Michael Pertschuk, known as Mike to his friends and foes, has an ability to win over the toughest advocates, their critics, those who are self-righteous and those who are cynical.
Liberal legislators and conservative ones respected Mike's policy entrepreneurship, his craftsman's drafting abilities and the speed with which he can frame an issue so that it resonates with most people who want to solve a public problem. What gives Mike a powerful legacy is that he has stood up to those interests that choose to exploit people and get teenagers hooked to the dangerous tobacco addiction. The record substantiates that the tobacco industry has no redeeming qualities made certain by the incontrovertible fact that there is no such thing as a good cigarette. Mike was an early David in this fight.
His sling shots fired precisely. Just as David did, Mike built an army strategically deployed around the country with an array of weapons and tools that bested the industry time and time again. The army developed it owns leaders, learned from advanced countries such as
Canada and Australia and inspired advocates around the world to overcome the killer tobacco and its corporate executives, and their hired guns—lawyers, lobbyists and their spin meisters.

The public interest world that Mike is part of, as a former Senate staff member,
Chairman and Member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and as one of the creators of the Advocacy Institute is a Pragmatist with high standards. Within the public interest world there is an ongoing tension between the Pragmatists who want a result, and sometimes compromise too quickly thereby losing major advances and the Puritans who think a standard must never be bent or delayed. Mike, forthright as ever, explored the tension in his book Smoke in Their Eyes when the "children of light" failed to give the FDA authority to regulate the tobacco industry. Mike knows how to bend rigid and ossified political and policy systems reflected in his other books Giant Killers, Citizens Rising and the DeMarco Factor. Each book demonstrates how those with less conventional power overcame those with greater power.

Mike is a champion story teller. As an organizer, lobbyist and issues politician I am always looking for a relevant story. Mike presents them, as he does in this book, by opening our auditory channels and vision.
In our over 50 years of being colleagues, partners and dear friends, I love that Mike values ideas and has a sensibility for history. We are both admirers of Isaiah Berlin who blended history and ideas. That ability to do so led to Mike's creation of a leadership taxonomy that provides insight into the qualities and characteristics of leadership that create and build lasting change. Mike's stories bear out the relationship of leadership to lasting political, economic and social change.

I digress. Mike has the ability to draw respect and support from the Pragmatists and the
Puritans. I tease Mike that he is the only public official I know, who has his share of outstanding contributions to the public weal who has never been attacked publicly by Ralph Nader.
Mike, a person of integrity, would not buy Nader who credibly could say I will never be bought to give a public official a pass.

It is worth reading what Nader has to say about Mike and his being a public servant of commitment, good judgment and probity. Nader wrote what follows in 1984. Nader on Pertschuk
This is the story of a public servant — Michael Pertschuk; whose valiant work for over twenty years in the Senate and the Federal Trade Commission have helped millions of
Americans.

He started as a young lawyer out of Yale on the staff of Senator Maurine Neuberger
(D-OR). She had replaced her husband–a cigarette smoker–who died of lung cancer.
Pertschuk took on the issue of warning labels on cigarettes and air time for anti-smoking advertisements. As a major opponent of the tobacco industry year after year, Pertschuk has been advocate, publicist, data analyst, strategist and, recently, exporter abroad of the drive to curb pernicious promotion by the cigarette companies and alert smokers to the dangers and ways out of the habit.

His crusade against the tobacco industry–done with more wit and humor than is the custom in Washington — was just a warm-up. In 1964 he became a staff counsel to
Senator Warren Magnuson (D-WA), the powerful chairman of the Senate Commerce
Committee. There, over the next decade, he became the point man for a wave of consumer protection legislation such as this country has never before witnessed. From auto safety to pipeline safety to flammable fabric prevention to radiation safeguards to consumer product safety — to list a few initiatives — Pertschuk persuaded members of the Senate Committee and their staff of their worth. What started in that Committee usually ended as national law.

Often observing this process firsthand I admired the diplomatic conciliatory but determined way he went about his rounds on Capitol Hill and kept a respectful but ready-to-pounce press accurately informed while making headlines for his Senators, not himself. Investigatory hearings on consumer health, safety and economic abuses by corporations were prepared by Pertschuk and his dedicated staff with precision. Witnesses made news; hearings were turned into printed volumes which provided a bedrock literature that nourished the escalation of higher expectations and demands of business sellers by the buying public.

Corporate lobbyists tried everything short of bribery to stop him. They went to his
Senators; they went to him; they tried to be tough, to be friendly, to be reasonable, to be intellectual and to play the underdog. He listened, reasoned, negotiated and heard them

out. But their calculations and contrivances did not work.

