hist_img:
the La Follette seat
Sen. Bob La Follette used the congressional investigation during Teapot Dome scandal. This check on the executive branch enforced laws about jury tampering and bribery concering mineral rights on public land during the Harding administration. Teapot Dome investigations--run by La Follette's committee on Public Lands--are the model for other progressive investigations like Watergate (down to the ransacking of La Follette's offices).
The investigation employed by Progressive Republicans like La Follette manifested oversight, reform and regulation of American capital generated during the Gilded Age. Progressives from this era were also concerened with this national capital as it leeched beyond American borders. They were non-interventionists during the Great imperial War that ended the Progressive Era. As a party, Progressive Republicans were centrists and in loose alliance with suffragists, non partisans, socialists, farmers and labor. This arrangement was undermined by the chauvanism of WWI, weakened (ironically) the ninteenth ammendment and finally obliterated by the Red Scare. To the right of this alliance were a bipartisan alliance of capital, nationalists and apartheidists. To their left were Communists empowered by the success of Lenin's Soviet model. The progressives identified many the same Gilded Age problems as the Marxists but the answer seemed to favor liberal legislative reform (like replacing partisan primaries with direct primaries) instead of dealing with capital.
The "La Follette seat" has been occupied by four Senators after the La Follettes (Sr. and Jr.): Joe McCarthy, William Proxmire, Herb Kohl and (currently) Tammy Baldwin. These politicians are from different periods of modern Wisconsin history and profess different politics and partisanship. They do share the progessive tendancy for high profile national investigations. This is the heritage of Teapot Dome. Both McCarthy and Proxmire are nationally famous (infamous?) for their investigations.
Another relevant aspect of La Follette's progressivism--the mixed economic cure to the socialist diagnoses of the inevitable problems with capitalism--is also apparent in La Follette's successors. Kohl was a liberal Democrat (the party of urban poor people and welfare) who also happened to be one of the richest people in the state, an NBA owner and the former roomate of Major League Baseball. Progressive Era regulations were supposed to temper obscene and generational wealth like Kohl's. At this, Progressive Republicans failed because they ignored inevitable structure of capitalism to funnel wealth towards capitalists and away from everybody else. Occupants of the "La Follette seat" were enamored of the legal superstructrue and refused to touch the economic base. The critique of capital is the main disagreement between Madison Wisconsin Idea Progressives of the La Follette seat and their contemporary neighbors: the Milwaukee Sewer Socialialists.
McCarthy investigated imagined (and real) communists during the Cold War. To his biographer Reeves, the hearings that brought McCarthy fame "on the national level...[as an] anti-Communist crusader...[also] shattered [his] effectiveness as a politician." There is a dialectical tension in republican politicians between popular support and popular revulsion. Personalities are interchangable and are outlived by the issues. When McCarthy became famous for his reactionary use of progressivism against communists, he was revealed to be a useful idiot indoctronated by the security establishment. When he realized he had been set up he began to lie to save his ego. McCarthy was an unwitting and unsophisticated reactionary in a sector populated by spies like Rep. Samuel Dickstein (D-NY, who was secretly working for the Soviet NKVD) and agents Rep. John Rankin (D-MS, who supported investigating communists and Nazis, but not the KKK). McCarthy used the investigative committe to further 100% American propaganda. This is exactly what La Follette did but his version of 100% Americanism was isolationism not internal repression. [1]
Proxmire was a different type of progressive investigator. He is famous for the Golden Fleece Award which identified and ridiculed wasteful government spending. Politicians that try to undermine science through politics are audacias and anti-truth but this Dunning-Kruger behavior is empowered by La Follette style investigations. The CEO of Pixar wrote about the chilling effect of the Golden Fleece Award on science in 2014--testing an hypothosis is what defines science and failure is one predictable result of a test. Under the Golden Fleece regime the risk of failure was accompanied by political grandstanding instead of peer review. [2] This oversight indered research--this was the agument made by Ronald Hutchinson's suit against Proxmire in 1976. Unfortunatly, it was settled out of court before a binding precident reigned in the unpfrofessional austerity of Proxmire.
Kohl isn't associated with one singular platform--unlike McCarthy's red baiting and Proxmire's unauthorized austerity. Kohl held powerfull committee appointments on Appropriations, Banking/Housing/Urban Affairs, the Judiciary and Aging. The authenticity of his liberal politics was undermined by his other position as Milwaukee's richest man. Kohl's archived voting record and platform includes many traditionally right-wing stances. [3] These include tort (?) reform: restricting personal bankruptcy laws, class action lawsuits and product liability laws. It is sinister--in a Gilded Age way--for man worth half-a-billion dollars to deregulate the economy. Kohl also supported funding increases for domestic police. He also supported the apartheid state of Israel. These later two are not just right wing positions, they are fascistic tendancies. Kohl's right wing positions and oligarchic class are not memories of the La Follette seat; Kohl's investigations weren't as notable as Proxmire and McCarthy. But he was still a nominal progressive.
