The Dean: The Best Seat in the House

By John David Dingell, David Bender, George H. W. Bush and Joseph R. Biden

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9780062572004

John David Dingell

John David Dingell Jr. (born July 8, 1926) is an American politician who was a member of the United States House of Representatives from December 13, 1955, until January 3, 2015. served as a House Page and attended the Capitol Page School from 1938 to 1943. In 1944, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he served until receiving an honorable discharge in 1946 after World War II. When his father passed away in 1955, Dingell won the special election to succeed him in the House on December 13, 1955. Though decennial reapportionment reshaped the borders of his district over time, Dingell was re-elected to office for an historic 29 additional terms. During his House career, Dingell rose to the powerful chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee (97th-103rd Congresses and 110th Congress; 1981-1995 and 2007-2009). As such, he played a highly influential role in legislation ranging from the automobile industry and energy policy, to the environment and health care. When Dingell retired at the end of the 113th Congress (2013-2015), he held the record as the longest serving Member in congressional history-with a total of 21,572 days in office-approximately 58.9 years. He lives in Dearborn, Michigan with his wife, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell.

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Dedication

For the Lovely Deborah

and to the memory

of my mother and father

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword by President George Herbert Walker Bush

Foreword by Vice President Joseph R. Biden

Introduction

Prologue

Part I

Chapter 1: The Day of Infamy

Chapter 2: A Nation of Immigrants

Chapter 3: Go West

Chapter 4: Ring (in) with Dingell

Chapter 5: The Courage of a Lion

Chapter 6: Becoming a Man for Others

Chapter 7: Called Home

Part II

Introduction to Part II

Chapter 8: A Right, Not a Privilege

Chapter 9: Promises to Keep

Chapter 10: Toward Justice

Chapter 11: We Borrow This Land

Chapter 12: The Lovely Deborah

Chapter 13: Mr. Chairman

Chapter 14: Too Big Not to Fail

Chapter 15: Going Home

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Photo Section

About the Authors

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword

FOR THE MOST PART, WHEN I HEAR PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT the gridlock in Washington and their wish to return to the good old days, I dismiss them as being whiny and shortsighted. After all, the most popular show on Broadway in a good many years has been the musical version of the story of Vice President Aaron Burr shooting and killing former secretary of the treasury Alexander Hamilton.

So, no, these are not the worst of times. And, yes, life in Washington has always been complicated.

Having said all that, this wonderful book from my great friend John Dingell has made me nostalgic, too, for a time in Washington that was perhaps a bit more civilized and when compromise was not a dirty word.

John was and is a fiercely loyal Democrat, just as I was a Republican. But he based his views, and therefore his votes in Congress, on what he thought was best for the country and for the people he represented from his beloved state of Michigan. That often meant going against the party line, which also meant that, thanks to him and others, some very good bipartisan legislation was passed during my presidency, when both houses of Congress were controlled by the Democrats.

I particularly will always be grateful to John for his support for the Gulf War. I know he was under party pressure to vote otherwise, but as he did so many other times in his long and storied career, he voted his conscience.

John could be a tough negotiator, but he was always fair and always willing to listen, which might be another lost art these days. And no matter what the outcome of our disagreements or agreements, he was always willing to then let me beat him at paddleball. (John asked me to be honest in the assessment of our relationship, so I felt the need to say I won more often than he did. At least that is my recall at age ninety-four.)

The Dingell and Bush families have a lot in common, including our commitment to public service, which both our fathers instilled in us, and which we both are grateful and proud that our children and grandchildren are continuing. I would be remiss in not adding that my respect for Debbie matches that which I have for her husband.

America, especially Michigan, is blessed that John and Debbie Dingell have called her home. They are the best examples of what public servants can and should be.

So, I hope you’ll join John in his Best Seat in the House, for a quintessential American journey you will love—and a journey from which, I hope, some of you will learn a thing or two about how to be a great American.

