Roll Call: One Year in the United,States Senate
Cohen, Senator William S.
ROLL CALL: ONE YEAR IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE Senator William S. Cohen / Simon and Schuster / $14.95 Fred Barnes The old saw in Washington has it that, Boy, if only reporters could write what...
...Cohen's reasons for writing this book are not obvious...
...At 7 a.m., we were extracted from our rooms by several aggressive young executives so that we could have breakfast with the executive committee responsible for putting on the program," Cohen writes...
...In 1978, he ran for the Senate against a truly lackluster incumbent, William Hathaway...
...Rather, they are an annoyance and an embarrassment...
...Senators are rarely so publicly honest about the splendid tedium of their work...
...But that wasn't good enough for the P.R...
...The halls of Congress have become so crowded with professional lobbyists that congressmen often are forced to push their way through the throng to reach the chamber to vote," he continues...
...You will hear few tales of Rita Jenrette and Paula Parkinson, even fewer of sinister lobbyists bending Congress to their will...
...At 7:30 a.m., before coffee or juice had been served, the president of the organization, an eager, hard-charging public relations expert, turned to me and said, 'Tell me all the positive things we can look forward to in the 1980s.'" Cohen rolled his eyes at Hart...
...You mean you can't tell me one good thing that America has to look forward to...
...It may be that he just likes to write...
...He was mayor of Bangor before winning the House seat from northern Maine in 1972...
...Democracy in America hasn't been supplanted...
...Cohen does not have a pre-Copernican view of American politics...
...He is an interesting fellow aside from the peculiarity of having written a book...
...Seven months later, Cohen and Senator Gary Hart, the Colorado Democrat, appeared in St...
...Louis to discuss "Issues of the 80s" before a gathering of public relations men...
...Cohen hastily learned that while a senator's job is more exalted than a House member's, the work is the same...
...Cohen played up his own support for the Kemp-Roth tax cut and criticized Hathaway as a liberal of the knee-jerk school...
...Because a senator is coming, that's why...
...Actually I didn't come here to tell you about all the positive things you can look forward to," he said...
...Roll Call is clearly not the sort of boring manifesto that politicians often have ghostwritten for them prior to running for president...
...He ousted Hathaway by nearly a 2-to-l margin...
...Which leads to William Cohen's diary of his rookie year, 1979, in the Senate...
...If you are eager, then, to discover how that elitist crowd in Congress spends its time, turn to this book...
...1 arrived nearly 40 minutes late for a press conference that I had scheduled at the state capitol...
...For an evening of unrelieved ennui, try eavesdropping on the barroom conversation of a half-dozen Capitol Hill reporters...
...Senators don't get much respect from lobbyists, either, according to Cohen...
...Why not...
...I came to talk about the mess that we're in and hopefully suggest some ways to get out of it...
...Cohen sometimes overwrites and his metaphors are occasionally jarring...
...Fame came quickly in Washington...
...He is also a poet, with a published volume of poems to his credit...
...There is a brazenness that seems to have taken hold of the [lobbying] process, an arrogance and disdain that makes a pathetic mockery of the legislative process," he writes...
...I had not anticipated that he would talk for more than 30 minutes and started to squirm as each minute beyond the half-hour margin I had allowed myself ticked off...
...Tocqueville can relax...
...Nor is it a luminous piece of literature...
...The system does not revolve around him...
...executive...
...By the end, Cohen has destroyed that old myth about reporters brimming with racy stories...
...Don't believe it...
...I stayed on the platform to listen to the speaker who followed me-an articulate librarian from New Hampshire...
...he asked...
...But voiced in rich detail will be all you didn't need to know about some senator's off-the-record assessment of the Japanese auto import issue or a House member's snide comment about a colleague...
...He served on the House Judiciary Committee when it took up articles of impeachment against Richard M. Nixon in 1974...
...Nor is it ego-inflating...
...He is a Unitarian...
...And there is always the obligation to appear before every group that might feel snubbed otherwise...
...This is not a great book about the American system of government...
...His father, a baker in Bangor, is Jewish, his mother an Irish Protestant...
...One April day, Cohen writes, "I flew from Boston to Augusta, Maine, where I addressed the Maine White House Conference on Libraries...
...ROLL CALL: ONE YEAR IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE Senator William S. Cohen / Simon and Schuster / $14.95 Fred Barnes The old saw in Washington has it that, Boy, if only reporters could write what they really know about senators and congressmen, you'd get hellacious stories about sexual hijinks and booze binges and heavy traffic in brown envelopes under the table...
...Cohen argued his position ably and voted to impeach...
...Robert Frost he isn't, but some of his poems are graceful and moving...
...It captures what are the salient but seldom cited characteristics of congressional life: the parade of smallbore legislative events, the mindless frenzy, the superficiality, the relentless pettiness, all of it made palatable by the chance of fame and a brush or two with something momentous...
...Cohen is a 40-year-old Republican from Maine...
...But Roll Call has the saving grace of unsparing accuracy, and that is no small feat...
...I don't know if any votes are ever changed by the pleas and importunings that reverberate and ricochet around our hallowed halls . . . But it does give the impression that an auction is going on for the highest bid and that the merits of the legislation and the welfare of the public are thrown out in the process...
...But lobbyists are not the corrupting influence that Jack Anderson and Common Cause portray...
...Two months after coming to the Senate, he climbed on the subway to the Capitol, only to be told, "Hey, don't sit in the front...
...They can't know what isn't so, though they might be willing to report it anyway...
...Cohen eluded them by regularly taking the side stairs of the Capitol...
...The issues involved, like saving Loring Air Force Base in northern Maine, are usually non-seismic...
Vol. 14 • July 1981 • No. 7
