Inside: A Public and Private Life

I have immensely enjoyed reading Mr. Califano's memoir. He is quite candid in his assessments, even when his candor doesn't reflect well on him or his decisions taken while in public service. (A lot more candor from today's public officials would be most welcome.) Most Americans will not have a clue about the almost Zelig-like presence of Mr. Califano when important policy decisions were being formulated beginning with the Johnson administration and continuing through the Carter years. This book should be recommended reading for all those studying Public Administration and for any person interested in understanding the ways of the Federal government. Bravo!

Inside is the most interesting memoir that I have read in many years. I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in how to do the right thing while under tremendous pressure to do the opposite to study this book. I also recommend giving this book as a gift to young people who want to pursue professional and public lives, as a study from which they can learn much. If you are a Democrat, you will be especially interested in the inner workings of how many critical events occurred. If you are not a Democrat, you will be fascinated by the misdeeds of some Democrats while they were in office. If you are skeptical of government power, you will find lots of examples of unwarranted abuse. If you like juicy stories that you haven't heard before, you will find this book full of them. Most people today have no idea who Joe Califano is of why he is important to American history. But if you tell people that he was legal counsel to the Army under Cyrus Vance and Robert McNamara, personal assistant to McNamara while he was Secretary of Defense, ran President Johnson's campaign to develop the social changes incorporated in the Great Society (including the elimination of government-sponsored racial discrimination), and was Secretary of HEW for President Carter (where he took ending discrimination much further, added important health reforms such as taking on smoking and began reforming the way HEW was administered), it's impressive. But there's more. He was also counsel to the Washington Post during the Watergate investigation and ended up being involved in both President Nixon's resignation and that of Vice President Agnew. His private clients have included many of the most important companies in the country. His law partner was Edward Bennett Williams, perhaps the most famous litigator of his generation. But that's all beside the point, to me. Mr. Califano is of most significance for his candor in explaining his religious faith and how he has tried to follow it while walking the corridors of power and pursuing a challenging private life. It hasn't been easy, and he hasn't always done what he later felt to be the right thing. But he tells you where he thinks he did right . . . and where he went wrong. Other legendary insiders (like Justice Fortas and Clark Clifford) ended up their careers with a cloud over them. Mr. Califano seems to have avoided that path by increasingly taking up the challenges of public service in a disinterested, pro bono way. His latest focus is on a private foundation to help locate and eliminate the causes of addiction. I thought that the lessons he shared are important and timeless ones for us all.Although the book is long, the prose is spare. He only provides enough information so you get the main point. He's lived through enough important events to fill 10 lives . . . and he seems to keep it all in perspective.As a person who also graduated from Harvard Law School and found corporate law in a law firm to be less

What is it to be a Washington insider? Consider this quote ': "? no legal fee can be too high for a large corporation with billions at stake on a phrase in the law ?" Meet Joe Califano: simultaneously General Counsel to the Democratic National Convention and Outside Counsel to the Washington Post during Watergate; and the reason you can't smoke in public.Joe Califano's career as a Washington insider began as a member of the Kennedy administration and continues to this day as that most celebrated but shadowy of creatures, the Washington insider. His book is a very personal account, easily read, of a man who has exercised power and enjoyed himself doing it. His is a quintessentially American not-quite-rags to riches story, the result of hard work and dedication. A heroic figure to many (and quite pleased with himself), Joe Califano is also a card carrying member of the society of arch devils who comprised Liberal America in its pre-Reagan heyday.Raised by a devout family, in a devout milieu, Califano attributes much of his social consciousness to his strict Catholic upbringing; Catholicism takes up a good part of the beginning of the book and a very large part of all of Califano's life; repeatedly woven into the story are the strength his faith gave him and the wrenching conflicts it forced him to face.Switching from the reflexively anti-communistic Republicanism of his family, and while working for Republican Tom Dewey's law firm, Joe's policy instincts were first evident in his early support for Jack Kennedy. Supporting JFK in debates at New York City's Reform Democratic Clubs, he recalls "In all my debates, I was never able to capture a single vote for Kennedy". Which led directly to his becoming one of McNamara's "whiz kids" in the new administration, the springboard for all that followed.He describes a level of intensity and excitement in his first days, in the depths of the Cold War, akin to what was ascribed to the early members of the New Deal administration: idealism, energy, commitment and controversy. A sample of the issues he faced:- Reforming the military administration at the Pentagon- Army protection of civil rights and enforcement of desegregation as Army Chief Cyrus Vance's special assistant- Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, Fidel Assassination plots- Kennedy burial duties- Lawyer before an international tribunal on riots in Panama Canal ZoneAt first reluctant to work for Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy's assassination, he came to admire the man's programs and the man himself; because of his intelligence, because of his abilities as a politician, and because Califano passionately believed in The Great Society programs which he was eventually to run as Johnson's domestic policy advisor. If a mentor is someone whose influence is evident throughout later life, Johnson was Califano's mentor. Califano's role working with Johnson was central to the making of who Califano later became; all else was prologue or epilogue.Hate it or love it,

