Of all the odd paths to fame, Ron Wyden’s must surely be among the oddest. He is a one-time college basketball star, topping 6 ft 4 in, who is now an American senator with a 43-year-long track record in US politics, and the second most senior Democrat in the Senate.
He’s not, of course, the only sports star who took up politics. But he is definitely the only one to marshal his four decades in public life into an entertaining memoir called It Takes Chutzpah, complete with Ron’s 12 Rules of Chutzpah, his guide to navigating American — and, by extension, global — society.
We spoke the week before Donald Trump’s second inauguration as US president, and since Senator Wyden’s book opens with immense sadness and regret about the 2021 Capitol riots — the leaders of which have since been granted a presidential pardon by Trump — I wondered what his feelings were about Trump’s second term in office. (In his book he calls Trump a “loudmouth” and says he and his “enablers” have warped the concept of chutzpah, saying Trump has used it for “evil ends”.)
But face to face, Wyden, the consummate politician, falls back on a major theme in his book. “I’ll work with anybody who is going to take steps to improve the lives of the American people. I see my job as opposing bad things and working for good things.” He leaves, delicately floating in the air, the question of into which camp Trump falls.
It is certainly true that Wyden has a history of getting things done by co-operating with Republican opposite numbers. Part of this may be a part of a kind of folksy charm which befits his role as senator for Oregon: he talks at length in his book about his attitude to meeting local Oregonians, frequently taking part in community basketball games and holding impromptu “street surgeries”, dealing with citizens’ problems.
But back to Wyden and chutzpah. This is an avowedly Jewish book insofar as Wyden lays his credentials on the table right from the off. He writes: “My name is Ron Wyden. Every day I get up and try to fix the world — a vocation we Jews call tikkun olam. But you know what? If you’re reading this book, then regardless of your race, religion or background, tikkun olam is your occupation too”. His rules of chutzpah, Wyden says, will enable everyone to fix not only their own, immediate world, but if they have the enthusiasm, perhaps to fix the world, too.
Chutzpah is “mother’s milk for Jews”, declares Wyden, though he is careful to quote a rabbi saying that there is indeed such a thing as “bad chutzpah”.
But Wyden’s is a Jewish book for another reason. “I am the grandchild and child of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. My parents, born Peter Weidenreich and Edith Rosenow, fled the Nazis with their parents in the 1930s.”
Wyden records that many of his relations did not survive the Holocaust, and that his Great Uncle Max was one of the last Jews to be gassed at Auschwitz. But out of this great pain came the Jewish American experience, which Wyden believes has many positive lessons to offer.
Wyden’s father, who changed his surname as soon as he started getting bylines, became a globe-trotting and award-winning journalist, passing on his innate curiosity to his son.
By chance Wyden discovered basketball aged 12, and was good enough to be offered a full basketball scholarship by the University of California in Santa Barbara. But injuries put paid to his dream of turning professional and so he transferred to Stanford University, and then to the University of Oregon to read law.
While still a student, he fell into a part-time job interning for a now-legendary US politician, Senator Wayne Morse, who taught him the basics of both chutzpah and advocacy, and getting things done. Wyden helped Morse on the campaign trail in his Senate race in 1974. Morse won the seat in May, but shockingly died of leukaemia in July of that year, leaving Ron Wyden devastated.
Nevertheless, the tall student (now aged 23) had attracted somebody’s attention during his time working for Wayne Morse — an 82-year-old woman called Ruth Haefner, a retired social worker, who wanted Wyden to help her found an Oregon branch of the Gray Panthers, an advocacy group for the American senior citizens. It became a force with which to be reckoned, making the needs of older people a national imperative across America.
The next step, when he was 28, was to run for Congress. He won and speaking up for older people became a cornerstone of his political life over the next five decades, together with vexed questions on health, women’s issues and the environment.
In the book Wyden details his various triumphs and victories, much of which are very specific to domestic American issues. But he pins such triumphs to his various “rules of chutzpah”, which owe a lot to his one-time ambition to be a professional basketball player. These include Chutzpah Rule 4: “Show up every day prepared to play”; in other words, however much you may be disinclined to become involved, turn up and take what life throws at you. “Everyone takes hits,” he writes, “the test of a true chutzpahdik is to bounce back”.
Or Rule 3: “Leading is coaching. You’ve got to bring people and ideas together around a shared goal.” Wyden advises that while those around you are thinking in the short-term, the way to succeed is “to play the long game”.
Perhaps my favourite of Ron’s Rules of Chutzpah is his first rule: “If you want to make change, you’ve got to make noise”. He later introduces the caveat that it has to be productive noise — for chutzpah to be effective, he says, it must be purposeful.
A UK equivalent of Ron Wyden would be, I think, a back-bench MP who doggedly sponsors progressive private members’ bills and places sometimes difficult issues on the national agenda. “I’ve tried to use my experience to help other people”, he says. “For me, chutzpah and tikkun olam are two sides of the same coin in that they try to make the world a better place. I think everyone has an inner chutzpah. You can use these rules to polish it — and make a difference.”
Wyden is today a powerful senator, chair of the Senate Finance Committee and a keen supporter of Israel. He insists, both in his book (which is his first) and in our talk, that this is not a sideways bid for him to become president. But I can’t help wishing that back in the summer, when Joe Biden was faltering at the microphone, that instead of Kamala getting the Democratic nomination, it was Ron and his chutzpah rules which were on offer to the US public.
You never know, as he reminds us, where chutzpah can take you.
