In November, Democrats in the U.S. House voted to replace the longtime chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, John Dingell of Michigan, with Los Angeles liberal Henry Waxman. This election wasn’t followed anywhere near as closely as Barack Obama’s a couple weeks earlier, but it was another clear indication that the nation’s political priorities were shifting. Dingell is the dean of the House—he’s served 27 terms since 1955—and widely admired for his loyalty, bluntness, and formidable political skills. But he was also the biggest obstacle in Congress to passing clean-air and climate-change legislation, since he’d always used those skills to protect Detroit automakers from regulation they deemed onerous.
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Waxman is hardly an upstart, having entered Congress as part of the reform-minded “Class of ’74” sent to Washington after Watergate. In 35 years in office he’s developed his own reputation as a shrewd operator with an unyielding commitment to progressive causes such as AIDS funding, tobacco regulation, and environmental protection. His ascent to the Energy and Commerce chairmanship signaled that the Democrats were eager to deliver on their promise to confront environmental issues, even if it meant dumping a respected elder. And it offered Waxman a hook on which to hang his entry in a literary genre that no amount of public indifference can seem to kill: the congressional memoir.
The Waxman Report isn’t as elegant as Lewis’s book, but it’s timely. Assisted by Joshua Green, a senior editor at the Atlantic Monthly, Waxman has written an informative, fast-moving manifesto against the gut-the-government politics that have been in vogue since the Reagan administration. The shortsightedness of the right isn’t exactly an original theme, but given the recent attacks on Barack Obama’s “socialism,” the country arguably still needs to hear how government can help.
The Waxman Report offers a reminder that the political winds shift constantly, and that skilled politicians—pushed along by engaged voters—catch them when they can. Here in Chicago, it’s probably too much to hope that most City Council members would check this book out, let alone cull some lessons from it. But maybe it can help some voters understand that the status quo—inside deals, lack of imagination and debate, rising taxes and declining services—doesn’t have to stand.
