Politics: Stories vs. Resumes
By: Barton Swaim (WSJ)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The political memoir, as a genre, is in bad shape. There are too many memoirists, for one thing. Unimportant cabinet secretaries, mid-level White House staffers, lawmakers that most of the country has never heard of—they all, these days, feel the need to write detail-heavy 300- or 400-page accounts of their time in the halls of power. Very few of these chroniclers are gifted writers, and even fewer have anything important to relate.
Yet some of them have terrific stories to tell about their early lives. If only they would write about the interesting bits of their biographies and leave out the already familiar career highlights and tiresome score-settling. Consider Hawaii Sen. Mazie K. Hirono's "Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter's Story" (Viking, 397 pages, $28). Ms. Hirono, in this reviewer's admittedly biased opinion, is author of some of the most witlessly partisan remarks in recent U.S. legislative history. Yet I found the book's early chapters very moving.
Ms. Hirono was born in Japan in 1947. Keiko, as she was called, was a small child when her father fell into alcoholism and gambling. His own parents treated Keiko's mother with shocking cruelty. When her mother's breasts suddenly ceased to give milk, "her mother-in-law insisted that [her daughter-in-law's] upper arm be branded with a sizzling iron, to shock her body into making her milk flow once more." Ms. Hirono recalls "my mother's glazed look as she told me this story many years later, almost as if she were recalling an event that had happened to someone else." She bore the scar on her arm for the rest of her life.
Ms. Hirono's mother had been born in Hawaii and soon began secretly arranging to leave her husband and flee with their children to the American territory, which she did in 1955.
Once Ms. Hirono begins narrating her political career, however, her writing takes on the, if I could put it this way, angular qualities of her public persona. She is never wrong, her opponents never less than despicable. Republicans during the ObamaCare debate, she quotes herself saying at the time, were "literally plotting how to deny millions of people in our country the heath care they deserve." She, on the other hand, glows with saintliness: "In the conflict-rich arena of politics, I had never sought the spotlight, never even referred to myself as a politician. I was a public servant. My work was to serve those who were vulnerable." Many politicians think and speak this way, but they ought to be discouraged from turning their memoirs into dreary recitations of their own courageous stands and their enemies' treachery.
Carl Levin first became a U.S. senator in 1979 and left office in 2015. You may remember him by the reading glasses perpetually perched on his nose, together with his combover. His memoir, “Getting to the Heart of the Matter: My 36 Years in the Senate” (Wayne State, 338 pages, $29.99), brushes quickly past his early life. He’s already out of law school by page 11. The rest of the book is a chronicle of the policy views he took as a public official, first as a Detroit city councilman and then as Michigan’s longest-serving senator.
I try not to fault books for what they aren’t, but I would have liked to read less about Mr. Levin’s policy decisions, which were already a matter of pubic record, and more about his growing up in a politically attuned Jewish home in 1940s Detroit. (Mr. Levin’s older brother, Sander, was a member of the U.S. House, also for 36 years.) Instead we learn what Mr. Levin said and the votes he took on Nafta, the Clinton impeachment, and the Iraq War.
Sen. Tim Scott’s response to President Biden’s recent address to Congress electrified GOP voters and wrong-footed the president’s cheerleaders in the media. The paperback edition of Mr. Scott’s “Opportunity Knocks: How Hard Work, Community, and Business Can Improve Lives and End Poverty” (Center Street, 292 pages, $28) was issued less than a month before the South Carolinian’s rhetorical triumph. The book is equal parts autobiography, self-help and political commentary.
I remain unconvinced that Mr. Scott’s “opportunity zones,” written into the 2017 tax-reform bill at his urging, are the consequential innovation he believes them to be. The idea, much like the “enterprise zones” championed by Mr. Scott’s hero Jack Kemp and others a generation ago, involves using the tax code to get companies to invest in low-income areas. These sorts of policies end up empowering politicians and doing little to achieve their stated purpose.
The important fact about Mr. Scott, though, is that he is the only high-level elected official in America capable of speaking truthfully and cogently on the subject of race. “For more than fifty years, starting with President Lyndon Johnson’s ‘Great Society,’ ” he writes, “the federal government has dumped huge amounts of money into an ever-growing web of bureaucracy and red tape. Yet poverty rates remain basically unchanged since the early 1970s, especially in the black community.”
“Opportunity Knocks” is what this column likes to call a résumé book: The author isn’t sure he wants the job (you know which job I mean), but he sends in his résumé all the same—just to see what happens. Not without reason, in this instance. Mr. Scott is a black man who grew up on the edges of poverty in South Carolina; he is relentlessly optimistic about America; and he rejects white liberal orthodoxy on race. In the United States of the 2020s, that is a potent combination.
“America is not a racist country,” Mr. Scott remarked in his response to the president’s address. But he doesn’t deny the existence and virulency of racism in the present—on the right or the left. As a freshman member of the U.S. House, he recalls, he voted against raising the debt ceiling. “My office had to shut the phones down because of an onslaught of racist calls opposed to my vote. ‘I’ll never drive through your N state again,’ they said, and ‘tell that N boss of yours to get his head out of his $%^&.’ Calls like these drove our staff and interns to tears. These weren’t from people in South Carolina, but New Jersey, Illinois, California, and so many other states.”
