Jake is a classic Texas yarn about one of the Lone Star State’s most colorful politicians. Rich in funny tales grounded in serious business, this memoir takes around a tour of the halls of Washington and Austin, as well as plenty of small Texan towns. Irreverent and often uproarious, Pickle has more than one gut-busting anecdote to tell. Like many Texan politicians, Pickle came from humble roots. When he was six, he offered to trade his baby sister for a pig, and he recalls stealing turnips from a university dean’s garden patch during the height of the Great Depression.
But when it came to politics, Jake Pickle was all business. He is proud of his vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and for health warnings on cigarette packs, as well as his investigations of tax-evading televangelists. During the 1980s, Pickle investigated abuses of the corporate pension plans, which eventually led to the Pension Protection Act.
Pickle does not hesitate to sound off his opinions in Jake. He is critical of the Reagan Administration’s unwillingness to face the insolvency of Social Security. To make Social Security more stable, Pickle was able to raise social security tax rates and the retirement age, and tax social security benefits. Still, he warns, we must face the oncoming insolvency of Social Security.
In the forward of Jake, Governor Ann Richards speaks of her friendship and admiration for Jake Pickle. She writes, "In that older Texas sense of the word, Jake has personality. That means he is something rare even in Texas: Jake is political natural."