—President George Herbert Walker Bush

Foreword

DIGNITY. WHEN I THINK OF JOHN DINGELL, THAT’S THE WORD that comes to mind. It’s how John walked, how he talked, how he carried himself. But more than anything else, it’s how he treated people. John fought hard for his constituents. But a lot of members of Congress work hard. What set John apart was his deep belief that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

My father used to say that a job was about a lot more than a paycheck. That it was about your dignity, your respect, your place in the community, your ability to look your child in the eyes and say, Everything is going to be okay. John got that in his bones. And as a guy who came from an auto state, too, I could see that John fought not only for jobs, but for jobs that made it possible to live a life of dignity. Jobs that made it possible to own a home, not just rent it, to raise a family, to send your kids to college, to do more than just eke by.

John gets the essential truth of America: that it’s all about possibilities. That what sets this country apart is that it doesn’t matter where you’re from, where you start out in life—everyone gets the opportunity to go as far as their God-given ability and their willingness to work will take them. Big dreams and limitless possibilities—that’s who we are. And if we ever lose that, we will lose the soul of this nation.

My father used to say something else. He’d say it’s a lucky man or woman who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the ground, and feels that what they are about to do that day still matters. John was a lucky man. Because for fifty-nine years, when he put his feet on the ground, no one doubted that what he was about to do mattered. Look at every piece of major legislation going back decades. From the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to Medicare and Medicaid, to the great battles to protect our air, water, and land, John was in the fight.

And, of course, no one stands taller in the long battle we’ve had in this country to make health care a right and not a privilege than John Dingell and his father. John’s father introduced the first national health care legislation, in 1943, and for John and his father it was a cause they never abandoned. So, when President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law on March 23, 2010 (some sixty-seven years after the battle begun by John Dingell, Senior), it was only right that the man seated next to the president be the Dean himself.

We miss John Dingell in Congress. He knew that public service was an honorable profession. He knew it could change lives. And he knew that for our government to work, we had to find consensus. For John, compromise wasn’t a dirty word. You wouldn’t find anyone tougher or more principled, but you also wouldn’t find anyone who better understood that for our system to work, we have to find consensus.

John Dingell’s career in the U.S. House of Representatives will be studied for years to come. I know that historians will rank him among the giants of Congress. My hope is that those serving today will read this book, wake up, and remember what public service is all about.

—Vice President Joseph R. Biden

Introduction

DINGELL, YOU’VE SEEN IT ALL.

When I was serving in the House of Representatives, I heard it over and over again: You ought to write a book.

That suggestion came regularly from more than a few people, including colleagues from both sides of the aisle, former staffers, and a number of my longtime constituents back home in Michigan. I’ve even been encouraged to do so by a few presidents of the United States.

I always gave the same answer: "Too busy. I’ve already got a job. Maybe someday, after I retire."

Truth is, I never intended to retire. My father died in office and, at twenty-nine years old, I’d succeeded him in the House of Representatives.

Like him, I knew I had the best job in the world. I fully expected to go out the way my dad did—serving my people until the day came when the good Lord called me home.

But what they say is true: man plans, and God laughs. Turns out I did retire, only a month shy of sixty consecutive years in office. It’s the record for length of service in congressional history. At this point, I’d also been Dean of the House—its longest-serving member—for twenty years (another record). I laughed when it dawned on me that the awards I was getting were for just showing up to work. All that was missing was a gold watch inscribed Turn out the lights when you leave, Dingell.

About six months before I announced my retirement, my wife, Debbie, and I were lying awake in bed in the early morning. The bedroom was still dark; the sun’s first rays had yet to appear. The house was quiet, and everything was peaceful.

In that tranquil moment, it suddenly became clear to me that I was ready to call it a career. Most everything that my dad spent his life in the Congress trying to accomplish, and his unfinished goals that I had worked so long and hard to complete, had now been achieved. Sixty-seven years after he first introduced health care reform legislation, I’d helped get it signed into law. Our food was safer. Our air and water were cleaner. Endangered species were protected. We’d looked after the widows and the orphans and all those who, as my father always said, needed a hand up, not a handout. I’d carried on his lifelong commitment to protect the unspoiled open spaces of our beautiful country. During my six decades in the Congress, tens of millions of acres of pristine land had been set aside for conservation and protected from development.

