Three Senatorial Lives

“Great books about senators aren’t especially plentiful,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The great heroes of modern American political history are presidents, not gifted inquisitors or master tacticians.”

“There are distinguished exceptions, of course: John A. Garraty’s Henry Cabot Lodge (1953) is a masterly rendering of a complicated figure; James T. Patterson’s biography of Robert Taft (Mr. Republican, 1972) is both graceful history and instructive political science. The trees felled to produce them may be said to have been sacrificed in a worthy cause.”

“And then there are three volumes (two memoirs, one biography) that fall somewhere short of the ideal, though that is not necessarily a reason to pass them by. The three senators under scrutiny, all Democrats, are well-known for different reasons. One is a party maverick, of sorts, much admired at home in West Virginia while ‘controversial’ in Washington (Joe Manchin). Another, from Nevada, was sufficiently distant from maverick status to have served as his party’s leader in the Senate for more than a decade (Harry Reid). The senator still in office is a Pennsylvania freshman whose singular status is both personal and political (John Fetterman).”