Copyright Anchorage Daily News
The playwright Oscar Wilde said, “Most people are other people.” Somebody else’s ideas. Somebody else’s beliefs. Somebody else’s aspirations. Popular culture is replete with confirming examples, from the highest of fashion to the lowest of talk radio, with people walking, talking and chewing gum in the shoes of others to win attention and favor. Sen. Lisa Murkowski walks in no one’s shoes but her own as her recent memoir “Far From Home” confirms. This should bring her respect, but in far-from-home Washington, her insistence on being herself — or as she puts it, voting her conscience and not somebody else’s — routinely puts her at odds with elected officials, bureaucrats, journalists, podcasters, and yes, even voters. President Donald Trump wants her to be his willing slave, as if he is an Old Testament king, and if he hasn’t called her Jezebel, he’s damned her as a loser and a fake Republican. He also has said he would replace her in the Senate with any Alaska MAGA believer who has a “pulse.” This has not stopped them from working together on what Murkowski calls “Alaska issues,” particularly oil development. Nor has her evaluation of Trump prevented her from partnering with the president on budget issues, including the Great Big Beautiful Bill. She doesn’t use the word Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California exploded with when describing Trump as a man — disgusting — but it’s clear that became Murkowski’s view once she heard him bragging about grabbing women’s genitals. The GOP Senate leadership is not happy with her because she will not vote for every Trump bill and every Trump nominee. She voted against elevating Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. She voted for impeaching Trump. The Democrats want her to be, well, a Democrat, but this won’t happen, not even if hell freezes over and Beelzebub appears on skates. Lisa Murkowski is a small-town banker’s daughter who has been educated in the faith of the Republican Party. She would have to abandon her history to become a Democrat. It’s telling that Murkowski says not one word about income inequality in this country, that the many have so little and the few — the billionaires — have so much. She dismisses Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as excessively “partisan,” ignoring the possibility that Warren might actually be principled in her defense of working people and her attacks on, uh, banks. Another senator she does not have much use for is fellow Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky. When she asks for his vote on an energy bill that will benefit Alaska and his state, he responds repeatedly, “I don’t need to sit here and listen to you lecture me.” Paul kills the bill, although his performance with Murkowski suggests he was auditioning for the title role in Steve Martin’s film “The Jerk.” Murkowski often quotes with relish the late Sen. Ted Stevens: “To hell with politics, just do what is right for Alaska.” This is an admirable battle cry but not as straightforward as it seems. How does a senator, who lives in a mercilessly political environment, say to hell with politics? Ted Stevens himself was the most political of animals – and was often chairman of the Appropriations Committee, controlling access to much of the federal treasury. For Murkowski, “politics” is often enough deranged partisanship in a world where as she puts it “Hope and idealism can feel like orphans.” And, to personify for a minute, who is Alaska in this memoir? It turns out the Alaska of the 21st century is the Alaska of the 20th century — Uncle Sam’s misunderstood child abused by distant politicians, especially Democrats, bureaucrats and environmentalists who have their way in the North. The list of malefactors does not include distant capitalists — Texas oil men for one — because Lisa Murkowski is apparently constitutionally incapable of criticizing capitalism. She on numerous occasions condemns “outside environmentalists” as if she didn’t know Alaska has had a home-grown environmental movement since the 1950s. Murkowski’s relationship with Alaska’s diverse Native peoples is the most affecting element of her memoir. Her respect for Native people is not only genuine but informed. Soon after Typhoon Halong hit western Alaska, she visited Kipnuk, and, when she returned to Anchorage, gave a firsthand report to the Alaska Federation of Natives. Her tender words of concern were from the heart – and the audience knew it. “Far From Home” ends with Sen. Murkowski in church on Sunday, here in Anchorage, expressing her Catholic faith and searching for answers not only to questions of faith but of how to live in a cruel secular world. As a reader, I was reminded of my own far-from-home moment in New York City. I made a visit to the Catholic Worker soup kitchen and shelter downtown near Astor Place. The Catholic Worker has been serving soup and providing shelter for decades. The day I visited was warm and bright. The Catholic Worker staff was serving breakfast — doughnuts, bananas and coffee arranged on tables outside the kitchen. Maybe 30 men had settled down to eat and argue about the NBA playoffs. I chatted up a man in his 50s named Carmen, who was directing the food service, and asked, “I know it’s a nice day, but why serve on the sidewalk when you have a dining hall?” Carmen suppressed a laugh. “The clients are afraid of ICE, of an immigration raid trapping them in the building. We serve on the street so they can escape.” It’s not just Lisa Murkowski who is far from home. So are the people of Kipnuk, so are the people lining up outside the Catholic Worker in Manhattan, and so are millions of Americans whom Donald Trump’s abusive rhetoric and nasty policies have made strangers in a strange land. Michael Carey is the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News.
