Pretty faces and promising careers tend to flash across our local political firmament with the frequency of shooting stars -- and with about as much effect. But for more than two decades, the most consequential elected official in Southern California has been a short, bald, decidedly mustached congressman from Los Angeles' Westside named Henry Waxman.
In fact, when the history of postwar America is definitively written, it's possible that the record will show that the three California politicians who had the biggest impact on the largest number of American lives were Earl Warren, as chief justice; Ronald Reagan, as president; and Henry Waxman as representative of the 30th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Tens of millions of Americans are healthier, breathe cleaner air and live safer lives because of his legislative efforts. Among living lawmakers, his record of legislative achievement can be compared only to Sen. Ted Kennedy's.
On that basis alone, "The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works" would merit respectful attention. However, the congressman, now 69, has, along with his collaborator Joshua Green of the Atlantic magazine, produced something unexpected and rather fine. "The Waxman Report" is part compelling memoir, part fascinating, shrewd civics lesson and part bracing statement of practical idealism. It's impossible to put down and a joy to read -- a model, in fact, of lucid exposition. If your plans for the long Independence Day weekend incline toward thoughts on the state of the nation, skip all the patriotic kitsch and read this book.
The timing is fortuitous, because Waxman is more than ever at the center of events, since the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which he chairs, shares jurisdiction over the energy and healthcare issues key to President Obama's agenda. The Westside Democrat and Rep. George Miller, a longtime friend and Riverside County Democrat who chairs the Education and Labor Committee, and Rep. Charles B. Rangel, the New York Democrat who heads Ways and Means, have agreed to work together -- their committees have jurisdiction over healthcare -- to produce a single House healthcare measure. (Miller, Waxman and Minnesota's James L. Oberstar are the only surviving Democratic representatives elected as members of 1974's so-called reform class.) Moreover, Phil Schiliro, who was Waxman's chief of staff for 27 years, now is Obama's congressional liaison. (Read this book and you'll understand the importance of such connections.)
