John Dingell, the longest serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was the most important energy legislator of the 20th century. His new memoir comes as he is in retirement at 92 and still as feisty as ever. It includes his 1981 orchestrating of the expansion of the venerable Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee (born in 1795). He turned the somewhat sleepy panel into the most important legislative venue in the House, with jurisdiction that spans virtually all of the U.S. economy.
In 1991, the New York Times said, “Since he became chairman 10 years ago, Mr. Dingell has brought more and more fields under the umbrella of the Energy and Commerce Committee. He has jurisdiction now over not only energy and transportation but also the environment, health, telecommunications, insurance, the financial markets, consumer protection, broadcasting, food and drugs, biotechnology and countless other issues that are woven into the fabric of American life in the 1990’s.
“The committee handles nearly half the bills before the House each year.”
In addition to chairing the full committee, Dingell also took over the Oversight and Investigations Committee, and turned it into the most feared, fair, and effective oversight institution in congressional history, staffed with experienced investigators, many veteran gumshoes from the Securities and Exchange Commission. He exposed waste, fraud, and financial abuse. His investigations led to the resignations of business leaders and academic icons, including the president of Stanford University, and government leaders, including the mother of a future Supreme Court justice (Anne Gorsuch Burford, Ronald Reagan’s first head of the Environmental Protection Agency).
But the memoir – “The Dean: The Best Seat in the House” – is more a personal recollection and history of this amazing legislator and participant in a House dynasty that started with his self-educated father and now includes his second wife, Debbie, his successor in Congress. All three have represented auto-making Detroit, through its rise to prominence and its descent into decay.
Dingell succeeded his father, a dedicated New Dealer who died of respiratory disease in 1955 after serving 22 years. The son served from 1955 to 2015. His wife, Fisher Body heiress Debbie, formerly a Republican, succeeded him and has served as a Democrat in the House since then. She is a junior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
I covered Congress on a daily basis for a dozen years in the 1970s and 1980s and confess that John Dingell was by far my most favorite member of the House. His memoir shows why I admired and liked him. He’s profane, funny, outspoken, and deeply insightful. He’s also a scathing, searing critique of the Trump administration and of what has become of his beloved institution, the House of Representatives.
For a reporter, Dingell was a gem. He was willing to talk, always on the record, during breaks in committee hearings and afterward. He was also happy to meet in his office, decorated with the heads of various animals he shot as an avid hunter (who was a summer park ranger in the West in the 1940s). Among the trophies was the head of a mountain goat. It looked surprisingly like Rep. James Scheuer (D-N.Y.), a Dingell adversary who lost several battles to the imposing Michigander.
Here is a vintage sample of John David Dingell, up front: “After eighty years of living in Washington, D.C., 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, forgot 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.”
— Kennedy Maize