Draft Russ? Draft Russ!

I just got e-mailed the url for the unofficial Feingold for President site (unsurprisingly, draftruss.com). Count me as on board---I'm going to go ahead and add a permanent link---though I disagree with some of his positions, especially those concerning free trade, Russ Feingold is the only national politician that I can honestly say I admire. Feingold is in practice what John McCain is only in theory: a bonafide independent. He is in a better position than anyone else to reshape the Democratic party, and the nation's politics, in a way that somewhat resembles this. He could be the standard-bearer for a national campaign of reformed and honest government---he would be wise to endorse Arnold Schwarzenegger's excellent anti-gerrymandering proposal, which is perfectly in line with the genuine bipartisanship that has been his legislative hallmark. Well, all this for now is merely potential, but I think there are justified reasons to be optimistic both about Feingold and his chances.

For the record, I disagree with Josh Eidelson, who also likes the idea of a Feingold candidacy, about his own qualms with Feingold. His vote in favor of Ashcroft, I think, was more defensible than Josh lets on. And his votes on the Clinton impeachment were precisely the right ones to make.

My views on Clinton, for the sake of context: I regard his performance as president to have been decidedly mediocre, and I regard him as the very lucky beneficiary of a boom economy brought about by a new Industrial Revolution that he didn't have any hand in whatsoever. He was a deplorable president from an ethical standpoint---I doubt that there are any campaign finance laws he didn't break---and he did more than any president since Nixon to use the powers of his office to exact revenge on personal opponents. For sure, the relentless lying, secrecy, scapegoating of hated minorities, and sanctioning of unspeakable evils (i.e. torture) that are sure to be George W. Bush's legacy in any honest account of this period in our history, make the Clinton stuff look petty in retrospect. But at the very least, we should be able to recognize that the only important structural development in domestic politics that Clinton succeeded in enacting was the selling-out of the long-term future of the Democratic party for his own personal aggrandizement. Feingold had it right back then, and if I can correctly divine his views about the lingering influence of the Clintonites, he still has it right: Very few people, least of all us Democrats, owe Clinton a goddamn thing.

One more point: Clinton's record from a libertarian standpoint was absolutely horrific. He wasn't fanatically tough on pornography like the Ashcroft DOJ, but that's about all that can be said in his favor. Meanwhile, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1995 was one of the most monstrous pieces of legislation ever conceived, and, in case it's not obvious, was a neat precursor to the most draconian aspects of the Patriot Act. Those of us who are concerned about President Bush's non-chalance/indifference about the execution of just about anyone convicted under any circumstances should keep in mind how much Clinton did to grease the wheels of the machinery of state-sanctioned death.