"FIGHTING BOB" LA FOLLETTE, PART II

personal enemies. He did not see that someone who opposed you today might be a valuable ally tomorrow on another issue. His nickname “Fighting Bob” was appropriate. But the President has to bring various groups with varying viewpoints together. La Follette was not capable of this kind of leadership. He would have been miscast as President.

Still, La Follette fought for the common man, much as Jefferson did in his day. He fought for primary election of candidates, a fairer tax system, breaking up monopolies or near-monopolies, a drastic reduction in armaments, public ownership of railroads, an end to child labor, labor laws protecting women, and banning the use of court injunctions in labor disputes. He loved democracy and believed in it with all his heart. In a complacent age, La Follette, unlike Coolidge, would not have left well enough alone. As President he would have been the wrong man at the wrong time.

When La Follette died, his power was such that his thirty-year-old son, Robert La Follette, Jr., took over his Senate seat. Robert La Follette, Jr., was re-elected in 1928 as a Republican, and in 1934 and 1940 as a Progressive (the party his father had founded in Wisconsin). Interestingly, the younger La Follette was finally defeated in a Republican primary in 1946 by the infamous Joseph McCarthy, for whom “McCarthyism” was named. Liberal, progressive Wisconsin dumped La Follette after 22 years to give the nation Joe McCarthy, or as Truman called him, “Mac the Knife.”

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