Life unvarnished

Most political memoirs amount to humble brags about achieving status or passing some landmark legislation. Most are also soft launches for presidential campaigns. But in Unfettered (Crown, 240 pp.), Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., chronicles not only his rise from small-town Pennsylvania mayor to the U.S. Senate but also his wrestling with depression.

The book starts out admitting the 6-foot-8 lawmaker sticks out like a sore thumb. Press gaggles with him in the Senate hallways look something like Gulliver and the Lilliputians. His penchant for sneakers, shorts, and a black hoodie have affected the U.S. Congressional Record when both parties passed a formal dress code for the chamber floor. Fetterman doesn’t hide his disdain for this bill, which he calls one of the only instances of bipartisan cooperation he has seen in his three years in Washington.

The memoir moves through his childhood, college, early career, and what pushed him into local politics in an economically depressed and violent town. When his own memory fails or he realizes he wasn’t seeing himself clearly, Fetterman includes accounts from his wife, brother, and close friends.

It’s a story of cognitive dissonance. While he was a rising star in the Democratic Party, Fetterman battled suicidal thoughts. When he arrived in Washington after a hard-fought Senate race, he could not pull himself out of a depressive fog. For years, he had described himself as someone stubborn and proud. He believed mental illness was something he could fix just by “pulling up your socks and getting on with it.”

Fetterman conquered in one of the most expensive Senate races to date even after suffering a massive stroke that left him struggling to relearn how to speak. Some of the effects continue today. But his mental health was the deeper problem. The story climaxes when in February 2023, shortly after his Senate term began, Fetterman admitted himself to a psychiatric ward at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Fetterman has become something of the Rand Paul of the Democratic Party, often voting against his caucus on matters like immigration and Israel. Despite that, whenever reporters ask about his contrarianism, Fetterman stomps through the Senate basement repeating, “I am not a Republican.”

What is he? I think the senator is still defining that. But Unfettered gives a glimpse into what he doesn’t say aloud.