Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This was a better read than I expected. Schiff begins with his experience during the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters. It is, of course, a defining event of the Trump presidency and a turning point in our history. On January 6th, for the first time, many Americans realized how easily we could lose our democracy. He then goes back to his personal history, how he became a successful prosecutor, then lost several campaigns in California before finally winning. Congressional Democrats noticed, and asked him to take on the incumbent Republican congressman in his district. Schiff’s victory was a big deal for about 6 weeks--and then he realized he was one of 435 members and should remember to focus on public service, not expecting fame. He describes what the House is like, including political divisions, the seniority system and having to conform to party discipline. He names some of the Republicans he feels are more in it for themselves than for public service (McCarthy, Gowdy, Jordan, Gaetz are a few of them, with examples.) He revisits the Benghazi hearings which turned into a political effort to make Clinton look bad in an election year, and foreshadowed some of Trump's strategies. He goes into depth on the Russia investigation and how Barr distorted its conclusions. Schiff criticizes Mueller's House testimony, but attributes it to cognitive decline rather than, as it appeared, an unwillingness to criticize Trump. (Mueller, as many remember, refused to even read aloud from his own report.) Schiff includes his "It's Not Okay" speech, which is well worth re-reading. Mueller's failure to tell the public his conclusions emboldened Trump who made his infamous Ukrainian call the following day. Schiff was the House impeachment manager when Trump went on trial for his conduct in the Senate so this book is also an important historical record. In spite of the President’s abuse of power and corruption, he writes with some positivity here about public servants like Marie Yovanovitch. Schiff wonders "how many, if any, witnesses" would have come forward without her example. He concludes with the final year of Trump's presidency--which begins with the "disaster" of the coronavirus pandemic and ends with 350,000 Americans killed by it. It also ends with the nation’s first insurrection at the Capitol. This, after Trump and the Russians had spent the year spreading a steady disinformation stream about the "rigged" election and the likely "voter fraud" if Trump didn’t win (despite polls showing all year long that his loss was very possible). Schiff goes into some of the state Republican efforts in 2020 at disenfranchising likely Democratic voters, an ongoing effort. The final section is about January 6th and the second impeachment and trial, The earlier themes come together here—public service vs. corruption and self interest; democracy vs. autocracy. Schiff is genuinely surprised that many Republican colleagues whom he admired and believed to be sincere in their beliefs and principles have been so easily coopted by Trump and his power . Schiff's final conclusion is that "the GOP has become an antitruth, antidemocratic cult organized around the former president." He also warns how Republican legislatures in many states "took the big lie and ran with it, using false charges of voter fraud to usher in a new generation of Jim Crow laws...." Congress has been weakened during the Trump years, but, in spite of this Schiff looks at the strength of the Constitution and the strength, historically, of American democracy, and remains cautiously optimistic. This is a look at one of the most important periods in our history, told by a Democratic leader who had an central role in it. It is very much worth reading.