A review by squirrelfish
The Senator Next Door: A Memoir from the Heartland by Amy Klobuchar
3.0
This book was one of the most personal of the presidential candidate books, describing Senator Klobuchar's life in amazing detail. I've noticed that women autobiographers tend to describe more of their home lives and relationships and this is an example of that to an extreme. She gives names and details of people she hung out with from middle school through those she works with in the Senate now. The details on incidents from the 70s and 80s is amazing - I can't remember those details from my high school and college days and they were 20 years more recent. There's also a through line of an unapologetic love for all things Minnesota - which makes sense for a Senator.
Her personal life takes up the majority of the book, but she does discuss what she was doing professionally, first as an attorney, then Hennepin County Attorney(something like a DA), and then as Senator. In those discussions political positions do reveal themselves, but there's much more discussion of bipartisanship and being a moderate than any specific platform. She was active among Minnesota Democratic circles from a young age, and seems to have had something of a mentorship by Walter Mondale, first as an intern, then associate and later one of her partners at a Minneapolis law firm. From becoming one of the youngest partners at a Democratic law firm she moved to a Republican one, emphasizing that the people at both law firms treated her with respect and remained supportive even as she ran for political office.
She remains proud of her first major political issue - making a health insurance requirement that new mothers be discharged the same day they gave birth illegal. It was inspired by her experiences as a new mother of an ill child, and having to leave the hospital while she was recovering and her daughter was in Neonatal ICU. In early chapters she discussed her fathers' fight with alcoholism, her parents divorce and other personal issues as well. She goes into some of the main issues she worked on in her role for Hennepin County, including a tough-on-crime record, collecting conviction data and campaigning to make 3+ DUIs a felony. Office furniture politics gets almost as much of a mention as her pride in Minnesota having the largest Somali population in the country and her work to make sure the refugee community knew they got equal protecting under the law. Klobuchar emphasizes a responsibility to victims not just to prosecute the cases they can win, but to make sure the victims knew why cases did or did not go to court.
I initially thought some of her choices were impressively loyal regarding claiming disgraced people as friends, but then I saw this came out in 2015. I'm not saying she wouldn't have still spoken up for law-school classmate James Comey, or fellow Minnesota Senator Al Franken, but it's not quite the loyalty in face of adversity I initially saw. The bit about bi-partisan coalitions was also something I hadn't seen in the other candidate books, but as with the lack of discussion of Trump, it's something that has a different context when seen in the rearview mirror. I do like the way she describes being a moderate - not as a halfway position between two parties, but as an acknowledgment that there is a complex and varied set of issues and they don't all naturally fall to one party position or the other. Regarding her political positions as a Senator she discusses the need to end endless war, help Veterans, carefully choose trade agreements, mentioning that she supports some and rejects others, and reaffirms her commitment to refugees and immigrants. Oh, and she brings up and credits her local tribes with the indigenous concept of responsibilities out to the 7th Generation and her belief that this ethic, and a general longer-term thinking, belong in Washington.
In a very nice closing chapter she brings up that definition of being a moderate, the Republicans she has worked with in the past, and a Slovenian quote "The obstacles in your path are not obstacles, they are the path". She uses this obstacles analogy to discuss how American democracy will overcome incalcitrant Republicans and how we'll vote them out if they keep misbehaving. It's a nice and hopeful way to think of things.
Overall, I'd say this had the simplest reading level, greatest detail of personal life, least politics, and most love of her state of any of the books for this project so far. Perhaps aimed more at a Senatorial candidacy than a Presidential one? She doesn't particularly impress me as a candidate, but as I said regarding the [a:Bernie Sanders|102824|Bernie Sanders|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1300822269p2/102824.jpg] review - the political positions are why I read this kind of thing, and this was light on political platform.
Read as an audiobook through Libby and the San Francisco Public Library. Book 6 of my readings of Presidential Candidates.
Her personal life takes up the majority of the book, but she does discuss what she was doing professionally, first as an attorney, then Hennepin County Attorney(something like a DA), and then as Senator. In those discussions political positions do reveal themselves, but there's much more discussion of bipartisanship and being a moderate than any specific platform. She was active among Minnesota Democratic circles from a young age, and seems to have had something of a mentorship by Walter Mondale, first as an intern, then associate and later one of her partners at a Minneapolis law firm. From becoming one of the youngest partners at a Democratic law firm she moved to a Republican one, emphasizing that the people at both law firms treated her with respect and remained supportive even as she ran for political office.
She remains proud of her first major political issue - making a health insurance requirement that new mothers be discharged the same day they gave birth illegal. It was inspired by her experiences as a new mother of an ill child, and having to leave the hospital while she was recovering and her daughter was in Neonatal ICU. In early chapters she discussed her fathers' fight with alcoholism, her parents divorce and other personal issues as well. She goes into some of the main issues she worked on in her role for Hennepin County, including a tough-on-crime record, collecting conviction data and campaigning to make 3+ DUIs a felony. Office furniture politics gets almost as much of a mention as her pride in Minnesota having the largest Somali population in the country and her work to make sure the refugee community knew they got equal protecting under the law. Klobuchar emphasizes a responsibility to victims not just to prosecute the cases they can win, but to make sure the victims knew why cases did or did not go to court.
I initially thought some of her choices were impressively loyal regarding claiming disgraced people as friends, but then I saw this came out in 2015. I'm not saying she wouldn't have still spoken up for law-school classmate James Comey, or fellow Minnesota Senator Al Franken, but it's not quite the loyalty in face of adversity I initially saw. The bit about bi-partisan coalitions was also something I hadn't seen in the other candidate books, but as with the lack of discussion of Trump, it's something that has a different context when seen in the rearview mirror. I do like the way she describes being a moderate - not as a halfway position between two parties, but as an acknowledgment that there is a complex and varied set of issues and they don't all naturally fall to one party position or the other. Regarding her political positions as a Senator she discusses the need to end endless war, help Veterans, carefully choose trade agreements, mentioning that she supports some and rejects others, and reaffirms her commitment to refugees and immigrants. Oh, and she brings up and credits her local tribes with the indigenous concept of responsibilities out to the 7th Generation and her belief that this ethic, and a general longer-term thinking, belong in Washington.
In a very nice closing chapter she brings up that definition of being a moderate, the Republicans she has worked with in the past, and a Slovenian quote "The obstacles in your path are not obstacles, they are the path". She uses this obstacles analogy to discuss how American democracy will overcome incalcitrant Republicans and how we'll vote them out if they keep misbehaving. It's a nice and hopeful way to think of things.
Overall, I'd say this had the simplest reading level, greatest detail of personal life, least politics, and most love of her state of any of the books for this project so far. Perhaps aimed more at a Senatorial candidacy than a Presidential one? She doesn't particularly impress me as a candidate, but as I said regarding the [a:Bernie Sanders|102824|Bernie Sanders|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1300822269p2/102824.jpg] review - the political positions are why I read this kind of thing, and this was light on political platform.
Read as an audiobook through Libby and the San Francisco Public Library. Book 6 of my readings of Presidential Candidates.