Leadership Quote by Russ Feingold

The line lands like a procedural statement that’s quietly radical: standing up to a sitting president isn’t framed as a spicy option, but as civic maintenance. Feingold doesn’t say it’s admirable, or strategic, or even justified in this particular case. He says it’s necessary. That word does the heavy lifting. It smuggles dissent out of the realm of personality and into the realm of duty, suggesting that a healthy democracy requires friction, not unity-as-branding.

The phrase “not only all right” is a tell. It anticipates the ambient pressure of the era: post-9/11 politics, the war on terror, and a cultural script where questioning executive power could be cast as disloyalty. Feingold’s construction reads like he’s answering an accusation before it’s spoken. The subtext is that the real abnormality isn’t opposition; it’s the expectation of obedience.

Naming “George Bush” rather than “the president” is another choice with intent. It strips away institutional majesty and turns the target into a political actor accountable like any other. Feingold is also positioning himself, implicitly, against the bipartisan reflex to rally around wartime authority. That wasn’t abstract for him: he was famously the lone Senate vote against the Patriot Act in 2001, a stance that made him look fringe until the civil-liberties backlash caught up with him.

So the quote functions as both permission slip and warning label: if you’re scared to dissent, that’s precisely why you must.