After Carter was elected, Pertschuk became Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) — the agency that is supposed to go after business fraud, monopoly and anti- competitive practices. Assembling probably the brightest staff in the FTC’s history,
Pertschuk took off with an enthusiasm that alarmed some important members of
Congress who were being reached by the companies and trade associations. The drive on
Capitol Hill to clip the FTC’s wings was underway and the campaign money began to flow — from the doctors, the insurance companies, the used car dealers and various other lubricators of the legislative process.

The advertising industries joined the backlash against Pertschuk. You see, he did not like the idea of television commercials exploiting the minds of 5, 6 and 7 year olds on the morning kiddie shows to nag their parents to buy junk food and other trash. He wanted to have children’s advertising declared a deceptive practice or banned as it is in some
European countries. But he was only one vote out of five on the Commission and would have to abide by the majority. The inquiry produced good information on children’s advertising but was eventually squashed by the advertising industry’s relentless opposition. Nonetheless, in his seven years on the Commission, Pertschuk won battles and enlightened many buyers to their rights and remedies. Now he is a private citizen. Is he going the way of most others and joining a lucrative corporate law practice? No, instead he is launching an Advocacy Institute to help develop the skills “of existing citizen advocacy groups who now lack effective voice.” Only Pertschuk could enlist a panel of approximately 100 lawyers and professional lobbyists — who are often lobbying against one another — to agree to provide free “a range of legislative counseling and services to citizens who need to develop such strategies and skills.”

He is starting these services for citizen groups committed to tax equity, low cost media advocacy, and evaluating proposed judges, among others. Pertschuk wants to breed trained citizens because he knows how much every society needs them. Unlike most former government officials who sink from view, this man is not even breaking stride.

Those of us who know and love Mike know that Mike never wallows in being an ascetic.
So the opposite of Nader is People magazine which provides an equally laudatory view of Mike.
People Magazine
People magazine, in an article under the provocative title, “FTC Chairman Mike Pertschuk Is the
Bureaucrat Who Makes Some Businessmen Turn Blue,” by ( Dolly Langdon, (People, Sept. 10,
1979, V12, N11):

During 15 years on the Hill—first as an assistant to former Oregon Sen. Maurine
Neuberger, later as chief counsel and staff director of the Senate Commerce
Committee—he earned the not always complimentary title of the "101st senator."
That knack for shaping workable bills and shepherding them to passage was noted by Commerce Committee Chairman Warren Magnuson, whom Pertschuk credits as his legislative guru. In turn, "Maggie" Magnuson is one of Mike's staunchest fans. "It began 'B.N.'—'Before Nader'—but we passed a list of consumer acts as long as your arm," the Washington Democrat enthuses. "The Warranty Act [of 1974] was the most trouble, but Mike was in charge and made it work." . "You can't run the FTC and not be controversial," says Senator Magnuson, "but that doesn't bother Mike—he's too tough."
Chris Buckley on Pertschuk
A less charitable view of Mike Pertschuk was captured in the Production notes written by Christopher Buckley to the director of the film being made based upon his satiric novel, “Thank You For Smoking,” whose only partial hero or heroine, was an appealing public relations specialist for a host of dreadful corporate interests, and therein, a born distorter of the truth, or, in the language of the trade, "spin master" http://www.wordspy.com/words/spin.asp:

Buckley writes:

Spin" is now such a commonplace word that it's hard to remember when it first arrived on the scene. Linda Wertheimer of National Public Radio asserts that it happened in 1984, following the presidential debate between
Ronald Reagan and his challenger, Walter Mondale. Both candidates' staff - as well as high-profile supporters brought in as cheerleaders - rushed to the microphones outside the debating hall to proclaim victory. Reagan's performance had been, in the words of one of his aides, "a disaster," but his campaign manager, the legendary late Lee Atwater said, "We're going to want to go out there and spin this afterward." A subsequent New York Times editorial coined the term "Spin Doctors."

I did a little more digging - actually, now I'm spinning you.. All I did was
Google "spin origins of" and within about 1.3 seconds I was connected to a delightful website called Word Spy. According to Word Spy, the very first citation of the word "spin" occurred before the Reagan-Mondale debate, in an article in The Washington Post in 1977. This was the citation:

"What Pertschuk is accused of is being too ardent a consumer advocate, of
'lobbying' members of the committee on behalf of things he thinks are good, of putting his own philosophical 'spin' on options, of having excessive influence on Magnuson; in short of acting like the '101st senator.'"
[Spencer Rich, "An Invisible Network of Hill Power," The Washington Post,
March 20, 1977]

The name Pertschuk rang a distant bell. I re-Googled and, what do you know: he was the righteous, hall-monitor-like head of the U.S Federal Trade
Commission. He was so insufferable he was ultimately forced to resign.

