Beltway cynics get it wrong

The pundits assumed Russ Feingold's principled stands were really grandstanding by a presidential hopeful. As usual, the pundits were mistaken.

By Glenn Greenwald

Read more: Rush Limbaugh, Russ Feingold, Opinion, 2008 election, Glenn Greenwald

Nov. 13, 2006 | When Russ Feingold announced in March that he would introduce a resolution to censure President Bush for breaking the law by eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, a clear two-pronged consensus immediately arose among Beltway pundits and politicians -- Republicans and many Democrats alike:

1) Feingold had just disastrously handed a huge "gift" to Republicans because opposition to Bush's warrantless eavesdropping would doom the Democrats politically; and,

2) Feingold had introduced this resolution not because he really believed anything he was saying about it but only as a "political stunt," selfishly designed to advance his own political interests (at the expense of his party) by shoring up the "liberal base" for his 2008 presidential run.

As for premise (1), though their opposition was mostly mild and reluctant, Democrats spent all year opposing warrantless eavesdropping. That opposition culminated in a House vote just six weeks before the midterm elections in which 85 percent of Democrats voted against a bill to legalize warrantless eavesdropping.

For the next six weeks, Republicans did everything possible to make the Democratic reluctance to abridge civil liberties an issue in the campaign, yet Democrats still crushed Republicans in the election. As but one example, 12-term GOP incumbent Rep. Nancy Johnson of Connecticut made her support for warrantless eavesdropping (and her challenger's opposition to it) a centerpiece of her campaign. She lost by 12 points.

As for premise (2), Russ Feingold announced Sunday, definitively, that he is not running for president in 2008.

As their treatment of Russ Feingold illustrates, it is hard to overstate how misguided and just plain wrong Beltway pundits are about virtually everything, and how barren and corrupt inside-Washington conventional wisdom is.

Feingold has spent his entire idiosyncratic political career espousing views because he believes them, even when those views are plainly contrary to his political interests. He infuriated his entire party by being the only Democratic senator to vote against dismissal of the Clinton impeachment charges prior to the Senate trial. He relentlessly pursued campaign finance reform hated by incumbents in both parties.

When Feingold ran for reelection in 1998 against a tough challenger, GOP Rep. Mark Neumann, he vowed to limit his expenditures to one dollar per Wisconsin citizen and not to accept any soft money. Even when he fell behind in the polls and was unable to pay for television ads to keep up with his challenger, Feingold adamantly refused to budge from his vow or even to allow the national Democratic Party to run campaign ads on his behalf.

And in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Feingold seemed to be the only prominent elected official in the country immune from irrational pressures, as he not only was the only senator to vote against "The Patriot Act" but also was the only senator who refused to pledge blind loyalty to limitless presidential power. He emphasized on the Senate floor as early as Sept. 14, 2001, that a national emergency did not make Bush a king. In voting for the resolution authorizing the use of force in Afghanistan and against al-Qaida, Feingold made sure to note, "Congress owns the war power. But by this resolution, Congress loans it to the President in this emergency."

In the same speech, Feingold presciently warned of the dangers of an excessive reaction to the terrorist threat as a result of allowing the terrorists to "inflate their numbers and their influence." Even with the attack on the World Trade Center, as well as the anger of most Americans, still smoldering, Feingold cautioned, "Our response will be judged by friends and foes, by history, and by ourselves. It must stand up to the highest level of scrutiny. It must be appropriate and constitutional."

Despite all of that, when Feingold stood up and advocated the censure of George W. Bush -- based on what ought to be the uncontroversial premise that when the president is caught red-handed breaking the law, Congress should not meekly acquiesce -- Beltway insiders could not even contemplate the possibility that he was doing so because he believed what he was saying. Instead, pundits, along with political figures in both parties, spoke in unison and immediately began casting aspersions on Feingold's motives. The Beltway crowd laughed off the idea that he was motivated by actual belief, and did not deign to debate the merits of his proposal.

That's because they believe in nothing. They have no passion about anything. And they thus assume that everyone else suffers from the same emptiness of character and ossified cynicism that plague them. And all of their punditry and analysis and political strategizing flows from this corrupt root.

Not only do they believe in nothing, they think that a belief in nothing is a mark of sophistication and wisdom. Those who believe in things too much -- who display intense political passion or who take their convictions and ideals seriously (i.e., Feingold, Howard Dean) -- either are naive or, worse, are crazy, irrational, loudmouthed masses and radicals who disrupt the elevated, measured world of the high-level, dispassionate Beltway sophisticates (i.e., Joe Klein, David Broder). They are interested in, even obsessed with, every aspect of the political process except for deeply held political beliefs, which is the only part that actually matters or has any real worth.

Next page: Lacking passion and conviction, they project those deficits onto everyone else