There were a few things left that I still wanted to do. I still wanted to see the FDA get more resources and an improved ability to make our food and drugs safer. I still wanted to lead the fight to protect Social Security, Medicare, voting rights, and civil rights. But these battles now belonged to younger men—and women.

I turned to Debbie, who was, as always in the early morning, lying next to me quietly checking her emails. In the soft glow of the light emanating from her iPad, she looked like an angel sent from Heaven. She was my gift from the good Lord.

Deb?

Yes, John? Sensing from my tone that this was not just an idle question, she put down the iPad and looked at me quizzically, peering intently at me over her reading glasses.

I’m finished.

"Finished with what, John?" she asked, a hint of concern in her voice.

The job. And I proceeded to tell her what I had finally come to tell myself: that it was time to hang it up.

Debbie said nothing for what seemed like an eternity but was probably less than a minute. She never took her blue eyes off me. I could see they were misting up. Finally, she spoke. She asked me to think it over for a few more days before I said anything publicly, and I agreed. Still, I knew then that my decision was the right one. It was time.

Starting over is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. This book is not like anything I’ve ever done before. For most of my life, I’ve let the work speak for itself. Now I realize I have one job left. It’s to explain why that work was so important—and why it still is.

* * *

AFTER EIGHTY YEARS OF LIVING IN WASHINGTON, DC, IF I’VE learned one thing, it’s that elected officials are supposed to be there as servants of the public interest, not of their self-interest, or of partisan ideology. A lot of my most recent former colleagues, especially this crowd of spineless Trumpet Blowers, forget that—if they ever knew it in the first place. These gutless wonders are terrified that if they show any independence or integrity, they will get kicked out on their hind ends by even crazier members of their own party. The sad truth is that both parties have become captive to a mentality that rewards pandering over patriotism.

That’s why I finally decided to write this book: to tell the truth about why the Congress has become reviled by the American people, and what we can still do to fix it.

In my time, America has had its share of great leaders: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Sam Rayburn, John McCormack, Lyndon Johnson, Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden—to name just a few. They weren’t all Democrats. Republicans like George H. W. Bush, Jerry Ford, James Baker, Alan Simpson, Fred Upton, and Pete McCloskey all put country before party. I worked closely with most of them, and they all served with genuine dedication and a deep belief that America was greater than a collection of its special interests.

People today, especially younger generations, have become deeply cynical and distrustful of their own government. They have good reason to be. Young people find it almost impossible to believe, but the truth is that a twice-elected African American president wouldn’t have been allowed even to vote in many states before Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Of all the bills I’ve played a part in helping pass into law, that still remains the one I’m most proud of.

This book will provide a behind-the-scenes account of some of the great congressional accomplishments I’ve been privileged to play a role in achieving, and of the tough fights that made them possible.

When I entered the Congress, it was largely a place of comity and mutual respect across the aisle. Sure, there were demagogues like Joe McCarthy—I kept his picture up in my office for decades, as a daily reminder of how not to conduct myself in public office—but there are always a few of those types in every era. There was Huey Long in the 1930s, and there are more than a few around today. One of them is now president of the United States.

Maybe the good Lord has kept me here to tell the story of how government, like life, is cyclical. FDR is revered today, but there was a time—and I remember it well—when he was called a traitor to his class, a fascist, and a warmonger. It’s no coincidence that those are some of the exact same terms (and worse) still used by frothing critics of former president Obama, a good and decent man who, I believe, will be viewed by history as one of our most courageous presidents.

Obama’s successor is another matter entirely. He is unfit to serve. He demeans the office of president of the United States, and he is a daily embarrassment to our nation.

Still, I remain convinced that the innate decency of the American people will prevail, even in the face of what anyone with half a brain can see is an existential threat to our republic itself. This crude and reckless man is not just the problem. He is the manifest symptom of a citizenry that has grown cynical about all our institutions, not just government. The clown doesn’t cause the circus. He fills it with people desperate to believe that the free loaves of bread he’s promised them aren’t merely crumbs. Trumpism is a far bigger danger to the country than the man himself.

History is something that can’t ever be understood while it’s happening. It’s only the perspective of time that allows us to see beyond the temporary passion of the moment and to judge our actions, good or bad, by their consequences, not just by our intentions.

