The All-American

With the race for House Speaker in disarray after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy unexpectedly removed his candidacy for the job, it looks like the man about to succeed John Boehner may very well be Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz. And regardless of his qualifications, Jason Chaffetz is the most American person ever.

Chaffetz was born in California and raised in Arizona and Colorado. His father was Jewish and his mother was a Christian Scientist, but playing football (he was a record-breaking placekicker) for Brigham Young University he converted to Mormonism. He also became a Democrat, because his father had once been married to Kitty Dickson, who later married Michael Dukakis, making the Dukakis kids Chaffetz’s half-siblings.

Think that’s all-American? You ain’t seen nothing yet. After college, Chaffetz went to work for Nu Skin, a “multilevel marketing” company, which both the Federal Trade Commission and the Chinese Government investigated for charges of being a giant pyramid scheme. In 1990, the company hired as a motivational speaker the most motivational of all speakers, Ronald Reagan. And Chaffetz, who just two years prior was the Utah co-chairman of the Dukakis campaign, converted once again, this time to Reaganist Republicanism. American!

When Chaffetz decided to run for Congress in 2008, few paid him serious attention. A poll released two days before the Utah Republican caucuses gave Chaffetz a paltry four percent. He sent letters to each delegate and promised to have no staff, no office, no pollsters, just a clean ideological campaign. It worked. In the primaries, Chaffetz defeated his opponent, the popular incumbent Chris Cannon, by 20 points, even though Cannon was endorsed by many of the GOP’s biggest names, including George W. Bush. You know where Cinderella stories like these are possible? Only in America.

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