Ron Wyden was a 31-year-old organizer with militant seniors of the Gray Panthers when Portland voters sent him to Congress, upsetting veteran Rep. Bob Duncan.
Duncan was a pal of Tip O’Neill, and Wyden strove to project collegiality and competence when first meeting the House Speaker. It worked. “Look, kid, you will do just fine around here,” Tip told him with a broad grin.
Wyden has been “around here” for 44 years: He is now second longest serving Democrat (after Patty Murray) in the U.S. Senate. The “kid” is now 75 and himself a senior. But Sen. Wyden is still evincing youthful energy, hammering Cabinet nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for his anti-vaxxer views at a confirmation hearing last week.
Wyden faces a long commute home, and has put to good use hours spent in seat 17C of Alaska Airlines’ D.C.-Portland flight. He has written a book entitled: It Takes Chutzpah: How to Fight Fearlessly for Progressive Change (Grand Central, $30).
“It Takes Chutzpah” has a serious goal, offloading what Wyden has learned and what works. Wyden has lived by the premise that anything worth doing is worth doing with enthusiasm.
The Yiddish term roughly translates to fearlessness. Wyden defines chutzpah as “the orchestration of instruction, observation, practice, and collaboration to bring goals to life.” He offers 12 informal rules and backs up each with anecdotes. The son of journalist Peter Wyden, writing is part of his DNA.
The first rule of Wyden: “If you want to make change, you’ve got to make noise.” He backs it up citing the example of cantankerous Oregon Sen. Wayne Morse, one of two senators who voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the enabling legislation for the Vietnam War.
Wyden has made a lot of noise, from opposing plutonium production at Hanford to holding a House hearing on abuses of liposuction surgery. He has enjoyed ideal platforms, such as the oversight and investigations panel of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Wyden’s list concludes with this rule: “Political capital doesn’t earn interest and is worth nothing if you don’t spend it.” And there lies the calculating side of idealist Wyden.
He has gone bold when Democrats held majorities in Congress, witness clean energy expenditures in the Inflation reduction Act. He has, however, shied away from other battles and grasped for low hanging fruit.
Biden bluntly admits that the political right has often taken such initiatives. Wyden writes: “In recent years, the perception of chutzpah has been misappropriated and usurped by loudmouth Donald Trump and his enablers in the media and politics who engage in what my chief-of-staff calls ‘self-aggrandizing fuckery and pass it off as chutzpah.”
A former basketball player, Wyden is a believer in teamwork and coordinated play. He is palpably impatient with the American left’s fussing, feuding, and self-indulgence. Above all, he sees it as failing to connect with the American people.
“As much as it pains me to say it,” writes Wyden, “progressives just aren’t great marketers and they fall in love with words and slogans that might fly in Palo Alto but won’t land in Pendleton.”
Wyden followed a girlfriend from the Bay Area to Oregon in his early 20’s, fell in love with the state. Oregon is a smug state, and its self-satisfaction is a book subplot. No Fox News videos of rioters, rather “Portland nice.”
We read of Wayne Morse’s 27-acre ranch, now a park in Eugene, and of Phil Knight and track coach Bill Bowerman founding Nike. Wyden extolls of charms of college town Corvallis. The state’s secular saint, distance runner Steve Prefontaine, is cited as a prime example of chutzpah.
Unlike counterparts north of the Columbia River, Wyden and seatmate Jeff Merkley hold town meetings around their state. Andrew Villeneuve of Northwest Progressive Institute found Wyden as seatmate on a Walla Walla to Seattle flight. Wyden was just off a town meeting just over the state line in Milton Freewater, a very Republican town..
“It Takes Chutzpah” is a hoot to read, and Wyden is refreshing in his approach to politics. The long D.C. tenure has not made him insular or flanked by handlers.
In Wyden’s words, Perhaps the greatest occupational hazard of leadership is that you can readily get caught up in the trappings of your position and lose touch with your humility and your humanity.”
Would somebody frame that remark and hand it to current occupant of the Oval Office?
Sen. Wyden will discuss his new book with State Rep. Liz Berry at Town Hall Seattle on Feb. 16.
Wyden, Murray, Cantwell, Sanders, Warren, Schumer, McConnell, and their fellow ancient travelers of the progressive Democrat dinosaur class have yet to understand that the asteroid has struck their planet.
Mr. Glicyne:
Well stated! Especially the “McConnell. . . traveler of the progressive Democrat (sic) dinosaur class . . . .”
Always learnin’ to be done right here, readin’ the writin’.
Back in the ‘80s when I covered the Oregon Legislature for the AP, Wyden was a frequent visitor to the Capitol press room in Salem. He indefatigably chatted up reporters to get coverage of the bills he pushed for the Grey Panthers like the rights of nursing home patients. Looking back, chutzpah is definitely the word that comes to mind when thinking about the senator in those early days of his advocacy.