The American political process comes alive in Richard Fenno’s The Making of a Senator: Dan Quayle. Written before Quayle came to national prominence in 1988, the book offers a fascinating account of his efforts to master the Senate system and then exploit legislative success in winning easy reelection. At the same time, the narrative traces the making of a law–describing the infighting, the strategies, the competing egos, the humiliations, and finally the brazen attempts at credit stealing.
The book tells how Quayle, then a freshman Republican subcommittee chairman, pushed a major job training bill through Congress in 1982 with the help of Massachusetts Democrat Edward M. Kennedy–a bipartisan alliance that angered the Reagan White house. At first opposed to the bill, the administration later sought to embrace Quayle’s work as its own achievement.
Fenno portrays a buoyant, confident Quayle who disdains the fine print of legislation but relishes the leadership actions essential to enacting a law. Using his trademark “over the shoulder” method, Fenno observed Quayle and aides at close hand throughout the young senator’s first six-year term, in Washington and Indiana. The result is a readable, instructive case study of growth and development in the campaigning-governing-campaigning sequence that is part of every senator’s political life.
Watch the C-SPAN interview about The Making of a Senator: Dan Quayle