There’s a quote by the great English member of Parliament, Edmund Burke, that I kept on the desk of my House office for almost sixty years: Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays [it], instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Following the public will is only one part of the job. Our main purpose is to work together to find solutions to the problems faced by the people we were sent there to serve. Congress literally means a coming together. That’s why compromise was once considered an honorable word.

Hucksters like Trump have conned and intimidated a majority of both houses of Congress into believing that they are no longer a coequal branch of government. Too many members of Congress now believe that leadership consists of following the latest polls and shamelessly regurgitating popular opinion, all in the service of their own self-interests (reelection and a high-paying job when they leave office). Working on behalf of the public interest and fighting for the greater good are quaint ideas to them, artifacts of a naïve, bygone era.

I offer you this book as evidence that nothing could be further from the truth.

I was a part of our government when it worked honorably and well together. In this book, I hope to show you why it did, and how, by coming together again for the common good regardless of partisan ideology or petty personality, we can preserve, protect, and defend our beloved constitutional republic.

Prologue

MY DAD TAUGHT ME NEVER TO TRUST A FELLOW WHO TALKS too much about himself in the third person. After Richard Nixon lost the California governor’s election in 1962, he declared, You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore. Turned out we would have that SOB to kick around a hell of a lot longer, until they put him on that helicopter with a one-way ticket out of town. (Resigning when you’re about to be impeached is like being the drunk at a party who has his hat and coat thrown at him and slurs, I think I’ll be going home now.)

Like Nixon, Trump is overly fond of talking about himself as if he were somebody else: Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign? J. K. Rowling, who wrote all those Harry Potter books that my grandkids read, asked the right question: I wonder whether Trump talks to Trumpself in the third Trumperson when Trump’s alone.

As I write this, more than three years after I left Congress, Donald Trump still occupies the Oval Office and calls himself the forty-fifth president of the United States. I don’t call him that. He is what royalists call an imposter to the throne.

I call him a grave danger to our country and to the world. Even worse, his legacy of Trumpism has the potential to threaten the survival of our fragile and increasingly divided nation. As my friend Norm Ornstein and his coauthors Thomas E. Mann and E. J. Dionne write in their wise book, One Nation After Trump, The most disturbing aspect of Trumpism—beyond whatever we come to discover about his and his campaign’s relationship with Putin and Russia—is its dark pessimism about liberal democracy, an open society, and the achievements of the American Experiment.

Perhaps by the time you read these words, with the good Lord’s blessing, Trump will have left us by way of resignation like Nixon, or by impeachment, or he might finally have been called out by his own party for creating too bad a stench around them in this election year.

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which I voted for in 1965, gives the vice president, leaders of Congress, and/or the Cabinet the responsibility to declare what is now self-evident: that this is a man fundamentally incapable of fulfilling even the most basic duties of the presidency. Yet, as of this writing, the swamp creatures surrounding him are too busy lining their own pockets to even notice that their Emperor is an empty suit (whose ties were made in China).

Moreover, should criminal action by the president be alleged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, we may yet see the Supreme Court involved. It remains an open question as to whether a sitting president can be subject to criminal indictment. However, the Court has held that a president can be sued in a civil action while in office; we saw that with President Clinton. To this old Polish lawyer, that suggests criminal liability by any member of the executive branch, including the president, is also within the purview of the judicial. Trump thinks he is above the law. I believe that no judge or jury, truly fulfilling their constitutional duties, would agree.

Trump once boasted that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters. He may be right about that with a relatively small number of crazy jackasses who voted for him even though they knew exactly who he was. Some of them are my former colleagues on the other side of the aisle. When it comes to Trump, most of them have been acting like monkeys with their hands over their eyes, ears, and mouths. Shame on them for making a deal with the Devil just to pass a tax cut for their wealthy friends and pack the federal benches with right-wing ideologues.

As for the millions of people who voted for Trump out of hope and not hate, I’d say the vast majority is made up of decent folks who were taken in by the lies of a con man. With the exception of Trump’s true believers who swallow his crap like it’s a chocolate dessert, most of the men and women who supported him in the election were hardworking, honest, and decent people who were, with good reason, frightened about their futures. I don’t deplore them. I feel sorry for them, because they will suffer the most from this ignorant fool’s heartless and cruel policies.

