FOR people on the political left, Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold has emerged over the last five years as something of a maverick hero. He was one of only 23 senators to vote against giving President Bush authority to invade Iraq and has been unrelentingly nettlesome on the issue ever since.
He also has been sharply critical of the USA Patriot Act, a lengthy and complicated thinning of civil liberties rushed into being amid the emotions following the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
That last issue, of course, is not something of concern only to the left. Libertarians and small-government conservatives are also uneasy with the Patriot Act. And Feingold entered into another cross-aisle alliance when he and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) teamed up on the campaign finance reform act that bears their names, though that star dimmed as connivers found ways around it and conservatives condemned the measure as limiting free speech.
In other words, Feingold is a complicated political figure, a pro-gun-rights progressive who risked losing his Senate seat during the 2004 election cycle rather than let the national Democratic Party use "soft" campaign contributions to counter Republican attack ads against his campaign.
Clearly ambitious -- he flirted briefly with a 2008 presidential bid -- and buoyed by the politician's sometimes unfathomable self-assurance, Feingold is one of the more intriguing figures on the American political landscape.
Yet hailing from small-market Wisconsin, he remains unknown to most Americans. Unfortunately, Sanford D. Horwitt's new biography, "Feingold," doesn't get us much closer to understanding him.
Horwitt notes that although he worked with Feingold's cooperation, the book is not an "authorized biography" in which the subject was allowed to approve the final manuscript. Feingold didn't need to.
Clearly, Horwitt is on his side, and despite pretensions, this is little more than a candidate's campaign bio.
In his introduction, Horwitt describes Feingold as "important because he represents the kind of courageous leadership that is so urgently needed in these troubling times." Horwitt's stated ambition: To use the story of Feingold's life "to encourage others -- public officials and ordinary citizens alike -- to act on their idealism and take risks to transform the 'real world' into the kind of world that we would like it to be."
Not the kind of approach apt to result in an engaging and informative biography.
