★★★★☆ I Swear: Politics Is Messier Than My Minivan, by Katie Porter
An honest politician...
I Swear: Politics Is Messier Than My Minivan
Katie Porter
An honest politician...
There's a kind of a tradition in the USA, according to which a politician publishes a book-like thing before an important election, laying out his/her positions. I say "kind of" because this is by no means a rigid rule that all politicians follow. But it is fairly common. I have read a fair number of these book-shaped objects, more from a sense of duty than any real interest. They are almost uniformly dreadful -- typically ghost-written boilerplate.
Katie Porter, currently the representative from Orange County, California, is running for US Senate, to fill the seat being vacated by Diane Feinstein. Thus I Swear: Politics Is Messier Than My Minivan looks like one of these campaign books. But it is certainly the most amusing one I have ever read, even beating Obama's books in that regard. (Notice that I didn't claim I Swear is "better", merely "more amusing". I intend to keep Mum on the "better" question.)
Porter, a former law school professor and single mother of no great wealth, sees it as part of her job as a Congressmom (this is the title her children have conferred on her) to educate the American public. In pursuit of that goal she tells us a great deal about how Congress (more specifically, the House of Representatives) actually works. This she does with verve, humor, insight, and a good deal of profanity. (When she titles her book I Swear, she is telling the literal truth.)
She is great at anecdotes. I will quote only one brief one here, from her days monitoring banks for compliance with mortgage lending regulations
As I reached out to set up introductory meetings in 2012, I was on the better end of a typical professional slipup: the reply chain with unintended content. I was exchanging pleasantries with David Moskowitz, a top lawyer at Wells Fargo, and down at the bottom of an email was an accidentally forwarded message to his assistant, Debbie: “Keep an eye on this one. She’s sharp and dangerous.”
She is! Smart as a whip, Katie Porter is, and dangerous as dynamite, as she proved, for instance, by getting a Wells Fargo CEO fired.
Of course she mostly tells stories that make her look good, but not exclusively. In particular, Chapter 18 "Correct the Rumors" is a huge mea culpa, and not easy to read. She is also bluntly honest in a way that few politicians are. For instance,
I decided to run for Congress to get power.
That is the naked truth about why everyone decides to run for Congress: They want power. The question we should be asking every candidate, every day, is what they will do with the power.
If you must read a politician's campaign book, you can't do much better than this. Even if you are just looking for a fun nonfiction book, I recommend it.