George Orwell’s dictum that “the top of a book is the place where every bluebottle prefers to die” applies most of all to the political autobiography.
They usually weigh in at around 600 pages, providing enough space for an insect Forest Lawn. And the contents radiate enough boredom to send the flies more or less humanely to their eternal rest.
Self-satisfied, self-serving and complacent, occasionally enlivened by malice toward enemies, they inspire wonder that the politician’s career ever got off the ground.
Senator Ron Wyden is a 44-year veteran Democratic member of Congress and senator representing Oregon since 1996. He is a self-described senatorial “designated driver” – that is, a politician with a taste for legislative and committee work but one without any desire to run for the presidency.
He may be little known to the public, but his previous position as chair of the Senate Finance Committee is a very powerful legislative post in Washington. The committee’s remit ranges over matters such as tax, trade, and health issues.
This sort of curriculum vitae may add up to a satisfying, productive, and honorable career. It may also add up to a boring book, unreadable to anyone outside his intimate circle and professional Congress watchers.
Wyden has evidently grasped the problem. In his memoir It Takes Chutzpah: How to Fight Fearlessly for Progressive Change, he has come up with a neat solution: combining his life story with self-help advice for the would-be political and social activist, offering tried and true techniques for legislative and social innovation, based on his long political experience.
He groups these techniques under the collective heading of “chutzpah”: The senator is Jewish, the son of refugees who escaped from Nazi Germany to the US.
Rules of Chutzpah: Senator Ryn Wyden's guide to fixing the world
His claims for them are far-reaching. “I’m going to show you how to fix your world, and if you’ve got the enthusiasm for it, how to fix the world, too,” he says.
Chutzpah, “a learned skill that allows its practitioners to self- confidently embrace the possible, despite the odds,” is drawn from varied aspects of his life, including his high school and college sports career (injury put an end to it; only then did his thoughts turn to law school and political activism).
He cut his political teeth on a successful campaign he helped lead in the early 1970s to promote senior care and the Gray Panther movement. From there, it was a relatively short step to the House of Representatives. The American health and elder care system have remained long-standing preoccupations for him.
“Ron’s Rules of Chutzpah,” snappily phrased and 12 in all, come from many sources: family history, congressional experiences, even a beloved sports coach. But not all of them exhibit the sort of brazen effrontery normally implied by the word “chutzpah.”
Some indeed showcase ambitiousness, boldness, and initiative-taking as important means of effecting change. “Don’t push rocks up hills. Push boulders.” “If you want to make change, you’ve got to make noise.” “Show up every day prepared to play.”
But others might fit better into an imaginary “Ron’s Rules of Common Sense,” such as “Be a principled bipartisan: Work with anybody who is serious about moving forward.” Or “Political capital doesn’t earn interest and is worth nothing if you don’t spend it.”
These principles are workable and solidly backed by personal experience, even though it is hard for all of them to be shoehorned into a dictionary definition of chutzpah. What they do illustrate is the balance Wyden seeks to maintain between energy needed to power the desire to affect change, the analytical skills needed to distinguish good ideas from bad, and (very importantly for him) the need to work with political opponents to achieve goals, even though that means you will not get everything you want.
Wyden pinpoints the legislator’s crucial ability to pluck the fruits of achievement from the thorns of political rancor. “Each side digs in, unwilling to listen, let alone find the mutual win inside the squabble,” he complains. Note the unmistakable assumption of optimism: If there is a squabble, there’s a mutual win in there somewhere. I wouldn’t try this approach on the present Knesset, though.
And over the years, Wyden has had some notable mutual legislative wins on a variety of American domestic issues, including health care (his earliest passion) and the environment. Reading over recent hearings of the Senate Finance Committee that Wyden presided over, I was struck by the large number of non-partisan initiatives involved. Granted that the Senate tends to value these initiatives more than the House of Representatives, still Wyden practices what he preaches.
He emerges from these pages as an engaging mixture of driven political animal and an affable, convivial presence able to get on with all kinds of people. It’s typical of him that he laments the decreasing incidence of collegiality-building live debates and human interaction among senators.
And he is generally wary of presidents. “If I were to fault one predilection of the Democratic Party, it’s the tacit conviction of our faithful that electing a single God-like figure as president of the United States is the most important means to effect change.”
He lets fly the occasional broadside at President Donald Trump (the book went to press before the November elections), and even at former president Barack Obama, whom Wyden criticizes for not boldly taking the opportunity to take down America’s employment-based health system and let Americans take personal responsibility for their health insurance.
Israel doesn’t get a look in here. Wyden is a two-state-solution Democrat, and his progressivism is of an older, pre-woke school. Foreign policy is of little interest to him. In the Senate and in his home state of Oregon, he has found two Promised Lands and feels no urge to go in search of a third one.
It Takes Chutzpah is crisply and clearly written, intended to raise a new generation of can-do activists with the ability to build bridges and widen constituencies in order to achieve their goals. Recommended for all. Well, nearly all. Flies should arrange to meet their Maker elsewhere.■
- It Takes Chutzpah: How to Fight Fearlessly for Progressive Change
- Ron Wyden
- Grand Central Publishing
- 336 pages; $22.50
