Maverick: A Life in Politics.

• Author: Johnson, Kirk

Through most of Lowell P. Weicker, Jr.'s 30-year public career, from his days in the United States Senate during Watergate to his tumultuous four years as governor of Connecticut, he marched to a tune only he could hear. Opponents who heard music of their own were likely to be lambasted as tone-deaf, or just not smart enough to hear the bells that rang so loudly for Weicker.

In a world of political spinelessness, Weicker's contrariness made him charming, while the equal measure of self-righteousness that fueled it made him a huge pain in the neck.

His new book of political reminiscence, Maverick: A Life in Politics, captures that mixture of traits perfectly, which is to say that it is by turns inspiring and utterly annoying. At its core, it is a scrapbook of Weicker's favorite fights over the years, with his role during Watergate as the Republican party's bete noire and chief Nixon administration inquisitor taking center stage. The underlying theme, and perhaps its most contrary note of all, is that politics is a good and noble calling, and the process of bargaining and deal-making is not sordid or shameful but simply how it afl works.

Maverick is not a prescription for a new program to save America, as some people might have expected, given Weicker's recent musings about running for president. Although he pronounces the death of the two-party system and predicts multiple credible candidates for high office in the future, the closest he comes to outlining an agenda is near the end when he says that whoever is elected must have the guts to really balance the federal budget and not simply dance around it. Skim a few chapters, and you'd know who has more guts than anyone: Lowell P. Weicker, Jr.

"On occasion," he writes, "as when colleagues said they would not vote and speak out as I did for fear of a backlash, I did sometimes see myself as a maverick. Independent, unafraid, an oddity."

Yet his book is also in part a manual for how to make going it alone pay great dividends. Watergate, which broke the careers and lives of so many, was Weicker's deliverance. His high-profile role on the televised committee hearings, starring as the brave young Republican from Connecticut charging full-tilt against members of his own party, alienated Republicans in his home state but won over many Democrats and...