Politico: “That was Bob Graham, a young state senator from Miami with a quirky campaign gimmick: He was spending 100 days working 100 different jobs done by ordinary Floridians. This was the first time the undercover job he was doing for the day had bumped into the public job he was seeking for four years. He sheepishly tried to explain the coincidence, but a voice from another room shushed him: “The General is still sleeping!” So he left the bag and tiptoed back to the elevator.
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That’s a story from Workdays, Graham’s campaign book about his stints as a pooper-scooper at a horse auction, an orderly at a nursing home, a mechanic at a Toyota dealership and other humble jobs he worked on his way to the governorship. He won the race in a massive upset and went on to serve two terms as Florida’s governor and three terms as its U.S. senator. He also served more than 400 days working in his constituents’ jobs. After Graham died Tuesday at age 87, President Joe Biden celebrated the workdays in a statement, noting that his former Senate colleague “knew it matters to walk a mile in other folks’ shoes.”
Workdays is my favorite book by a politician, partly because Graham was probably my favorite politician — nerdy, funny, curious, courteous, compassionate, widely respected and magnificently weird. But it’s mostly because Workdays is an amazing glimpse into what politics ought to be.”