STUBBORN, IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE Thus does University Diaries characterize the late Senator William Proxmire, the Senator from Wisconsin who succeeded Joseph McCarthy, a stubborn, impossible person of a different stripe.

Tenacity was a key to Proxmire's temperament. It fueled his lonely crusade to talk the Senate into approving an anti-genocide treaty - he made 3,000 speeches to the Senate over 19 years to force that vote. He went more than 20 years without missing a roll-call vote, smashing the previous record. His job was his life.

He was no doubt best known for his Golden Fleece awards, many of which fought rearguard actions against what we understand as public choice in action. Although the obituary, in an urban paper, notes critics of the senator who wish he had, just once, made some kind of deal to bring more federal funds to Wisconsin cities, notably Milwaukee, it does not note his understanding of where his bread was buttered. There is a legendary story in the Wisconsin economics department about the day an economics professor got up at one of Senator Proxmire's public sessions and asked about his vote in favor of cheese subsidies. It happened before I got there, but given the independent cast of mind of the professor in the story, I do not doubt that it happened.