Live From BEA
Rangel’s Got the Right Stuff
By Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 5/31/2007 2:19:00 PM
This year’s African American Program for Book Industry Professionals kicked off Thursday with a panel of Atria authors, but the highlight of the day-long event was an appearance by longtime Harlem congressional representative Charles Rangel. He’s the new chairman of the House Ways and Means committee—making him one of the most powerful African Americans in Congress—as well as the author of a new autobiography, And I Haven’t Had a Bad Day Since, from St. Martin’s Press.
It’s a shame he’s not running for reelection. Rangel showed why he’s been in office for nearly 40 years. Arriving about 25 minutes late, he walked down the aisle to the podium to a standing ovation. Rangel is a powerful and sophisticated politician with a guy-from-the-block manner—"a dropout and screwup off the streets of Harlem," as he described himself, now one of the most powerful politicians in America. An engaging storyteller, he had the audience alternating between nods of agreement and howling laughter. He explained that the Ways and Means committee is the only committee mentioned in the Constitution and oversees "anything that has to do with collecting money—about 80% of the federal budget," he said. "I’ve made a lot of new friends since I became chair." His book’s title comes from his service in the Korean war. He spent three days lost behind enemy lines in 1950 during some of the worst combat of the war. "It was a nightmare, and I survived it. I could never have a bad day after that. And I haven’t," said Rangel. "The book’s about turning a bad day into a good one." Rangel offered some comments on politics. He said the Ways and Means committee will examine President Bush’s tax cuts, which are set to expire in 2010 ("We want to give a tax cut to the middle class") and will look for ways to simplify the tax code. And, he said, while he’s chair of the Ways and Means committee, "education and poverty will be treated as national security issues." Although the book recounts his rise from a high school dropout and unemployed war veteran—working in the garment indusry and at the historic Hotel Theresa ("exciting days," said Rangel, "I got off at midnight") while attending New York University and St. John’s Law School—it was the stuff he said he left out of the book that got the biggest laughs. "My son the lawyer took out a lot," Rangel said, clearly enjoying the moment. "He kept asking, ‘Does mom know about this?’ I said, ‘Son, that’s the stuff that sells the book.’ "
