Jewish World Review Dec. 5, 2001 / 20 Kislev, 5762

Jules Witcover

Jules Witcover
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Consumer Reports

Another children's crusade

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com -- BACK in 1968, America's last major war, in Vietnam, produced a long-shot presidential candidate in protest - Democratic Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. He failed to win his party's nomination, but his challenge was instrumental in persuading President Lyndon B. Johnson, the commander in chief of the American forces in that war, against seeking re-election.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the McCarthy campaign was his recruitment of tens of thousands or more of students on college campuses around the country in what came to be known as a Children's Crusade.

Many of the recruits shaved their beards and long hair, the trademark of their generation, dropped out of school for a semester or two and - "Clean for Gene" - went to New Hampshire to join McCarthy's political drive to stop the American involvement in Vietnam.

They failed not only in getting him the nomination but also in ending the war. But in the process, they awakened a whole generation to the virtue of political engagement in the critical issues of the time, so often left, with unsatisfactory results, to their elders.

Since Sept. 11 and President Bush's declaration of war on terrorism, another equally obscure Democratic senator from the Midwest is out beating the campus bushes for a different kind of Children's Crusade. This one is not in protest against that war, but rather designed to generate greater concern for the maintenance of constitutional civil liberties as it is being waged.

Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, like McCarthy one of his party's old-fashioned liberals, began his campus tour about a month ago with a long speech at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He delivered it again about a week later at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and then at the University of Texas in Austin, to unexpectedly large crowds for such a relatively unknown senator. He is to resume the tour at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill soon after the year-end holidays.

His message is a general appeal for student involvement in public affairs with a particular twist. Feingold, previously best known as co-sponsor with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona of the campaign finance reform bill aimed at ending soft money contributions, explains why he cast the only dissenting vote in the Senate's 98-1 approval of Bush's anti-terrorism package, which is known as the USA Patriot Act.

Feingold at Ann Arbor acknowledged that "voting against something called that is not exactly what I'd call fun; it's not exactly a politician's idea of a good time." But, he told about 650 students, "we need your help in striking the right balance between the legitimate needs of law enforcement on the one hand and the protection of civil liberties and the Bill of Rights on the other. I can tell you I sure could use some allies on this."

Feingold has continued his criticism of the new powers Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have invoked to smoke out and try suspected terrorists, which he claims would intrude on privacy and due-process rights. He says the criticism has been met with wide student interest as well as predictable opposition.

The speech talks of civil-liberties abuses in previous times of crisis and also is critical of racial and ethnic profiling, the death penalty and American ignorance of third-world languages, history and cultures. He calls on the younger generation to become engaged in response to President John F. Kennedy's 1961 exhortation to "ask what you can do for your country."

At the same time, if it sometimes sounds like a plea to ask what you can do for Russ Feingold as a possible 2004 presidential candidate, he says it's "extremely unlikely" he will run, while not ruling it out. He says his party needs "an aggressive, progressive candidate" who will chart a course away from the road set by the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, and hopes it will find one he can back.

Meanwhile, Feingold says he probably will seek a third Senate term in 2004 and continue talking to college students in his effort to engage their generation. "I see it as an end in itself," he says, while obviously realizing that some will see his efforts as the making of a candidacy in the Gene McCarthy mold, though not aimed at stopping a war.


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