And what did he do then? He became the leader of the anti-smoking lobby.
Full circle spin. Enjoy the movie. Turn off your cell phones. And as Mr.
Pertschuk would say, "No smoking!"

From his very first years as a novice legislative assistant to Sen.
Maurine Neuberger of Oregon, and my early years as a public interest lobbyist, we came together, with a shared vision and the joy of working for what we believe in. As for Ralph Nader’s and Sen. Magnuson's assessment, I couldn't agree more, especially since Nader expresses the light touch and serious purpose of Mike's way
– an appreciation that many who think of Nader from a distance would not expect him to appreciate.

As for Chris Buckley, whom I also greatly admire, his account is not precisely right. Among other things, Mike was not forced to resign from the FTC; rather, having been appointed as a liberal Democrat by Pres. Jimmy Carter in 1977, he was removed as FTC Chairman as soon as Ronald Reagan, elected president in
1980, could turn his attention to the FTC. But Mike continued to serve as one of the five FTC Commissioners for the remaining four years of his statutory term, making as much creative mischief as possible for the neoconservative economist appointed by Reagan (unkindly labeled by a journalist who covered the FTC closely as "The Right Stuffed." ). Nonetheless, Buckley's riff does offer a glimpse into Mike's qualities.

As, Mike himself, writes in this book: "We were not angels." (And he cites the formidable tobacco lobbyist, Earl Clements, who, who managed to be both gracious and stentorian as lecturing him thusly: "you know, Mike," he lectured, after Mike had transparently written a brutal attack on tobacco company advertising abuses for the strong tobacco control advocate, Sen. Frank Moss of Utah: "When you're on the side of the angels, it's easier to stretch the truth.") In that case, Clements was dead wrong; Moss's indictment was solidly based on sound data.

In fact, the most common "spin," was the disciplined, straight-faced narrative consistently spun by Mike and almost all other Senate staff members, which portrayed every good deed and act produced by their bosses, as coming straight from the caring soul and fertile mind of the Senator.

One of the ironic virtues of this book, is that Mike untangles the elusive initiation of good legislation. He un-spins the respective roles of a powerful Senate
Chairman and his entrepreneurial staff. Creative initiative stretches the art of the possible.
Among his stories are also what Mike properly labels as a staff member’s "confessions" – stretching ethical boundaries in the name of worthy ends, just as Clements charges. Within my knowledge, this kind of history has rarely been told straight.

What you'll also learn in this especially revealing book and its touches of irony, surprise and humor are the artful ways in which the United States Senate can be a centrifuge for the genesis of potent legislation in the public interest. It also demonstrates how such legislation can be achieved even when confronted with the most powerful lobbies armed with untold wealth, in no small part the achievement of largely invisible, but knowledgeable, entrepreneurial, and idealistic staff to the Senate powers.

Of course, those readers who have come of age as citizens in the last 30 to 40 years may find even the possibility of such achievements in the public interest incredible.
Even many liberals then – now, "progressives" – such as we, who experienced what now seems the lost Golden age of public interest dominance over special- interests, especially the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, find it hard to believe that such an age can again reemerge.

For both age cohorts, this book can be a tonic. In it, Mike Pertschuk, now in his
80’s, re-creates with an appreciative but reflective eye, the Mike Pertschuk of 40 to
50 years ago. Most of the book utilizes Mike's vividly recalled personal stories of a young man's experience participating in and observing what another former Senate staff member, Ira Shapiro, labels in his encyclopedic opus, "the Last Great Senate"
(Public Affairs Press, New York, 2012). Simultaneously, the reader has the benefit of the experience and resulting wisdom acquired over the intervening years of the elder Mike Pertschuk.

Finally, this book is no mere nostalgic backward look: through it, a new generation of progressive citizens and their faithful leaders in Congress – which those of us of a certain age and experience can glimpse around the corner – can learn the elements, especially the role, and indispensable need for what we learn of as a model for "entrepreneurial staff." Separately, especially for younger readers, above and beyond the legislating lessons to be learned here, are lively stories which evoke the joy involved in doing well by doing good at the heart of the nation's once cherished "World’s greatest deliberative body." [check source and wording.” David Cohen [id