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PATRIOT
GAMES
by John-David Morgan
A Foreword PATRIOT GAMES: Sen. Russ Feingold's Fight for Liberty at Home
was first published in the debut issue of ThePRESS, Milwaukee's News and Arts Monthly, in February of 2002, four months after the Wisconsin senator cast the lone U.S. Senate vote in opposition to the USA Patriot Act. At the time, an interview with Feingold was an irresistible way to introduce to readers an independent monthly with a progressive political bent. Media in Feingold's home state, while reporting the passage of the act and his vote, had proven unwilling in the wake of 9-11 to present ample coverage of his side of the story. This despite the fact that voting against the Act did no damage to the senator's popularity in his home state. In fact, Feingold's approval ratings improved after the vote, according to one poll.
"Feingold voted against the Patriot Act and his approval ratings soared," declared Ralph Nader on the national talk show circuit, chiding those in Congress who voted for the Act to allay the public's post-9/11 fears. It would be revealed that few U.S. Senators even read the Patriot Act before casting their votes.
Feingold's reelection bid in 2004 bore similar results, as he claimed 55 percent of the vote. Throughout the race, he maintained a double-digit lead against Republican challenger Tim Michels, a former Army officer and heir to the Michels family construction fortune. As the Michels campaign hammered away at Feingold's opposition to the Patriot Act and his vote against the Iraq War Resolution, the senator's popularity did soar, and his lead rose to over 20 percent in some pre-election polls.
While Feingold's landslide win gave merit to his insistence that there is an "independent streak" and "healthy skepticism" in Wisconsin -- and strong public sentiment against the Iraq War -- the incompetence of Michels in the race often thwarted definitive conclusions.
The Patriot Act, Michels argued, has been effective in preventing terrorism at home. Feingold fired back that Michels had, admittedly, "never even read it. He doesn't even indicate that he knows what the bill really does." After the debate, Michels rationalized that: "I haven't read my truck's owner's manual, but I know how to drive it."
Shortly thereafter, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee canceled a $1.2 million television media blitz that had been reserved for attacks on Feingold, reallocating the funds to tight races in other states.
As Feingold begins his third term, his star continues to rise nationally. "Draft Russ" for president in 2008 campaigns are underway (http://draftruss.org), and Feingold has been cast as "the moral conscience" of the Democratic Party in leading political publications, the New York Times and the arch-conservative Washington Times among them. For some, he is the Harry Truman of our times: a deeply principled, independent progressive from the Midwest who refuses to allow his sense of civic responsibility to be compromised. Like Truman, Feingold offers lessons in core heartland values for the national establishment of both political parties.
The Patriot Act expires this year, and Congress will decide whether it should be reinstated or allowed to sunset into history. As Feingold continues to call for full disclosure of military and Justice Department practices in the War on Terrorism, the Bill of Rights concerns he expressed in this interview in early 2002 and in a speech given a the University of Michigan, Veteran's Day 2001 [LINK], are as pressing today as they were when the Patriot Act was fast-tracked through Congress.
PATRIOT
GAMES
Senator Russ Feingold's Fight for Liberty at Home
by John-David Morgan
When political
pundits and writers, especially those in Wisconsin, looked back on
2001 in search of the year's most intriguing political figure, they
did not have to dig far into their notebooks to find their honoree.
Wisconsin Senator
Russ Feingold stood alone in the minds of many in the wake of the
Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
horrific events that gave birth to the USA Patriot Act, the homeland
security measure designed to fight terrorism. Citing concerns that
the bill violated constitutional rights to due process and
protections against unreasonable searches, heightened the need for a
federal ban on "racial profiling" ban, and gave law
enforcement new powers to seize assets, Feingold cast the single
vote against the Act in the U.S. Senate. The 98-1 vote made him a
pariah in the eyes of some, a defender of civil liberties to others
and, to some analysts and interests, a potential presidential
candidate in 2004.
When the Patriot
Act was introduced, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft inferred
that Feingold and others attempting to amend the Act's civil
liberties violations were "aiding the terrorists." Letter
writers on editorial pages in his home state followed Ashcroft's
lead, calling the senator "unpatriotic," "a
fool," and a friend of terrorists. Still, his overall
popularity in Wisconsin held steady.
The Patriot Act
represented to Feingold the standardization of what was already
happening to Muslims and Arab-Americans in the days that followed
the attacks. On a Northwest Airlines flight, the passengers and
pilot voted three Arab-American passengers off the plane. In San
Antonio, a doctor was arrested and detained because his last name
was similar to the names of two hijackers. The fight against racial
profiling that Feingold had taken up with the Feingold-Conyers bill
accelerated with new urgency as Feingold stumped on college
campuses, calling for support for broader civil liberties reforms at
home. The post 9-11 homeland security act, Feingold dared to say,
would weaken America at home.
During a visit to
his Milwaukee office while arranging the interview, the implications
of the Patriot Act hit home. In
a surreal scene during which a children's choir sang "My
Country 'Tis of Thee" in the rotunda of the federal courthouse,
I was asked by security officers to first remove my coat, my belt,
and finally my shoes. I stood under the metal detector in my socks
as the children's voices rose in harmony to fill the rotunda,
wondering whether this was to become a permanent facet of life in
the United States.
