1Flight of the MonarchsA few things to know:
My name is John Karl Fetterman. I am fifty-six years old. I am six foot eight, which makes me the second tallest senator in American history. At first glance, I look like a skinhead. I stand out everywhere, and I know my life would be very different if I were a mere six foot two. My ears stick out like the flaps of a jet wing. My bald head could be used as a practice putting green. I can be ornery, and as Gisele will tell you, no one will mistake me for a good time.
I have few close friends, perhaps because I am not great at making small talk, and I’m perfectly content to stay at home in Braddock watching movies with my wife and three children and two dogs and Potato the cat. I am hardly a sports fanatic, and I’m not a big fan of crowds, which is not a good thing for someone in my field.
Otherwise, I am perfect . . .
I do love people in small settings, real people struggling for work and dignity in the contradiction that is America, where the haves only have more and the have-nots only have less. It is the only reason I am here as an elected official—to let people know they have an authentic advocate.
Unlike the majority of elected officials, I lived and worked for many years with those who were impoverished, who felt discarded and in fear of violence. I still live in a forgotten America.
This is my third year in the Senate, and I now wonder if what we politicians really like to do is fight and invoke lofty principles we don’t remotely embrace. In 1964, twenty-seven Republican senators crossed the aisle to vote in favor of the Civil Rights Act. Could you imagine that happening today? Now Democrats blame Republicans, and Republicans blame Democrats. The members of each party vote like lemmings, in a monolithic bloc, regardless of whether it is good for the country. It just isn’t possible that
every Republican actually disagrees with
every proposal put forth by a Democrat. The same is true for
every Democrat disagreeing with
every proposal put forth by a Republican. There has to be some give-and-take, some accommodation, if we are to survive. Do you truly want to Make America Great Again? Start crossing the aisle in the name of what is right (instead of staying put to accrue more power).
Meanwhile, people collectively lose their shit over the dress code—or, more precisely,
my dress code of baggy shorts and a hoodie. Clothing has always been a hot-button issue for me. When I was a teen, I could never find anything that fit, not even a simple pair of jeans. Wearing a suit makes me feel uncomfortable and adds to my general awkwardness, taking me back to the challenges of growing up. Even my own mom, Susan, doesn’t get it. She thinks I look “so handsome” in a suit.
She’s my mother.
The controversy over my attire started when I presided over the Senate one Thursday afternoon. It’s the ultimate graveyard shift, and I had received the assignment because I was lowest in seniority. On Thursdays, just about everybody has gone home for the weekend, and the chamber is virtually empty—except for the occasional lone senator in the surreal act of making a speech to no one, to get it into the
Congressional Record. I was eager to get home to see my family and worried I’d miss my flight if I had to change out of a suit. So, I stayed in my shorts and hoodie—which was when everybody began to act like I had committed a breach of national security.
In September 2023, to accommodate me, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer announced that he was relaxing the unwritten dress code for the Senate floor. I’d never asked him to do this. Knowing Schumer, he did it out of the decency of his heart, to make me feel more at ease.
Other senators felt I was sullying the decorum of Congress, and on September 27, 2023, the Senate, for the first time in 234 years, unanimously passed a resolution formalizing a dress code: While on the Senate floor, men would now be expected to wear a coat, tie, and slacks. The resolution was initially called the SHORTS Act or “Show Our Respect to the Senate.” This move was engineered by Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, who came up to me before the bill was introduced to make sure I was okay with it. I said I had no problem with a dress code. I appreciated Manchin checking in—until the name of the act was unveiled, and it became obvious that “SHORTS” was a direct shot at me. So much for Manchin’s act of decency. We called his office and asked that it be pulled. The name was dropped.
Forty-six Republicans signed a letter to Schumer insisting on passage of the code, writing that “the world watches us on that floor and we must protect the sanctity of the place at all costs.”
Actually, the world watches us precisely
because there is no sanctity left in the present U.S. Congress, precisely
because of the continued dysfunction of the U.S. government as the country teeters on the world stage, with Nero fiddling while Rome burns . . .
Except when it comes to shorts. Then there was bipartisan support.
So, at the beginning of 2024, Schumer was forced to reverse himself and enforce a dress code aimed at me. Everyone is now required to wear a suit on the Senate floor, although I have found what I think is a fine alternative: I walk from my office in the Russell Senate Office Building to the Senate floor in my standard dress, open the door to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down on a particular vote, and then close the door and walk back to my office.
Of course, voters—who are far more reasonable than those in office—thought the whole controversy was a crock. When the
Washington Post editorial board smacked me for not wearing a suit, a majority of comments found the whole thing ridiculous. “A suit doesn’t mean anything,” wrote one reader. “The Congress critters who committed sedition back in 2021 when they voted to overturn the lawful results of an election wore suits and business attire.”
Touché.
For the record:
• I did not come out of the womb in a hoodie and shorts.
• I did not look like Andre the Giant, but was a svelte eight pounds and three ounces.
• I was born on August 15, 1969, at the same hospital as Taylor Swift, St. Joseph’s in Reading, Pennsylvania, my only true claim to fame.
My parents, Karl and Susan, were nineteen when I was conceived; they got married not long after. I have always felt it was because of me that my parents were unable to follow their own dreams, including my father having to give up on playing baseball for Stanford University. My parents were young—way too young, in my mind. I was unplanned, and the reality of that is something I cannot forget. Should I even be here?
Instead of going west, my father went to Albright College, in Reading, Pennsylvania, after he married my mother, attending classes during the day and working nights at the local Shop-Rite stocking shelves. Could he have played major college baseball? I don’t know, and he doesn’t know, but my birth destroyed his dream.
I know my parents wanted me. Their love and support have been profound. But I cannot shake that guilt.
When your self-image is being developed, perception becomes reality—or, at least,
your reality. When your self-image is negative, as mine was growing up, you gravitate toward shame. You gravitate toward feeling unwanted. These feelings become your comfort zone, even though they provide no comfort whatsoever. They are the default place you go to because they are familiar. They also become the building blocks of depression: It starts in childhood and grows bit by bit until, ultimately, you are imprisoned by it.
I need to let go of what my birth did to my parents, but I am not good at letting go of anything. The things I care about get stuck inside me like embers of hot coal that momentarily fade before flaring red hot again: the 2011
New York Times article undermining what I was doing as mayor of Braddock that relied on quotes from someone on the council who was later convicted of stealing over $170,000 from the town coffers; Conor Lamb and Malcolm Kenyatta accusing me of racism (without directly saying it) during the Democratic primary for the Senate in 2022, a charge they knew was false; Dasha Burns of NBC ambushing me in an interview I gave her after my stroke by implying I was incoherent, rather than just unable to hear her. I am not saying my grievances are necessarily right. Maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t. I have been told I have a persecution complex—but that’s the way I am. Gisele thinks my Achilles’ heel is that I care too much, get involved too much, take things too personally when I know something is right, go to the wall with all my heart and soul.
I have not been this way all my life.
Far from it.
Copyright © 2025 by John Fetterman. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
