2007 Hubert H. Humphrey Award

Presented each year in recognition of notable public service by a political scientist.

Award Committee: Lisa Anderson, Columbia University, Chair; David Adamany, Temple University; and Jeffry A. Frieden, Harvard University

Recipient: David Obey, U.S. House of Representatives, Wisconsin

Citation: The 2007 Humphrey Award recognizes a respected and influential voice in American political life: David Obey, Representative of Wisconsin’s 7th District and Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

The Humphrey Award typically recognizes the achievements of an outstanding academic political scientist who has been unusually active and influential in the public policy debates of American political life. Today we reverse the priority, and recognize a politician and policy-maker who has been unusually active and influential in bringing the skills and standards of political science to the practice of politics.

Representative Obey had completed his graduate coursework in Soviet politics at the University of Wisconsin, expecting to teach Russian and Chinese politics, when he decided to put his skills to the practice rather than the study of politics and ran for the Wisconsin State Assembly at age 24. He won by a 1,000-vote margin and headed to the statehouse in Madison. In 1969, when then Representative Melvin Laird was nominated as secretary of defense, Obey was tapped to fill his seat and he soon found himself the youngest House member in Washington. Shortly after he arrived on Capitol Hill, he found his way into even more rarified circles as a member of the Appropriations Committee and, as his official web site puts it, “he’s been there ever since.”

What may have been a loss for political science was certainly a gain for Wisconsin and for the United States. We can hope, however, that his forthcoming memoir, Raising Hell for Justice: The Washington Battles of a Heartland Progressive, appears on the reading lists of thousands of American politics courses across the country.

Even in the early days, in the Wisconsin State Legislature, Dave Obey was widely admired, even (perhaps especially!) by those who disagreed with him, for the well honed analytical skills and solid factual grounding that he brought to whatever he did. He served three terms in the Wisconsin State Assembly and played a key role in creating Wisconsin’s Technical College Districts and the state’s public broadcasting network. Both there and in Congress, he has been a consistent and articulate advocate for a principled liberalism that believes that government can do a great deal of good and is a viable instrument for collective action in society. His style of leadership has been very much in the model of congressional committee leadership that we know in the congressional literature, exercising strong direction on the minority side as well as in the majority, all the while maintaining the collegial relations needed to get things done. Now chair of the Appropriations Committee, he holds one of the most powerful positions in American government and, as such, he is deeply involved in one of the great policy debates of the moment—the role Congress plays in the pursuit of a war already underway.

Now a 38-year veteran of Congress and the House’s third-most-senior member, Representative Obey is well known for his candor but also his wit, intelligence and good preparation: the hallmarks of a political science education. He is a model for our students—not least because he exhibits skills even those of us who stayed in the academy cannot aspire to: in his spare time, Representative Obey plays the harmonica and performs with his two sons and some friends in a bluegrass band, “The Capitol Offenses,” which has recorded several albums.

In celebrating the accomplishments of Representative David Obey, the 2007 Humphrey Award highlights the contributions of political science in informing responsible public policy.