[Mb-civic] A Senate Maverick Acts to Force an Issue - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

A Senate Maverick Acts to Force an Issue
Democrat Feingold's Motion to Censure the President Roils Both Parties

By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 15, 2006; A01

For months the Democrats have resisted calls from their liberal base to 
more aggressively challenge President Bush. Now a maverick Democratic 
senator from Wisconsin has forced his party and Congress to confront 
head-on the question of whether Bush should somehow be punished for 
secretly ordering warrantless wiretaps of U.S. citizens.

Sen. Russell Feingold's call this week to formally censure Bush for what 
some say was a clear violation of a federal statute regulating domestic 
surveillance has touched off a fierce debate on Capitol Hill that is 
likely to persist throughout the congressional campaign season.

GOP leaders who had been reeling from the impact of Republican political 
scandals, an unpopular war and Bush's mishandling of the port-security 
issue sensed that Feingold overplayed his hand and denounced the censure 
resolution as a political stunt by an ambitious lawmaker positioning 
himself to run for president in 2008. Many Democrats, while sympathetic 
to Feingold's maneuver, appeared to be distancing themselves from his 
resolution yesterday, wary of polls showing that a majority of Americans 
side with the president on wiretapping tactics.

Feingold, 53, says he is convinced that Bush broke the law in ordering 
National Security Agency wiretaps of overseas telephone calls and 
e-mails of U.S. citizens that involved people suspected of terrorist 
activities without first obtaining special court approval, and that his 
party must take a firm stand in protest. Unless Democrats make the case 
that they are more trustworthy than Republicans on national security 
issues, Feingold says, the party cannot win control of the White House 
or Congress.

"We have a great case that they have done a poor job of fighting the war 
against terrorism," Feingold said of the Republicans in an interview 
yesterday. "We need a different strategy, one that shows we stand for 
something."

Feingold's resolution, formally introduced Monday, would censure Bush 
for approving an "illegal program to spy on American citizens on 
American soil." The senator's intention was to refer the matter to the 
Judiciary Committee for hearings and a vote before consideration by the 
full Senate. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) tried to force an 
immediate vote, to put the Democrats on the spot, but Democratic leaders 
objected, and for now the censure measure appears to be stalled.

Censure, or official Senate condemnation, is a rare tool that has been 
used against only one president -- Andrew Jackson, in March 1834. 
Jackson ignored the censure, and it was expunged three years later. 
Censuring is a symbolic act compared with impeachment -- an indictment 
by the House permitted under the Constitution, which, if approved, leads 
to a Senate vote on acquittal or removal from office. Feingold has not 
called for Bush's impeachment, although the senator called the 
wiretapping case "right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes 
and misdemeanors."

In the past two years, liberal groups have urged Congress to take action 
against Bush for various alleged misdeeds in the waging of war in Iraq 
and efforts to combat terrorism. In February 2004, MoveOn.org and other 
liberal groups called for Bush's censure because he used what proved to 
be false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in justifying 
the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Last December, Rep. John Conyers Jr. 
(D-Mich.) called for an investigation of the administration's prewar use 
of intelligence and offered motions to censure Bush and Vice President 
Cheney for failing to respond to Democratic inquiries about the planning 
and execution of the war. Feingold's censure motion specifically 
addresses the issue of illegal wiretaps.

Republicans seized on Feingold's presidential ambitions as the 
motivation behind his bid. Feingold "should be ashamed of this political 
ploy," said Frist, who also has presidential ambitions.

Democratic views were mixed . Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) dismissed 
the proposed censure as "getting way down the road on this issue." When 
asked on NBC's "Today" show yesterday morning whether Feingold was 
"grandstanding for 2008," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), himself a 
2008 prospect and a leading Democratic voice on foreign policy, replied: 
"No, I think it's more of an intense frustration. Do any of you in the 
news media or any of us have any idea what the president is doing?"

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said he hoped the Feingold 
measure would spur the intelligence committee to complete an 
investigation of the wiretapping program, to determine whether Bush 
broke the law. "Senator Feingold is a man of principle," said Reid. "I 
think that people should cool their jets and let the process takes its 
course."

When Feingold first ran for the Senate in 1992, he was much the same 
person he is today: a Democratic outsider and iconoclast and a darling 
of progressives.

While other Democrats speak more colorfully, or show up more often on 
television, Feingold has carved a niche as one of the least-predictable 
senators. As he contemplates a presidential bid, he is emerging as an 
anti-establishment maverick, a blend of Howard Dean, John McCain and the 
late Wisconsin progressive senator William Proxmire.

The Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School graduate was elected at age 29 
to the Wisconsin legislature, defeating an incumbent by a handful of 
votes. He turned back two better-known Democratic challengers in the 
1992 Senate primary by ignoring their mudslinging and running humorous 
ads, including one in which he conducted a tour of his Madison area 
home, noting the closet space and saying, "Look, no skeletons."

Feingold has shown little of that humor in the Senate. He rarely engages 
in small talk with colleagues and is so independent that fellow 
Democrats rarely seek his help in legislative battles or include him in 
public events. He irritated many colleagues in his long crusade for 
campaign finance reform, which Democrats feared would put them at a 
fundraising disadvantage; by his opposition to dropping all charges 
against President Bill Clinton during impeachment proceedings; and with 
his support for the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

But it is Feingold's national security views that have stirred the most 
controversy, vaulting him into the national spotlight. Before the 
censure bid, he was the first Senate Democrat to call for a troop 
withdrawal from Iraq, and he waged a solo filibuster against the renewal 
of the USA Patriot Act.

The left wing of the party has greeted Feingold's censure call 
ecstatically. He was the front-runner in a Jan. 31 survey of 2008 
presidential candidates by the liberal blog Daily Kos. Feingold garnered 
30 percent support among the more than 11,000 respondents, eclipsing 
retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who dropped to second place after leading 
in the previous five bimonthly polls.

Feingold said he is "extremely pleased with the way this is going." He 
said he is particularly buoyed the barrage of criticism from 
Republicans. "If such a crazy idea has such limited appeal, why do they 
have the attack dogs calling all over the country about this?" Feingold 
asked. "It touches a nerve."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/14/AR2006031401752.html?referrer=email
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