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Informationen zum Autor In 1988, after serving fourteen years in the U.S. House of Representatives, James M. Jeffords was elected to the U.S. Senate. Currently serving his third term, he is Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. He lives with his wife, Elizabeth, in Shrewsbury, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. Klappentext Senator Jim Jeffords's disarmingly frank memoir recounts his idyllic small-town childhood in Rutland, Vermont, his somewhat unruly adolescence, putting himself through Yale University with the help of NROTC, traveling the world during his three-year navy service, and his courtship of Elizabeth Daley when he was a Harvard Law School student.In his first term as Vermont state senator, Jeffords already had a reputation for being a maverick Republican. He supported welfare bills and environmental protection. As Vermont's attorney general, he helped draft and then implement some of the most important legislation in the nation -- the bottle bill, ban on billboards, and land protection.Jeffords failed in his bid to be governor of Vermont when conservative Republicans in the state turned against him. When he was elected to the House of Representatives, he was so broke that he lived in his office. Meanwhile, he was battling problems brewing at home. He and his wife divorced and later remarried. But during his congressional years, Jeffords concerned himself with issues of education, energy, and dairy farming. He was the only Republican to vote against Ronald Reagan's budget. He supported Bill Clinton's Health Care Reform and opposed his impeachment. Jeffords's disagreements with the second Bush administration and the Republican leadership led to his decision to leave the party. In My Declaration of Independence, Jeffords wrote about his decision to quit the Republican Party. Now, in this memoir, he tells us more about who he is and what he believes in and what led him to that decision.He concludes with a section on how we must rebuild America after September 11 and why we must improve our education system. In the vein of Jimmy Carter's An Hour Before Daylight, this is another magical piece of Americana from a different part of the country, steeped in the same lasting values and tough lessons. Chapter 1: On the Street Where I Lived My wife likes to say I was born into an Andy Hardy movie and remained out of step with contemporary times, that there's something inherently naive about me that keeps me from seeing things as they really are. There's a lot of truth to that statement, but if I were to pick the movie that feels most emblematic of my life story, I would choose Mister Smith Goes to Washington, or some other wholesome film that shows what life was like before we became so obsessed with speed and consumption, a time when your word meant something and people were driven by ethics more than money -- or, at least, most people were. I'd also want a story with so many other interesting characters that I could step into the background and watch it all unfold. Like most people, I like to be in the limelight -- but only on occasion. I have been blessed with leadership roles and important challenges. Recent events, especially my decision to leave the Republican Party in May 2001, and my integral role in protecting Americans after September 11 as chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, have cast me into the national spotlight. But the best of life, I learned at an early age, is being part of something larger than yourself. My decision to become an Independent was prompted by that sense of public responsibility, something I've been trying to explain to folks ever since I made it. I'm sure it was growing up in Vermont, where my father was the chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court and so many of our family friends were in public service, that brought me to this understanding. I was born in Rutland. Although it was the state's...
