What I Am Reading: "Millicent Fenwick: Her Way" by Amy Schapiro

After living in New Jersey for almost six months, this book marks my first foray into New Jersey political history. I was familiar with Millicent Fenwick the same way almost anyone is: from her semi-portrayal as Congresswoman Lacey Davenport in Doonesbury. I was disappointed in this book, however. I feel bad saying that, because this book is of exactly the type that I look forward to reading and perhaps even writing someday: the only biography of a minor-tier political figure.

The risk involved, however, is that the subject may not turn out to be very interesting. Millicent Fenwick was, in my opinion, not very interesting. Born in 1910, she lived an upper-class life in the New Jersey suburbs that is enlivened only through by occasional name-dropping, or the descriptions/reminisces of childhood in the lost world of the nineteen-teens. She ended up writing for Vogue during the Depression and the war, and became more active in politics during her retirement. She was elected to the New Jersey Assembly in the late ‘60s, launching from a life of patrician activism, and to the House of Representatives in 1974. She was a moderate Republican. She was mainly a backbencher in the House; spending her time on Soviet human rights abuses and as a fiscal scold.

The book makes many attempts to stress the importance of her work, or perhaps artificially inflate it. Her primary accomplishment was legislation to create a commission to monitor Soviet enforcement of the Helsinki Accords, signed by President Ford against the wishes of Henry Kissinger. Beyond that, her career was mainly that of a gadfly with respectability. To be fair, the book doesn’t flinch from depicting the way that Fenwick’s rogue personal style and quirkiness inhibited her effectiveness as a legislator:

“Many of the amendments Fenwick introduced on the House floor were handwritten and spontaneous, causing her staff to scramble. Her amendments generally failed because when other members called to follow up, her staff usually had no knowledge of the amendments.” (p.187)

Another of her legislative accomplishments listed was a bill deregulating the trucking industry, passed during the Carter administration.  This caught my eye because I once read a book excerpt about the intersection of trucking and serial killers:

“In the years since the interstate era began, the proportion of freight going over the road has steadily increased. After the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 deregulated trucking, the number of trucks on the road shot up even more … To survive cutthroat competition, trucking has become leaner and more efficient. Unionized trucking companies have dwindled while smaller, low-wage ones have multiplied. Trucks have become “sweatshops on wheels,” with truckers driving harder, longer, and faster, for lower relative pay. Like pieceworkers, most are paid by the mile—on average around 39 cents.

As the need for drivers has expanded, the bar to entry has been lowered. Today, you don’t need a high school diploma or to go through any criminal record check service to drive a truck. In fact, beginning with welfare reform in 1996, employers could get a federal Work Opportunity Tax Credit for hiring convicted felons, and many in the trucking industry did. Most trucking companies don’t care if drivers have a permanent address. It’s possible to drive a truck with drunk driving convictions on your regular license. Annual employee turnover at trucking companies is around 100 percent.

As trucking has changed, it has attracted a new demographic: less educated, less stable, less tied to unions, less rooted in family life. Has it also begun attracting a criminal element?”

Anyway, that was just a morbid aside on my part. Beyond the understandable need to flatter its subject, the book has occasional stylistic issues and minor factual errors. Regarding the trucking issue: the book discusses an unsuccessful bill that Fenwick introduced, and concludes a paragraph on the issue by simply saying that “Eventually, her efforts led to the deregulation of the trucking industry.” (p. 190). I looked up the bill that became the 1980 Motor Carrier Act, and it was not the same as that which Fenwick introduced in consecutive sessions (which is of course not to say that her draft did not affect the final legislation, just that the provenance of the final legislation is not as straightforward as portrayed). There are other examples that I tripped over, such as writing that Jacob Javits was a Democrat (p. 170) or that Stuart Symington had served in the House of Representatives (p. 39). Sometimes information is repeated within a few pages without any acknowledgement of it having been mentioned already; and the epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter can be hit-or-miss, such as quoting MLK’s famous remarks on “content of their character” for a chapter on Fenwick’s upbringing and how it shaped her values.

The chapter on the 1982 NJ Senate race, where Fenwick lost to Frank Lautenberg, was pretty good. It covers how Fenwick won the Republican primary against Jeff Bell, the supply-side conservative crusader who had defeated Clifford Case in the Republican primary four years earlier. The discrediting of Reaganomics worked in the other direction in the general election, with Lautenberg running a well-funded and aggressive campaign on a platform of job creation in the midst of recession, and Fenwick’s disorganized, character-driven campaign unable to keep up. She went on to serve as Ambassador to the UN Food and Agriculture division; and died in 1992.

I appreciated the opportunity to read this book. It was straightforward, and was well-served by Fenwick’s compartmentalized life, easily divided into chapters. I will keep looking, however, for the biography that draws me into New Jersey political history.