Who Said It Would Be Easy?

One Woman's Life in the Political Arena

Edición de la obra Who said it would be easy?

When Liz Holtzman first ran for Congress in 1972, her opponent, an incumbent of almost fifty years, compared the likelihood of her winning to a "toothpick's chance of toppling the Washington Monument." Topple it she did, becoming the youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress and promptly distinguishing herself as a key player during the Watergate hearings. Beginning even before this first electoral victory, Liz Holtzman's extraordinary political career has linked her time and again with the defining moments of the last several decades, from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, to the constitutional crises of Watergate, to the fight for women's rights, to the campaign for a government free of the undue influence of wealthy special-interest groups. In Who Said It Would Be Easy? Liz Holtzman looks back on the twenty-one years she devoted to public office, on the battles lost and the battles won. Holtzman tells how, shortly after arriving on Capitol Hill in 1973, she was thrown into the center of controversy when she sued the secretary of defense for the illegal and unconstitutional bombing of Cambodia (and won, until Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall overruled Justice William O. Douglas in a dubious maneuver the lawfulness of which is still debated today). Less than a year later, Holtzman again found herself on Washington's center stage as a member of the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach President Richard Nixon in 1974. Nixon resigned, and when his successor Gerald Ford issued him a blanket pardon, Liz was the only member of the Judiciary Committee who dared to ask Ford whether the pardon had been part of a deal. Her uncompromising integrity soon earned her a reputation for being incorruptible, even among her adversaries. "Don't even bother with Holtzman," one corrupt lawmaker was recorded as saying. "She's too honest to trust."