Experiencing Politics: A Legislator's Stories of Government and Health Care.

• Author: Rosenthal, Alan
• Position: Review

Experiencing Politics: A Legislator's Stories of Government and Health Care by John McDonough, University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif., 2000. 336 pages, $50 hard and $19.95 paperback. Available in November at www.ucpress.edu or by calling (800) 777-4726.

In the Massachusetts political world, an archetypical ward boss, Martin (Mahatma) Lomasney, is remembered for his advice, "Never write when you can talk; never talk when you can nod." Happily, John McDonough, who for 13 years represented part of Boston in the Massachusetts House, didn't pay attention to such advice. He has written something for just about everyone.

He supplies models and metaphors to guide those who want tools to make sense out of unruly phenomena. He provides an in-depth, inside look at the process of lawmaking and the people who are intimately involved for those of us who just like to wallow in the legislature. He furnishes reassurance and encouragement for those who believe in representative democracy. And he tells the best legislative stories I have yet to come across.

Other legislators have written about their experiences, but Mcdonough's approach is unique. During his legislative service, and while getting a doctorate in health policy, he came under the influence of political science models and modelers. He takes the models, concepts and even metaphors and applies them to stories or cases that emerge from his personal experience in the legislature.

In this way, he hopes to make the legislature more accessible to a broad audience. He certainly should make political scientists happy. Indeed, he was so impressed with the agenda-setting model developed by John Kingdon that he used it to plan a campaign prospectively, instead of just using it to analyze a legislative effort after the fact.

More compelling than the models are the stories that McDonough tells. Normally, to make any sense of a legislature one has to be there, and be there for awhile. But McDonough's stories are so rich and well spun that they convey as good a sense as possible of what legislative life is about.

Each reader will have his or her favorite. Those who are into representatives and their districts will be fascinated by just how far constituency service extends, as McDonough endeavors to get an Hispanic gang (the X-Men) off the streets so that a neighborhood can be developed. Those interested in the area of health policy will prefer the hospital rate-setting case and what it tells about the...