When patriots dissent: surprise: standing up to the PATRIOT Act can be good politics.

• Author: Weigel, David
• Position: Russ Feingold

IF YOU ASKED the Republicans in 2004, Sen. Russ Feingold was a slow-moving target painting himself ever-brighter shades of red. The Wisconsin Democrat, who had barely won his last election with 51 percent of the vote, was running for re-election in a year the GOP would be marshalling all its forces to win the state for George W. Bush. Republicans had dislodged a number of Democrats in other states by casting them as weak-kneed in the war on terrorism. Feingold was the easiest mark yet: the only member of the United States Senate who had voted against the PATRIOT Act.

A year before the election, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie (no relation to reason Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie) crowed that the party would make use of that vote in its campaign to take Wisconsin for the first time since 1984. Republican Senate candidate Tim Michels, a former airborne ranger and well-heeled construction mogul, grabbed the PATRIOT Act issue with both hands. One of his first television ads slammed Feingold for putting "his liberal ideology before our safety." Another spot, aired before the Republican primary, used footage of the 9/11 attacks. As smoke billowed out of the World Trade Center, a sad-voiced narrator told viewers that "our leaders passed new laws to keep us safe. But Russ Feingold voted against those laws."

Michels destroyed three opponents in the September primary, and Gillespie came to Milwaukee to boost his campaign, telling the media that Feingold was "eminently beatable." Michels then hammered the PATRIOT theme in two new ads. One showed video of the smoking Pentagon, with a voiceover declaring, "Ninety-eight senators vote to pass the PATRIOT Act. One senator votes no." Another ad pumped up the drama, showing a menacing Middle Eastern actor stalking over some Wisconsin hills before opening up a spy kit and taking pictures of a nuclear power plant. Michels himself then appeared on screen. "Unlike Russ Feingold," he said, "I will support renewing the PATRIOTACt, because we need to be able to track and stop terrorists before they strike again."

According to Michels, these commercials consumed around a fifth of his ad budget. They fell flat. Michels failed to make up a gap in the polls, and in mid-October the Republican National Committee cancelled a major purchase of TV commercials. On Election Day, as John Kerry was carrying Wisconsin by barely 10,000 votes and Democrats were losing four Senate seats nationwide, Feingold won his biggest victory ever, trouncing Michels by II percentage points and 330,000 ballots. Not only had his vote against the PATRIOT Act not damaged Feingold; by all appearances it had made him stronger.

"We knew this was an issue that Republicans would use," says George Aldrich, Feingold's campaign manager, who started laying the campaign's groundwork in early 2003. "Very early on we saw this was an issue that Russ Feingold would be seen favorably on. Russ has listening tours across the state. He holds these meetings in every county, and what he was hearing was that people agreed with his vote. The more people heard about the PATRIOT Act, the more skeptical they were."

Today, back at his construction company, Michels says he "ran into no voters that were not concerned about terrorism," and that "my point was that the PATRIOT Act is a tool that history has proven has not been abused." But by the end of 2004 this was becoming a minority view. At a time when terrorism fears run high and Republicans have won elections on national security bluster, the PATRIOT Act is less and less popular among voters and politicians, becoming the most galvanizing legislation for civil liberties activists since the Sedition Act of 1918. The movement against it has grown from a smattering of city council resolutions to a powerful political coalition.

The law's defenders are active as well, and so far they have successfully resisted the most serious efforts to roll back the government's PATRIOT Act powers. But stances like Feingold's have proven surprisingly popular with the public. Politicians who have attacked the act are getting re-elected or seeking higher offices; Republicans who assumed voters would be easily swayed by rhetoric like Michels' have learned a hard lesson. In part, that's because the issue has transcended typical right-left politics. Some of the act's most influential opponents are very conservative people in very red states.

How a Bad Bill Becomes Law

Six weeks after 9/11, following very little debate, the USA PATRIOT Act was approved by a vote of 357 to 66 in the House of Representatives and 98 to Feingold's I in...