Kohl supported an Orwellian program called "Progressive Internatinalism" that was neither progressive nor internationalist. It was defined in the "Hyde Park Declaration" (1 August 2000) in "A New Agenda for the New Decade" manifesto signed by 72 Democrats and six independentents. [4] It is not internationalist to call for American "pre-eminence." Hegimony is the imperial antithisis of internationalism. Progressive internationalism is bellicose trash, an ideology expressed by Democrat presidential hopefuls Gore Jr., Clinton, Kerry, Lieberman, Newsom and (presumably) Schiff--all signatories of the Hyde Park Declaration. Harris echoed this sentiment with her "strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world." The type of progressivism these Democrats describe is not La Follette's Wisconsin Idea about education, direct elections and social welfare. It is a progressive military imperialism. La Follette was an isolationist during the Great European War--just like his socialist neighbors in Milwaukee. Hyde Park specifically denounces both isolationism and protectionism. It promotes "U.S. values [and] global leadership" by "project[ing] force"--this is not La Follette progressiveism this is big stick imperialism ala Roosevelt--the cynical progressive tourist, rough rider and American annexer. [4]
My intention is not to undermine, reinterpret or adopt the La Follette seat--thats what the egomaniac Bull Moose Roosevelt did and it split the national movement at it's height (c. 1912). Instead, it is worthwhile to look at how Progressives like La Follette used congressional investigations, direct elections and isolationism to promote democracy within the republic.
If the goal was to undermine the individuals it would have included Joe McCarthy's three minute stammering recording about the "Names on Wheeling list, 1951" (available at Marquette University) where he gets caught filling in the holes of his propaganda with outright lies. A more tabloid treatment would include Proxmire claiming a $2,758 medical expense on his taxes for hair tarnsplants 1972 because it is ludicrous than a fiscally conservative Senator would embellish his taxes to fund scientifically dubious, elective, gender-conferming surgery. The beef with Kohl has even less to do with politics than his predacessors or tendancies embedded in the La Follette seat. It is they way his personal relationship with Bucks coach Don Nelson dissolved and cost the team its coach. This Senator spent his time in office meddling in the NBA and in the family department store. These are three full time jobs. The state deserves their elected's complete attention for their entire term. These are secondary critiques and conjeture.
The primary goal is to encourage progressive investigations of the liberal state from the La Follette seat. There is a risk to empowering senators--progressive investigations up to this point have been reformist and reactionary. Since this tool has been used in different ways by different politicians then it can also be adapted toward revolutionary (and adventurist) goals. The first step is seperating the congresttional investigation from the presumption of capitalism. The second step is entryism through open campaigns or the French Turn. The La Follette seat has produced multiple different interpretations of progressivism that have manifest as isolationism, non-partisan democracy, McCarthy's ideological repression, Proxmire's un-scientific skeptisim and Kohl's American hegemony. There is room for a new interpretation, perhaps socialist internationalism, from this seat that inherits the Wisconsin Idea and so much else. [5]
[1] Thomas C. Reeves The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy New York: Stein and Day, 1982. 639.
[2] Ed Catmul Creativity, INC. New York: Random House, 2014. 67.
[3] "Herb Kohl" archived from "ontheissues.org" (which appears to have stopped working in 2022). Some (possible?) right-wing positions: yes on wiretapping (yes on Patriot Act, Oct 2001 / he changed his mind later), no on same-sex marraige (Sept 1996), bankruptcy reform to include means-testing (March 2005), restricting personal bankruptcy (Jul 2001), billions of dollars for more police through the COPS program (March 2007, May 1999), limiting product liability lawsuits (March 1996), restricting class action lawsuits (December 1995), funding COPS ON THE BEAT (January 2007), pro-school choice (August 2000), terminating CAFE standards (March 2002), defunding renewable energy (June 1999), no funding for forest roads or fish habitat (September 1999), embargoing Cuba (March 1996), "Progressive Internationalism: globalize with US pre-eminence" (Aug 2000), support of Israel (November 2012, October 2007).
[4] The Hyde Park Declaration via "ontheissues.org":
Build a Public Consensus Supporting US Global Leadership
The internationalist outlook that served America and the world so well during the second half of the 20th century is under attack from both ends of the political spectrum. As the left has gravitated toward protectionism, many on the right have reverted to "America First" isolationism. Our leaders should articulate a progressive internationalism based on the new realities of the Information Age: globalization, democracy, American pre-eminence, and the rise of a new array of threats ranging from regional and ethnic conflicts to the spread of missiles and biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. This approach recognizes the need to revamp, while continuing to rely on, multilateral alliances that advance U.S. values and interests.
A strong, technologically superior defense is the foundation for US global leadership. Yet the US continues to employ defense strategies, military missions, and force structures left over from the Cold War, creating a defense establishment that is ill-prepared to meet new threats to our security. The US must speed up the "revolution in military affairs" that uses our technological advantage to project force in many different contingencies involving uncertain and rapidly changing security threats -- including terrorism and information warfare.
Goals for 2010
A clear national policy with bipartisan support that continues US global leadership, adjusts our alliances to new regional threats to peace and security, promotes the spread of political and economic freedom, and outlines where and how we are willing to use force.
A modernized military equipped to deal with emerging threats to security, such as terrorism, information warfare, weapons of mass destruction, and destabilizing regional conflicts.
Kamala Harris "DNC Convention Speech" Chicago: United Center, 23 August 2024.
[5] I hesitate to write about center-left Democrat Tammy Baldwin until her third (!) term is up.