Like the last despot we had to break with, King George III, Trump not only thinks he’s above the law, but he also believes his word (or tweet) is the law. The Supreme Court can’t impeach a president, but I believe it can uphold a criminal conviction that would move Trump’s presidency out of Mar-a-Lago and into a federal penitentiary. He might still retain his job, at least for a day or two, but they would immediately take away his phone.

That alone could save the republic.

Part I

Chapter 1

The Day of Infamy

The American people have a right to know and I, as a member of Congress on their behalf, demand to know who was to blame for the great catastrophe which befell our American fighting forces in the stronghold of the Pacific, which jeopardized the very existence of the United States of America.

—CONGRESSMAN JOHN D. DINGELL SR., HOUSE FLOOR SPEECH, DECEMBER 9, 1941

JACK!

I shot up off my ass and ran across the crowded floor of the House of Representatives toward the tiny, round man who’d called out my name. At his full height of four feet and ten inches, Chief Page John W. McCabe was almost as big around as he was tall. Though I was only fifteen, I towered over him by almost a foot and a half. Yet, like all the pages, I treated him with great respect and affection.

John McCabe was a kind man, but he did have quite a temper. It was not unusual to hear him barking out commands. But on this day, there was a different kind of urgency to his tone that I’d never heard before. He sounded deeply troubled.

Jack, he said, reaching up and grabbing my arm for emphasis, you’re on that radio fellow Fulton Lewis today. I want you to bird-dog him and see that he doesn’t talk more than he should. And make sure he turns off his recording machine the minute the president finishes speaking.

Yes, sir, Chief!

It was Monday, December 8, 1941. The time was just before noon.

My father, Congressman John D. Dingell Sr., had appointed me to the House Page Program back in ’38, when I was only eleven. Even before that I’d been helping him around his office, addressing envelopes and running errands all over the Hill. But to make it clear that his son was not expected to get any special treatment, my dad arranged for me to become a page boy on the GOP side, which is why John McCabe, who was the chief of the Republican pages, was my boss.

Back then, the House had only two office buildings. The Old Building (later named after legendary House Speaker Joe Cannon) dated back to 1908. The New Building (now the Longworth House Office Building) was finished in 1933, the year my father was sworn in as a freshman congressman from Michigan. Dad moved into a bare-bones office in the Old Building with a single typewriter and one electric fan.

Page boys carried messages and delivered draft copies of bills back and forth between House members. Back then, there was still a great sense of humor up on the Hill. Sometimes they would send us pages running for bill stretchers or check stretchers. We didn’t know there were no such damn things. I’d go into an office, and the secretary would say, Sorry, son, we don’t have them here today, but if you go on down to so-and-so’s office, they should have one. Some days, I’d spend about a half a day running around before I finally realized, "Balls of fire, I’ve been had."

Not that we didn’t cause a great deal of trouble ourselves. The principal of the House Page School was a strict, humorless man named Ernest El Kendall. My fellow prankster pages George and Walter and I used to leave stink bombs in his office. If we ever got caught, the work would double, and our time off would disappear.

Truth is, I loved it all. It was a great place for a young man to learn how the government really worked. It was better than any social studies class in the country, and we all felt lucky just to be there.

Johnny, as my dad and the other members affectionately called McCabe, started out as a page boy himself, back in 1919, during the Wilson administration. A Republican from Indiana, he survived party leadership changes for decades, staying on the job because everybody on both sides of the aisle respected him. And he loved and protected all his kids.

For some reason, I was one of McCabe’s favorites. He used to take me hunting and fishing with him on weekends down at his place in Northern Virginia. It’s where Dulles Airport is located now, but it was all farmland back then. There was so much of it surrounding the city that Washington, DC, was called the little town in the woods.

* * *

BACK THEN, I KEPT A SHOTGUN IN MY LOCKER AT PAGE SCHOOL so I could sneak out and go down to McCabe’s farm. I’d even clean out his chicken coops to have the pleasure of hunting with the chief. Cleaning chicken shit was