The Dean

Book excerpt: A candid memoir of the past eighty years in American politics, as told by the longest-serving congressman in history Congressman John D. Dingell first came to Washington, DC, in 1933 at the age of six, when his father was elected to the Congress, and became a House page boy at eleven. Dingell has devoted his entire life to public service and has witnessed and helped shape most of the important political events that profoundly changed America over the last nine decades. Rife with wisdom born of unparalleled experience and filled with the caustic candor that has made him a living legend on “the Twitter Machine,” The Dean is the inside story of the greatest legislative achievements in modern American history and of the tough fights that made them possible. Here Dingell looks back at his life at the center of American government and vividly describes the political currents that swirled through Congress and the nation. At the age of fifteen, Dingell was in the House Chamber on December 8, 1941, and personally heard President Roosevelt declare it “a date which will live in infamy.” Almost a quarter century later, he presided over the House when Medicare was passed and led the health care reform effort in the House of Representatives from his first term in 1955 through the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, when President Obama invited Dingell to sit at the table when the bill was signed into law. Congressman Dingell worked closely alongside some of the most legendary names in American politics, including Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama; Vice Presidents Hubert Humphrey and Joseph Biden; Senator Ted Kennedy; and House Speakers Sam Rayburn and John McCormack. And though he is a lifelong, proud Democrat, Dingell built lasting bipartisan friendships with Republican leaders such as Presidents Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, Secretary of State James Baker, and Senator Alan Simpson. And in a scathingly powerful afterword, Dingell addresses our nation’s future in the wake of an unprecedented attack on all our democratic institutions. He presents a persuasive defense of government, reminding us how it once worked honorably and well across the aisle, and offers hope for how it can do so again. By sharing his personal story as a descendant of immigrants, Dingell also reminds us of this country’s founding promise to remain a beacon of liberty to the entire world. The Dean is essential reading for all who love this country as deeply as John D. Dingell does.