold "doesn't have any friends" in the chamber, according to one veteran Democratic aide. It may even be fair to say he has a few enemies. For example, Feingold told me that, in the heat of one pay-raise debate a few years ago, one of his colleagues marched up to him. "Feingold," the senator said, "if we go into Iraq, we're strapping you onto the first missile!"

Back in New Hampshire, it was early on Saturday morning, and the only thing Feingold was strapped to was the seat of a rented van. Cruising down the highway from Manchester to Dartmouth, Feingold held court with a handful of reporters. He was impressive in close quarters: a quick and clear thinker with less of a tendency to drone on than the average senator (including a certain recent Democratic presidential nominee). Reminiscing about his Rhodes scholar days--playing squash with Tom Friedman, talking sports with future NFL quarterback Pat Haden--Feingold had a certain goody-two-shoes quality. (Though he grew surprisingly animated when reminded that Dartmouth had been the fictionalized setting for Animal House. It turns out Feingold can quote readily from some of the movie's more obscure scenes.)

On the drive, Feingold chose to emphasize a surprising theme. Although he's a rising star today for his antiwar position, he made a point of talking about his party's standing on national security issues. "I think Democrats bankrupt their credibility if they cannot say there is no room for trying to understand Al Qaeda. The idea that you would negotiate [with terrorists] is unacceptable." He continued, speaking in the steady and reasoned voice of the litigator he once was: "If we are not perceived as strong and able to deal with international threats, we won't win. I do agree with some of those more conservative Democrats who say we need to do this. I just don't buy their argument about Iraq."

Feingold was clearly driving home a calculated talking point--perhaps one intended to compensate for his markedly dovish record on military action in the '90s. But, in that sense, it showed him to be savvier than your typical one-note antiwar candidate. Certainly, Feingold has been thinking about what it takes to run a national campaign; in one conversation, he made an offhand reference to an obscure detail in The Making of the President, 1960.

But this kind of independent streak, especially when it doesn't match liberal activists' ideological principles, can be a liability. After his speech in Epping, during which he insisted that Democrats must "show passion for American national security" and make it clear that, "if there are people out there who want to kill us, we should stop them first," a few activists complained to reporters afterward that he had sounded too "hawkish."

Episodes like these raise the question of whether Democratic activists really are yearning for a candidate who stands up for what he "believes"--whether, as that one commenter at MyDD suggested, bravery is more important than ideology. The flak Feingold has taken over his less predictable opinions--on Roberts or on a tough national security policy, for instance--suggests this may not be the case at all.

What's more, Feingold may soon lose his monopoly on the out-of-Iraq mantle. "The ground is about to shift on this thing, and Democrats and Republicans alike are going to be advocating bringing the troops home," said an aide to one potential 2008 Democrat. John Kerry recently called for the withdrawal of 20,000 U.S. troops after the Iraqi elections in December, and former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle has proposed withdrawal by December 2007.

For now, however, Feingold is the best hope that antiwar liberals have. Even if some pro-war candidates echo his themes, they can't change their original vote for invading Iraq. Feingold can also credibly say he launched the withdrawal debate. And his lonely opposition to the Patriot Act is forever fixed in liberal lore. Yes, his presidential dreams face obstacles: He's Jewish. He has been divorced twice. He's not about to rouse the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party" with a primal scream. But, in reality, his odds of winning the Democratic nomination are slim anyway. What Feingold can do is make life miserable for the other Democrats who seek it. Dean didn't defeat Kerry, after all. But he was the proximate cause for Kerry's vote against the $87 billion war appropriations bill--a vote that haunted Kerry in the general election. In 2008, perhaps Feingold will play the role of Dean to Clinton's Kerry, battering her image and dragging her further left than she can afford to go. A couple of years from now, in other words, it may be Hillary Clinton who wants to strap Russ Feingold onto a missile.
Michael Crowley is a senior editor at TNR.