Experiencing Politics: A Legislator's Stories of Government andHealth Care, by John E. McDonough. University of California Press, 342 pages, $19.95.
Toward the end of this useful handbook on the politics of lawmaking,the author laments the dearth of novels and films about what really goeson inside legislatures. After all, it is through popular art that thebroad public is exposed to unfamiliar worlds. And, says John E.McDonough, "The breadth of what legislators do is simply astounding, farbeyond what most citizens understand."
It's an interesting thought, but it's hard to imagine Tom Hanks andMeg Ryan as members of the Ways and Means Committee struggling over taxpolicy and then making time at the end of the day to answer constituentmail. McDonough's book, though it has its dramatic moments, does notquite make the case that hammering out fine points of public policy isthe stuff of which great art--or even popular cinema--is made.
Still, he is persuasive when it comes to the "breadth of whatlegislators do." He has collected from his 13-year career in theMassachusetts legislature a trove of well-told stories, ranging fromwork in his district with a street gang called "the X-Men," to battlesfor tenants rights, campaign finance reform, expanded health insurance,and against the death penalty. McDonough, who since 1998 has been aspecialist in health care policy at the Heller School at BrandeisUniversity, was an unabashedly progressive member of the MassachusettsHouse, yet one who had a driving passion to enact legislation and, thus,to understand the ways of compromise and relationship building.
McDonough learned a lot in his years of practicing politics. His bookis partly memoir, written in a relaxed, engaging voice. As one wouldexpect from an Irish-American politician representing Boston, there aregood anecdotes sprinkled throughout. And there is no shortage of strongcharacters, with former Massachusetts governors Michael Dukakis andWilliam Weld playing roles, as well as a string of House Speakers ofvarying degrees of competence and dictatorial tendencies. He avoids acommon pitfall of this genre: He doesn't cast legislators as poor,put-upon public servants who are unappreciated by the ignorant ingratesin the citizenry--although ignorant ingrates make frequent appearancesin his stories, especially as he recounts the state's fiscal meltdown inthe 1990-1991 recession.
In addition, McDonough combines quite a bit of book learnin' here, ashe seeks to understand the chaotic forces that can swirl inside thepolitical arena. Somehow he completed work on a doctorate degree inpublic health while serving in the legislature--an experience of"learning backward," as he puts it. While he was at it, he became "ascavenger" for useful theories and models devised by politicalscientists to explain legislative politics. He employs these models inconjunction with detailed accounts of his efforts in the legislature.The effect is similar to listening to an unusually skilled professor,one who is more grounded in reality than most. His book is the rare onethat can be described as pleasantly pedantic.
McDonough makes easy work of the old conundrum about whetherrepresentatives in a democracy are supposed to function as "delegates,"voting as their constituents wish, or as "trustees," following their ownconsciences. In real life, he says, it is not an either-or choice forlegislators. Sometimes it's one, sometimes the other--and somelegislators act as delegates most of the time, while others seldom do.As well, McDonough is attentive throughout to the importance of powerfulstories and ideas as determinants of whether legislative campaigns winor lose. In analyzing the failure of health care plans at the state andnational levels in the 1990s, he pinpoints the essential weakness of theideas that liberals were pushing. (In the case of the Clinton plan, itwas so complicated even proponents had a hard time grasping it.) Incontrast, McDonough shows how he was able to help enact a bill expandinghealth insurance to children by increasing tobacco taxes. The conceptwas compelling, and he benefited from seizing just the right "window ofopportunity," another lesson he derives from academic work that arguesmajor change is possible only at certain propitious times.
One of the ironies of politics in our open society is that most ofwhat goes on in legislatures is closed to the public. Not only is theprocess baffling to unschooled observers, but the real decisions areusually made in tightly controlled circles. McDonough is one of many whoare concerned about the "dispiriting cynicism" that he believes is"rooted in misunderstanding of essential features of our publicinstitutions." Books like his are valuable for the light they shine onthe inner sanctums of power, and the franker they are, the better. It'snot that the politician-hating cynics will read his book, but it oughtto be read by students of politics, and especially by elected officials.They could learn from McDonough's practical insights into effectivelegislating and, too, from his understanding of the democratic arts. Theconversation he has here with the reader is precisely the kind ofconversation every leader ought to be having with citizens. Among thejobs legislators (and journalists, for that matter) need to do better isto explain how lawmaking really works. It may not make great art, butthere is an art to doing it well.