I doubt this résumé will get tossed in the trash.
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Three political biographies to consider.
My favorite is the one about the man, who as the reviewer puts it: is the only high-level elected official in America capable of speaking truthfully and cogently on the subject of race.
No personal attacks.
Scott's an ascending star within the Republican Party.
VP material perhaps
Why is Scott the only one 'capable of speaking truthfully and cogently on the subject of race' Vic? There are dozens of other African Americans, Asians and Hispanics in 'high level elected office'. Why discount them?
I don't. I'm counting the minutes when I can hear them speak for themselves. Beyond speaking for oneself is the matter of the courage Senator Tim Scott had to speak truth to power. He took all the slings & arrows we all knew would come, he is the example to be admired.
IMHO, from his privileged position, it didn't take any courage for Sen. Scott to speak his mind on the floor of the Senate.
If Scott took 'slings and arrows' from his floor speech, it sure as hell wasn't from the left. If you are talking about his reply to the SOU, Scott's motivation wasn't to endear the left so I doubt he gives a fuck what they said.
Scott's embrace of Trumpism takes him off of the 'admiration' list.
He probably doesn't, since racist attacks by the left were expected.
I was no surprise.
Trumpism remains very much in favor.
It will succeed without him
It seems that Mr. Scott was singing a different song a few years back.
Scott is a characteur of an unsayable stereotype...
You going to defend progressives calling him the n-word next, too? How low can you drag this site down?
No, and I didn't. Scott is doing okay for Scott.
I cannot help it if he is perceived as a token...
This:
is a good example of what the author was talking about.
Sure you can. Try not perpetuating it. Try perceiving and speaking of him as something other than that.
You can if you don't. Easy Peasy.
Most conservatives of all colors look at him as a human being that is openly stating what he is seeing, and taking all the racist comments like a man from the "all inclusive" left.
The almost entire GoP was singing a different tune a few years back. The few that have stayed true to their conservative/republican ideals are now being stuffed into the handiest trash can for their temerity.
As to the reviews, frankly I could care less about some author's teenage angst, we've all experienced our fair share of it and none of us need to live through it again vicariously.
And no, this is not a personal attack, but I am in no way surprised that both author and seeder have chosen the latest 'angel' of the right for praise. Political discourse like the Remarkable Rocket sinks deeper into the mud ... both amusing and saddening at the same time.
Therein lies the rub. Sen. Scott can stand on the Senate floor and cite personal experience in being racially profiled both in and out of the Capitol and they STILL deny that there is systemic racism.
Since the author insists that Scott is the 'ONLY' one 'capable of speaking truthfully and cogently on the subject of race' it's pretty fucking sad that he his being ignored.
The two things are not synonymous, nor does the Senator's past recollections have much to do with America in 2021.
No one is denying that there is racism in this country. The systemic racist attacks by the left on Sen Scott proves that.
In Scott's 2016 speech on the Senate floor, he spoke about events THAT YEAR.
Is it your ridiculous posit that things have radically changed for the better in the last 5 years Vic?
Actually, many do.
Are you claiming that the police that stopped Scott were leftists?
Nope. Why are you trying to claim something I never said?
It would behoove you to recognize the difference between a claim and a question bugsy.
There is no systemic racism, no matter how much the left tries to promote it
It would behoove you to not try and put words in my mouth.
BTFW, Dulay, I answered your question with the first word of my post.
Deal with it.
What I and most Americans have noticed over the years is that ANYTIME a leftist tries to accuse someone from the right of doing something, you can rest assured that THAT, or any other leftist, is actually doing what they accuse.
Being racist is by far the biggest.
There is no hiding it by them anymore.
They, mostly white liberals, hate any black not tied down to the democratic plantation
Post it.
Is it your ridiculous posit that things have radically changed for the better in the last 5 years Vic?
I've made my view clear. America is not a racist country and hate filled progressives are trying to use Blacks.
I didn't. Why keep claiming I did?
So it WAS a question, NOT a claim. Thanks for playing...
There is nothing to 'deal' with...
Why Vic? Are you incapable of searching C-Span for Scott's 2016 floor speech? I thought that you admired him. Guess that isn't enough motivation...
Which fails to answer my simple question.
Because that's the way it works around here - you make the claim and it's on you to back it up.
Are you incapable of searching C-Span for Scott's 2016 floor speech? I thought that you admired him. Guess that isn't enough motivation...
In fact, it would have taken you just as much time to pursue the video for yourself as it took you to whine to me about it. Have you managed to invest the seconds to search for it and the minutes to go watch it for yourself yet Vic. Because if you haven't, you don't really WANT the link, you just want to get ME to post it for you.
BTFW, you STILL haven't answered my question.
And he also lied saying that Democrats/Liberals/Progressives are further dividing the U.S. without ever saying how. I'm sure his republican masters told him exactly what to say.
