ROSTENKOWSKI: The Pursuit of Power and the End of the Old Politics.

• Author: Lewis, Charles
• Position: Review

ROSTENKOWSKI: The Pursuit of Power and the End of the Old Politics by Richard E. Cohen Ivan R. Dee, $27.50

AFTER FORMER HOUSE WAYS and Means Committee chairman Dan Rostenkowski pled guilty to fraud on April 9, 1996 in federal court, he was treated for prostate cancer and sent off to prison in Illinois. The humiliated old lion refused to see any outside visitors, including his friends and family. At his request, his wife and four daughters did not visit him for over a year.

One person Rostenkowski did agree to meet with repeatedly during his incarceration was Richard E. Cohen, a congressional reporter for the National Journal, who has authored two previous books about Congress and won the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for distinguished reporting on Congress. Those conversations, as well as many with his former aides, have helped Cohen to produce an insightful, sympathetic biography about one of the most unsympathetic, colorful characters ever to wield a gavel on Capital Hill.

Rostenkowski is not a deep psychological study, nor is it an investigative expose about specific abuses of power in Washington, nor is it particularly a tale about the intricacies of an important federal corruption case. It is, nonetheless, an important, revealing, anecdote-laden biography about one of the most compelling Washington political figures of our time, written by an enormously gifted journalist.

Rostenkowski's steady rise to power and his Greek-tragedy downfall also mirrors the fortune of the Democrats in the House. Author Cohen richly describes this broader context in which both the chairman and his party colleagues grew increasingly arrogant and out of touch over the years, until both came crashing down in 1994.

"Humility" was apparently never a word in Rostenkowski's vocabulary. The notorious Rostenkowski swagger surfaced early, during his high school years at St. John's Military Academy, a prep school outside Milwaukee. "His grades were average but his status was superstar," said one profile. "In his senior year, he was voted best athlete, most popular cadet, and runner-up as most conceited."

Politics clearly was in the genes. His Polish-American grandfather Peter was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1912, and his father Joe was a tough Chicago alderman and ward leader for 24 years who helped Cook County Clerk Richard J. Daley get elected Mayor of Chicago. In 1952, 24-year-old Danny Rostenkowski entered the family business, winning a...