Politics: April 2008 Archives

By ANDREW MIGA

Former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee often seemed to be odd man out in Washington.

He was one of the Senate’s most liberal Republicans, bucking his party on big issues such as Iraq, tax cuts, abortion and the environment. His reserved, sometimes quirky personality was never a smooth fit in the clubby Senate, where friendships can mean more than political ties in making things happen.

In his new political memoir, Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President (St. Martin’s Press, 245 pages. $24.95), Chafee revels in his outsider status as he chronicles his disillusionment with the bitter partisanship that dominated his seven years in the Senate. He wields a broad brush, heaping blame on Republicans and Democrats alike for putting party loyalty and ambition ahead of the public good.

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald H. Rumsfeld, the powerful former defense secretary and architect of the Iraq War, is working on a memoir to be published by Penguin Group (USA) in 2010.

Books by such former Bush administration officials as treasury secretary Paul O’Neill and CIA director George Tenet have come out, but Rumsfeld’s take is from the highest level so far.

He will receive no advance for the currently untitled book, only money for expenses. Profits will be donated to a foundation he started, whose projects include grants to ‘‘promising young individuals’’ interested in public service.