Book Review: A Capitol Journey: Reflections on the Press, Politics and the Making of Public Policy in Pennsylvania

Vincent P. Carocci, A Capitol Journey: Reflections on the Press, Politics and the making of Public Policy in Pennsylvania. Penn State University Press, 2005. Photographs, index, 298 pages, hardcover $39.95.

Political loyalty is a major theme that runs through a new book taking an insider's view of doing at the state Capitol over the past forty years.

In this case, author Vincent P. Carocci was, and still is loyal to the late Gov. Robert P. Casey. Carocci, a Camp Hill resident, served as Casey's press secretary from 1989 to 1995.

Carocci leaves no doubts about his continuing loyalty when offering an answer to a rhetorical, but very important, question that Casey frequently posed at public appearances: "What did you do when you had the power?"

 Carocci responds: "My answer, in his case, would be a lot of good in a lot of ways! " In his "A Capitol Journey: Reflections on the Press, Politics and the Making of Public Policy in Pennsylvania" (The Pennsylvania State University Press), Carocci intersperses his telling of the major events which shaped public life in Pennsylvania since the early 1960s with personal reminiscences and anecdotal stories.

A Scranton native, Carocci's career started in the Capitol newsroom with stints reporting for the Associated Press and The Philadelphia Inquire. Carocci held several positions, including official spokesman, with the Senate Democratic caucus during the 1970s, a period when his bonds of loyalty were tested as he sometimes found himself on the payroll of one Senate leader while actually working for other senators. He worked as legislative liaison for the State System of Higher Education as it was getting established. Carocci's six-year tenure as Casey's press secretary includes the dramatic episode when the governor relinquished his powers for six months to undergo a successful, but rarely done, heart-liver transplant to counter the debilitating effects of the hereditary disease amyloidosis.

 So Carocci is in a good position to shed light on how Pennsylvania state government really works, a topic that the generations of Cumberland County residents who have worked for the executive, legislative or judicial branches of government are well versed in.

Make no mistake, Carocci accepts the basic precepts of the political system as practiced by both political parties at the Capitol. He is an insider after all. He notes the hardball nature of Pennsylvania politics as an unchanging fact of life.

But Carocci does draw distinctions throughout the book between what he considers good and bad political behavior. For example, he says the Senate Democrats are in the minority today due to a series of transgressions when they last held the majority for a sustained period during the '70s. Some may question if this direct cause-and-effect still applies a quarter-century later, however the transgressions that Carocci writes about were serious ones involving payroll fraud, taxpayer-funded junkets and criminal prosecutions of individual senators.

"When one crosses the line of acceptable conduct in most professions, there is usually a price to pay," he observes. "This is particularly true (as it should be) in politics and public service where the public trust is so critical to and the public interest so inherent in the public policymaking process." The book's more revealing passages tell of the pressures exerted on staffers to be team players and the fallout that occurs when ambitious politicians with Type A personalities tangle with each other.

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