VANITY FAIR NOMINATES Senators Feingold and McCain

Hall of Fame

BECAUSE Senator John McCain of Arizona, a reliable conservative, was shot down over Vietnam in 1967 and spent five years as a prisoner of war. BECAUSE after surviving a Senate investigation as one of "the Keating Five" in 1991, he was re-elected in 1992. BECAUSE he describes himself as "Don Quixote with a strong streak of masochism." BECAUSE in 1994 he approached the Senate's lowest-ranking Democrat—Russell Feingold—sensing mutual concern "that there's just too much money corrupting the process." BECAUSE Feingold, a Rhodes scholar who is heir to Wisconsin's progressive tradition, unseated a Republican U.S. senator in 1992—with the help of a tongue-in-cheek endorsement by Elvis. BECAUSE they have set aside their philosophical differences (from NAFTA to Medicare) to lead the most significant campaign-reform effort since Watergate. BECAUSE in 1994 they shamed the Senate into voting—unanimously—to outlaw the long-standing practice of accepting free meals, vacations, and other gifts. BECAUSE they've provided the ballast for Tennessee's Fred Thompson— the only other Republican senator to endorse their bill—to pursue a broad investigation of Democratic and Republican fund-raising practices that everyone agrees are unseemly and might just be illegal.

DEE DEE MYERS