This is the third of Al Franken’s books I’ve read. The first two were Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations and Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. The titles reflect Senator Franken’s first career as a comedian and writer. The sarcastic title of his new book reflects his current career as the junior senator from Minnesota.

This book isn’t as funny as his earlier ones. That’s because, as he points out several times, a senator has to be more careful about what he says. This is more like a standard politician’s autobiography than I expected. He spends a lot of time telling his life story and how he got into politics, and how much he enjoys serving the people of Minnesota. There is a lot about his accomplishments as a senator. There are also serious discussions of important issues (his discussion of the Affordable Care Act is especially good).

I learned about the day-to-day life of a U.S. senator and how frustrating it can be to get things done now that one of our major political parties has become dangerously dysfunctional. I also had to relive some horrible recent history, for example, how one of the worst people in America became president. Fortunately, he still has his sense of humor and allows himself to use it fairly often.

It should be noted that Sen. Franken has shown himself to be quite a good senator. He’s especially done an excellent job during committee hearings on the president’s terrible nominees to cabinet positions. Now some people (for example, in this article from a couple days ago) are talking about Franken as a presidential candidate in 2020. I doubt if he’ll run, but we could do much, much worse. We already have (twice in this century).