Square Peg

October 1, 2002
Hatch, a fixture in Washington's Sunday-morning ritual of televised political badinage, reviews his career and mixes anecdotes with explanations of the folkways of the Senate, which he has been a member of since 1977. Elected, in his view, to stop an American brand of socialism, Hatch describes his use that year of the Senate's custom of the filibuster to defeat a labor bill championed by Democrats and the AFL-CIO. As a parliamentary maneuver, that was no mean feat for a rookie member of the minority party, but interest in this technical (albeit crucial) side of senatorial politics probably does not run deep. His war stories, on the other hand, will grab attention, and Hatch's selective offering reflects his high visibility in such fracases as the Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas nominations, and in the impeachment saga of President Clinton. If his role in those dramas soured liberals, conservative senators have been annoyed by his deal-cutting with liberal Democrats such as Henry Waxman and Edward Kennedy. Although most politicians' memoirs are ephemeral, they often generate requests, especially in their home states (Hatch's is Utah).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)