The day prior to
the scheduled interview, the final signature on a "discharge
petition" which would require Speaker of the House Dennis
Hastert (R-Illinois) to schedule a vote on the House version of the
McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill was received. This
freed the bill for a vote in both houses of Congress, and, seven
years after it was crafted, eventual passage of the landmark
legislation "to stop the train of soft money that dominates
politics." A "cautiously elated" Feingold talked
campaign finance reform first, defending the compromises made over
the years and declaring McCain-Feingold only the beginning in the
effort to reform the "corrupt system" in place.
"I favor
full public financing," he said. "But I think the American
people want to see the system cleaned up. [McCain-Feingold] has done
nothing but galvanize the movement toward campaign finance reform.
Its affect has only been benign toward those efforts, and it is a
beginning. Much more work needs to be done."
ThePRESS:
Let's talk about the USA Patriotic Act. The vote was 98-1. Now,
there are other Democrats in the Senate who believe very strongly in
the need to protect our constitutional rights, and Republicans who
would defend our "rights to be left alone." Yet you cast
the lone vote against the Act. If we could look at the more personal
side of the question, why you?
FEINGOLD:
I do think about that. I was raised to believe that the reason a
person goes into politics is to do something and stick to your
principles, even if you've got to do something that may endanger
your career and people will have a hard time understanding why
you're doing it.
My understanding
is that the protection of the Bill of Rights is the bottom line. I
take it very seriously. That's why I'm on Judiciary Committee, and
I'm chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee. ... All I could think
of is that the bill is very dangerous. As chairman of the
Constitutional Subcommittee, I had to vote against it. It's my job.
And, I have found that people of Wisconsin are very supportive of my
stance.
ThePRESS:
One poll showed that your ratings went up after you voted against
it.
FEINGOLD:
I think it is a national sentiment, more intensely felt in
Wisconsin. We have an independent streak and a healthy skepticism
about powerful interests. It includes corporations and the
government, and the FBI. We trust our local law enforcement to do
more and we don't want that much involvement from federal law
enforcement.
ThePRESS:
Doesn't some of this start with the Clinton Crime Bill in 1994? You
voted against the Crime Bill because it expanded the federalization
of criminal justice and the death penalty.
FEINGOLD:
They wanted to make every gun-related offense a federal offense.
That's sort of a slap in the face to local sheriffs and police, the
people who have always handled these things in the past.
ThePRESS:
The Clinton Crime Bill was the first major piece of legislation that
put the ideals of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) into
practice, as part of the centrist movement of the Democratic Party.
Do you think that the DLC's influence on party policy was one reason
that no Democrats were willing to join you in voting against the
Patriot Act?
FEINGOLD:
I do want to say that one aspect of the Crime Bill that I was very
supportive of was the federal government providing funds to local
government to hire police officers. That part of the effort was a
great idea, and I supported that. I want to make that clear.
But in answer to
the question, I want to say yes. I do feel the DLC has co-opted the
larger Democratic Party and become the kingmaker as it comes to
picking a nominee (for president). It has a combination of
requirements. To get the nomination, you have to be for the death
penalty. You have to buy into the global trade policies, and you
have to adopt a federalized and overly harsh view of law
enforcement. It sucks the populism out of the party.
[Note: These
comments, made just over two years before the Iowa caucuses, proved
to be a foreshadowing of things to come on the campaign trail. The
Democratic Party's DLC inner apparatus worked to ensure that Howard
Dean's populist candidacy for president was derailed in Iowa.]
ThePRESS:
So much of the attention with the Patriot Act has focused on
Attorney General Ashcroft, and, to some extent the irony of the fact
that you bucked the Democratic Party leadership and supported
Ashcroft during his nomination. Do you think the focus on Ashcroft,
the personal spin on this, has obscured in the media the real
problems that you see in the Patriot Act?
FEINGOLD:
I feel that almost none of (the media) did that, and I think the
issues have been covered. It isn't personal at all. It was a
terrible piece of legislation ... [Ashcroft's] remarks about how
anyone who votes against the bill were agreeing with terrorists were
terrible. They were outrageous comments. [He was] saying something
that no Attorney General of the United States should have said, or
should ever say.
I didn't see any
irony in it. And I don't think it was detracting at all from the
issues. I've said all along that the president has a right to have
his cabinet. But I'm sure many people know that if it were up to me,
John Ashcroft would be my last choice to be Attorney General. My
vote against the bill was about the systematic abuses of the Bill of
Rights that it allows. If anything, [the support of Ashcroft's
nomination] gave form to the criticisms. It added to the credibility
of my criticisms.
[Feingold's press
secretary breaks in here. A reporter from the Washington Post has
been waiting 15 minutes to talk about McCain-Feingold. For more on
Feingold's positions on "the merits" of the Patriot Act,
please click here: Veteran's
Day 2001 speech
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