Russ Feingold, The Real Maverick

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-14/real-maverick-confronts-one-word-plastics-commentary-by-margaret-carlson.html

Real Maverick Confronts One Word, Plastics: Margaret Carlson
By Margaret Carlson - Oct 13, 2010 8:00 PM ET


Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin is not among those members of Congress to have “gone Washington.” He’s as Wisconsin as the Green Bay Packers, walleyes, cheeseheads and chocolate bacon on a stick.

When he ran in 1992, defeating Republican incumbent Bob Kasten after dispatching two wealthy Democrats in the primary, Feingold posted five promises on his garage door that, 18 years later, could serve as the manifesto for this election season’s crop of angry outsiders.

Feingold pledged to live and send his children to public school in Wisconsin, reject any pay raise, visit each of the state’s 72 counties every year and rely on in-state contributions for the bulk of his fundraising. To reduce the influence of money in politics, he joined with Republican John McCain, back when the Arizona senator was still copping to being a maverick, on the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law.

Feingold stuck to his promises and gave every sign of becoming Senator for Life, following a quirky path in the tradition of the Progressive Movement leader Robert La Follette. He is David against the Goliath of organized special interests. He casts unpopular votes against popular spending programs such as the prescription-drug benefit for seniors. He opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement, the war against Iraq, deregulating banks and, nine years later, bailing them out.

A study by a Harvard University fellow, cited in a recent article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, found that Feingold’s voting behavior deviated from prevailing left-right patterns more dramatically than any other senator in seven of the nine sessions of Congress in which he has served.

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Feingold and other endangered Democrats face the oddest of coalitions. Working-class voters most damaged by corporate America have made common cause with new, faux populists to demand tax cuts for the wealthy, the continued under-regulation of corporations such as BP Plc and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and the repeal of Obama’s health-system overhaul so that insurers can decide who will and won’t get care. What’s best for business is best for America.

Those are mere details at a time when voters seem willing to send clowns to Washington just to put some new faces in the circus.