DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

Earlier this year Hillary Clinton held a public vote to decide what her presidential campaign song will be.

The winner turned out to be "You and I" by Celine Dion ("I'm always rising up/I never want to come back down"). The vote totals were not released, as far as I can tell, and given that the Dixie Chicks were among the contenders, it's possible that there was a politically protective component built into the process.

As the weeks went by and I kept getting news releases about the contest, it seemed to me that there was something about this that symbolized what has happened to our political system. John Kennedy managed to choose "High Hopes" as his campaign song without either a public vote or a focus group. Hillary Clinton doesn't want to take a stand on even such an inconsequential matter. Do we really want our officials to pander to us so completely?

One of the reasons this incident stuck in my mind was the discovery that public officials taking tough stands in the face of adverse public opinion has become so rare that an award created to recognize them has begun having difficulty finding any.

When the Profiles in Courage Award was created by the Kennedy Library in 1990, it was designed to recognize those "who stand up for the public interest, even when it is not in their own interest to do so." It is named for John Kennedy's book that described how eight senators in U.S. history risked their careers to take politically unpopular positions.

The award has gone to people like Lowell Weicker, who as governor of Connecticut took the enormously unpopular step of proposing a state income tax, and Gerald Ford, who as president outraged the nation by pardoning Richard Nixon.

But lately, the award has frequently gone to political figures who took very popular stands, such as John McCain and Russell Feingold for proposing campaign finance reform. One year the award was given to public employees who aided the public during the September 11 tragedy. This year it was given to a school superintendent who worked to put her school system back into operation after Hurricane Katrina. These are all worthy and admirable deeds. They're just not the kind of deeds JFK had in mind or the kind for which the award was created. We may be running out of them.

McCain has actually been engaged in a far more admirable effort than campaign finance. Since last year's election, he has been the most visible supporter of escalating the U.S. presence in Iraq. He has gone against the grain of public opinion because he believes it is the right thing for the U.S. and the Iraqis and it has nearly ruined the presidential campaign he spent eight years planning and which he once dominated. He has paid a high political price and has been attacked relentlessly on the blogosphere. His stance on this issue stands apart from normal political practice all the more because of its rarity.

Must we agree with McCain in order to admire the battle he has waged? John Kennedy himself answered that question: "This is not to say that courageous politicians and the principles for which they speak out are always right. ... But is it necessary to decide this question in order to admire their courage? Must men conscientiously risk their careers only for principles which hindsight declares to be correct, in order for posterity to honor them for their valor?"

Gerald Ford certainly deserved his Profiles in Courage Award - his courage almost certainly cost him the presidency. That doesn't justify the Nixon pardon, but it matters whether we esteem such actions in spite of our disagreement.

If the decline in genuine Profiles in Courage Awards is any indication, we should take the time to admire John McCain's current fight, because fewer and fewer officials show that kind of courage. At a time when we are being "served" by a generation of politicians who cannot bring themselves to tell us what we need to hear but do not want to hear, it may be a long time before we see it again.