I posted it in comment 2, two days ago. You should view the links that are posted in/on your articles.
Some don't even read the links that they post in their own articles...
We get it. There is one black US Senator in the gop.
Making a big deal about it just amplifies that fact...
If the gop says, "Get It!", Scott will step and fetch it...
You can't stop can you?
Bring up Tim Scott and the NT left wing racists go into a frenzy.
It's disgraceful!
The real disgraceful is that Tim Scott is so disliked by black voters in South Carolina that he only got 8% of the black vote in 2016...
EIGHT PERCENT!
Sounds to me like white voters in South Carolina must not be very racist if a black man is getting elected even with only minimal black supporters.
Sounds like Scott turnes off black voters...
Do whites vote for him because he is black?
Why does Scott only get 8% of black votes in his home state where they know him best?
Sure. In backward-logic-racebaiting-world.
Does it bother you even a little to say such racist things?
Bother?
Hell, the last few weeks have shown they thrive on it.
Nice racist comment, but coming from the source........
There are currently TWO black Republican members of the House of Representatives and one black member of the Senate (Tim Scott).
Remarkably, you could go back to the turn of the twentieth century, and look for African American members of Congress who were also Republican and you could literally count them all on your fingers. Over 120 years there have been no more than 10 black members of the US Congress who were Republicans. In that same span of time there have been more Democratic black members of Congress than I would want to spend time counting.
Tim Scott gets all this attention because in a very real sense he IS a token. He is all the GOP has to try and present themselves as friendly to black hopes and aspirations.
Here is the list of black members of Congress if you want to see for yourselves
Black-American Members by Congress, 1870–Present | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives
No John, we don't elect people on the basis of skin color. Democrats do that.
We don't have people who smear Black Americans for speaking their minds. Democrats do that.
We don't use Black people. Democrats do that.
Vic, dont tell black people how much Republicans love them. They arent going to believe you.
Surely you jest. I'm not sure what has fallen in your path but most assuredly you tripped over it. (apol. to the bard)
Then they can continue to believe democrats and continue to vote for them for how long did LBJ say?
" I'll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for 200 years ."
Yes John, Black voters have placed themselves in democrat hands. Every immigrant group has come to America and progressed. How has it worked out for Black Americans?
Really Vic.
Perhaps you can explain WHY the GOP put Scott front and center on 'race' issues Vic?
Scott has NO experience in law enforcement yet they put him 'in charge' of 'race and police reform'.
Oh look, our African American is writing our JUSTICE Act so it MUST be kosher.
It was and is an utter shit show. Introduced in June 2020 with 48 Republican co-sponsors and THAT WAS IT. McConnell co-sponsored it but they never even referred the bill to committee. It was all smoke and mirrors and just gave then a sparkly thingy to shine on the Sunday shows and blather into microphones about.
Ya, the GOP doesn't use blacks...
Pffft.
Because, as you can see, he is an eloquent speaker who happens to have a bit of personal experience on the subject.
Scott has NO experience in law enforcement yet they put him 'in charge' of 'race and police reform'.
Oh that's a new one. Now we need law enforcement experience to speak or race and/or police reform and the war on cops.
Oh look, our African American is writing our JUSTICE Act so it MUST be kosher.
Shame!
It was and is an utter shit show. Introduced in June 2020
Rejected by democrats because it was an election year, another year of total resistance.
Ya, the GOP doesn't use blacks..
I think Black Americans know who used & abused them. Republicans freed them. Progressives impoverished them.
Pffft.
That must be a feminist good by.
Have a good one.
Perhaps it alluded you that we are NOT talking about SPEAKING about a race and police reform. We ARE talking about Scott being put in charge of writing legislation to accomplish that reform.
Yes, it is shameful for the GOP to use Scott the way they have.
Utter bullshit Vic. McConnell, the Republican leader, NEVER assigned the bill to a committee Vic. There was NEVER a hearing in the Republican controlled Senate. There was NO debate nor were any amendments allowed.
In short, McConnell set Scott up to fail.
Oh and BTFW, only 45 of the 48 GOP co-sponsors voted for cloture on the bill.
But ya, Democrats.
I'm pretty fucking sure that Black Americans know that TODAY'S Republicans support and embrace the Trumpian plan to end birthright citizenship codified in the 14th Amendment.
The 'Radical Republicans' WERE progressives Vic. Read a history book.
No, it's a dismissal of an unsupported patriarchal posit.
11 people , two of them just elected for the first time last November. That is how many black Republicans have been in the House or Senate since 1901.
So that simply means that so many more failed to escape from the democratic plantation.
Counting by skin color?
Do you imagine that it sounds less racist if you phrase it that way?
Black people dont seem to run for office as Republicans very often in Republican districts. If they did there would have been more than 11 black Republicans in Congress over the course of 120 years.
Why dont you ponder on that instead of asking foolish questions.
I don’t need to ponder racist takes on politics. They are plain to see.
If they did they would be attacked by liberals...aka Tim Scott
Yeah, it’s just as good as “I have a black friend, so . . . “
Token Scott