Legal Commentary

As the Democratic primary winds down, the question arises: Will some candidate win the uncoveted LaFollette Award this year?

The LaFollette Award is given (by yours truly) to the candidate who most distinguishes himself or herself by conscientious indifference to public opinion in the service of truth as he or she sees it. The title of the award is inspired by Mencken's famous encomium in praise of LaFollette during WWI:

The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant?. There are only men who have character and men who lack it. LaFollette has it. There is no shaking or alarming him. He is devoid of caution, policy, timidity, baseness?all immemorial qualities of the politician. He is tremendous when he is right, and he is even more tremendous when he is wrong. LaFollette not only voted as a Senator, against American participation in the war; he also refused flatly to change his views when he failed to prevent it. What followed is well remembered. While the uproar lasted he was practically barred from the Senate Chamber. His colleagues, eager to escape contamination, avoided him; he was reviled from end to end of the country; all the popularity and influence he had built up by years of struggle vanished almost completely.?But LaFollette stuck. The stink-bombs burst around him, but still he stuck. The work of his whole life went to pieces, but still he stuck. Weak friends deserted him and old enemies prepared to finish him, but still he stuck. There is no record that he hedged an inch. No accusation, however outrageous, daunted him. No threat of disaster, personal or political, wabbled him for an instant. From beginning to end of those brave and intelligent days he held fast to his convictions, simply, tenaciously, and like a man.

Past honorable mentions include Paul Tsongas (him of the ?I?m no Santa Claus? fame). Past winners include Bush I (for accepting the inevitability of tax increases), Ford (for pardoning Nixon), and Truman (for firing MacArthur). This year, there seems to be a bumper crop of aspirants ? well, two ? who want to use their ?straight-talking? reputations to build up brand recognition with voters.

But will either clinch the deal by saying something risky that they obviously believe? (Denouncing the gas tax holiday garners, at most, a tepid honorable mention). Will Obama actually admit that NAFTA neither cost nor created a lot of jobs? Or that eliminating outsourcing would probably also eliminate the Indian middle class and risk economic collapse of unstable economies? Will McCain admit that tax breaks in an era of runaway deficits are silly and demagogic? Will either admit that slogans on Iraq regarding withdrawal time are essentially meaningless, because the situation there is too volatile to predict more than a week in advance? In short, will either address the voters as mature adults rather than as drunken fans at a tailgate who cannot understand sentences too long for a tee shirt?

Any such unforeseen candor will win the LaFollette award immediately ? not to mention, in all likelihood, more time in in the Senate. Stay tuned.