I share some things with Califano, the same potical beliefs, faith and concern for this country's drug abuse problems. Califano brings his experiences in governmant to life, particularly his interaction with heros like Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara. He is fair with Jimmy Carter, who fired the author as Secratary of HEW. Interesting people like Edward Bennett Williams, Art Buchwald, Bill Paley (his father in law) and Mario Cuomo (not to best advantage) also appear; Califano knows them all. He also discusses his childhood and education, with emphasis on pride in being an Irish-Italian Catholic.About two thirds through the book, I concluded that Califanowas telling to like it was -- but always with the skill of a great lawyer and bureaucrat. In other word, you are hearing his side of the story. Califano spends a chapter discussing his reluctance to seek an annulment from his first marriage. It is a wonderful chapter, touching on all aspects of a very difficult decision. Wonderfully told and moving, until you realize that Califano merely states, without explaining, that all three of his children from the first marriage did not attend his church wedding to his second wife (they had been married in a civil ceremony 7 years earlier).I would still recommend the book; it's tough to put down because you never know what's coming next. Califano, at age 60, is advised by Lady Bird Johnson to work and play hard for the next 15 years because energy starts to flag after that -- great advice that Califano follows despite bouts of cancer. (Califano does not mention Lady Bird's recent victory over the history channel in geeting the channel to retract a program on LBJ's part in the JFK assassination - one wonders if he was partly responsible for the victory.)getting

This is a terrific memoir. More than that though, it enables the reader to see an insider's view of Washington from 1961 through the nineties. Mr. Califano starts with his personal history through 16 years of Catholic education, then Harvard Law, the Navy and a brief stint in big firm NYC law practive. From there the book takes off with his life in the nations's capital.Hired by Cy Vance, he moves on to McNamara and then becomes Johnson's deputy for domestic affairs. After the Johnson administration he went into private practice where he represented the Democratic Party through the McGovern debacle/convention and then the Washington Post through Watergate. Thence on to be the last Secretary of HEW. After his firing by Carter he returns to law and then to his own foundation/think tank to combat addictions of all types. In addition to the professional bio he balances enough personal history to understand the man without violating his own and his family's privacy. To leave it as an autobiography would be a great disservice to this book.Oftentimes when we seek to understand our government we go back into history - to Jefferson, Hamilton or either Roosevelt. One of the most meritorious aspects of this memoir is that it helps us to understand the workings of our government through the much more relevant history of the past three and a half decades. Because Mr. Califano was in close to the major domestic issues of this time period (he happily had nothing to do with Viet Nam), the reader can see and understand the inner workings of the government. When Johnson powered through his domestic agenda of civil rights and the Great Society, Califano was one of his prime engineers. It was easy to see, and Califano shapes this point well, that the government was a smaller more intimate, less partisan institution back then run by powerful men (almost exclusively) who were not reliant on special interest money.The book is a dense 494 pages with not a wasted word or page. It would be too cumbersome to go through each and every interesting topic covered in this book. As interesting as the topics covered is the viewpoint of the author.Mr. Califano is a conservative Catholic with liberal politics. As liberal as he is and as religious as he is - both by his own admission - there was no agenda to this memoir.There are lessons, however. One of the lessons he learned best from his Jesuit upbringing and he passes to the reader is the burden we all should share of social service. He obviously sees social service as a higher calling. Even when he was minting money in private practice of law he found the most satisfying cases those with social impact. He also made friend on both sides of politics. One would not expect such a liberal to count as a best friend Al Haig, but he does. The philosophy of doing battle during the day and remaining cordial and gentlemanly also came through loud and clear.Mr. Califano could well have come off preachy or holier than