In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Love and Politics in the “State of Wisfollette”
  • John E. Miller (bio)
Bernard A. Weisberger. The La Follettes of Wisconsin: Love and Politics in Progressive America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994. xix 364 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $29.00.

During the almost half-century that the La Follettes held high political office in Wisconsin, friends and enemies alike tended to overestimate the power and influence that they wielded; historians have been tempted to do the same. To suggest that “Fighting Bob” La Follette and his two sons — one named during the 1950s as one of the five greatest United States senators of all time (Robert M. La Follette, Sr.), another Franklin D. Roosevelt’s personal choice to succeed himself in the White House and selected by the Washington press corps as the “best Senator in Washington” (Robert, Jr.), and the last rising to the governorship in his early thirties and seriously entertaining a White House bid before the age of forty (second son, Philip) — have been given more credit than they deserve may seem wrongheaded. Nonetheless, unless we step back and place leaders like them in their proper historical context, we are likely to misjudge their innovativeness, independence, power, and importance, for politics is a group endeavor.

More than most politicians, it must be admitted, the La Follettes managed to transcend familiar limits and to shape events in accordance with their own wishes. “Old Bob,” in implementing his Wisconsin Plan as governor from 1901 to 1905, helped transform Wisconsin into a “laboratory of reform” and a model of political progressivism that other states could emulate. In the United States Senate, until his death in 1925, he remained a prominent voice for an independent-minded, constructive approach to solving the social and economic problems unleashed by modern industrial society. “Young Bob,” who replaced him in the Senate and remained there until losing to Joseph R. McCarthy in the 1946 Republican primary, emerged as a leading spokesman in his own right for the interests of farmers, laborers, and the economically disadvantaged during the early Depression years. “Phil,” during his three terms as governor in the thirties, pushed through the legislature the nation’s first and only unemployment compensation law before the enactment of the [End Page 68] federal Social Security Act, figured prominently in 1934 in the formation of the immediately victorious Wisconsin Progressive party, put into operation Wisconsin’s “Little New Deal,” and failed in 1938 in a futile bid for national influence with his ill-timed National Progressives of America. His political career was over by the time he was forty-one.

It is a bit surprising that no one came along before Bernard Weisberger to do a La Follette family biography, but perhaps the La Follettes did not seem exciting or “sexy” enough subjects, in comparison to, say, the Kennedys or the Roosevelts. Although sexy may not be the correct adjective for them, there was love aplenty in the family, a point that Weisberger is correct to emphasize. Subtitling his study “Love and Politics in Progressive America,” he alternates his attention between the political arena and the homefront, showing how other family members provided strong psychic support for both generations of crusading La Follette leaders. Love between husband and wife cemented the bond that sustained and cultivated the former’s political sensibility and actions. The picture that is presented of Belle Case La Follette’s insecurities and limitations rings truer than do some of those provided by acolytes or by onlookers who suspected that she may have been the real “power behind the throne” in the family. But the accomplishments of this first woman law school graduate of the University of Wisconsin, contributing editor to La Follette’s Weekly, and general all-purpose political adviser were considerable, and her husband’s greatness as a politician derived in large part from her able and steadfast support. The loving admiration of his children likewise sustained the Senator, and during the years after World War I his sons’ political abilities on the platform and in strategy sessions, and, in Young Bob’s case, service as personal secretary considerably assisted their father. But the more important direction of influence, of...

Share