WASHINGTON — In the opening pages of his new memoir, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman acknowledges he's not the best fit for a career in politics.

He doesn't excel at small talk and isn't wild about crowds. He looks "like a skinhead" and his sometimes "ornery" disposition means "no one will mistake (him) for a good time."

The "only reason" he serves in elected office, he writes, is "to let people know they have an authentic advocate."

"Unlike the majority of elected officials, I lived and worked for many years with those who were impoverished, who felt discarded and in fear of violence," writes Fetterman, the former mayor of the 2,000-person borough of Braddock. "I still live in a forgotten America."

The moment is closest the longtime public official and first-term senator comes in any part of "Unfettered" to describing his motivation for representing Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate.

The remaining 211 pages contain little mention of his policy positions. They don't lay out goals for the final three years of his term or offer solutions to pressing national issues.

Both the book and Fetterman's media blitz that surrounded its publishing this week have instead leaned into a different approach — one that analysts, polls and even Fetterman say have cost him support from the voters who helped elect him in the first place.

"What this is trying to do is cultivate a persona as a purple state radical centrist," Matthew Jordan, a media studies expert and professor at Penn State University, said of Fetterman's use of the book to focus on his public image, not as a lawmaker, but as someone who bucks the Democratic Party.

Jordan said the strategy is hardly innovative among politicians or for Fetterman, whose "larger than life, working-class hero" image has always been a key to his political success.

But at the end of a year in which Fetterman has come under repeated scrutiny — and watched as his support from Democrats and Republicans has flipped — his latest foray into the national spotlight has shown he's not changing strategies, even if it continues to vex some of his constituents.

"(It's) reflective centrism where being bipartisan and being a person who can buck both sides is itself a position," Jordan said. "It tends to be empty as a position. You still don't know what these people mean besides they talk a lot about bipartisanship and reaching across the aisle. What exactly they're for is difficult to say."

Fetterman's memoir largely centers on his struggles with mental health and the near fatal stroke he experienced during his 2022 campaign.

After repeatedly revisiting those health struggles while promoting the book this week, Fetterman was hospitalized Thursday for what his office described as a "ventricular fibrillation flare-up" that caused a fall near his home in Braddock.

Fetterman posted a photo of his face, which was covered with bruises and cuts, on his X account after he was released from the hospital on Saturday.

"20 stitches later and a full recovery, I'm back home with @giselefetterman and the kids," Fetterman posted.

The book explores the raw emotions Fetterman felt when his heart issues first became public — he kept them private, and untreated, for five years beforehand — and during the severe depression that followed the stroke. It's dedicated to anyone dealing with similar issues, especially those with the kinds of suicidal ideations that led to Fetterman's six-week hospital stay in 2023.

Fetterman also uses the book to push back against reporting this year that quoted former staffers who were concerned that he was not taking his medication or otherwise keeping up his health regimen. Some questioned his ability to continue in office.

Others lambasted Fetterman for his policy stances — like for his unwavering support of Israel during its aggressive war tactics in Gaza — or what they perceived as his own lack of aggression in pushing back against President Donald Trump's autocratic behavior and cuts to funding for Pennsylvania.

Progressive said he'd abandoned their fight. Donors to his campaigns requested their money back. Polls showed his support was growing among Republicans and dwindling among Democrats. (A Quinnipiac University survey in late September showed 62% of GOP voters and just 33% of Democratic voters approved of how he's handled his job.)

"(The book is) a chance for him, in some ways, to try and control the message around him when he's gone through a period where he seemingly lost control," Josh Scacco, a University of South Florida associate professor with an expertise in political communications. "This might be some attempt to reclaim that messaging ground."

The book's timing became symbolic of both that messaging strategy and his continued role as Democrats' most high-profile renegade.

It published the day after he was one of only eight senators to cross party lines in Senate Republicans' effort to reopen the government after a six-week shutdown. The vast majority of Democrats railed against the deal for its lack of agreement on extending health care subsidies. Fetterman never supported his party's strategy, saying the shutdown's impact on federal workers' paychecks and food assistance for low-income families was too great.

Asked about the breaks from his party, he repeatedly told interviewers this week that he has a different role to play compared to senators from "deep blue" states.

"Pennsylvania keeps you honest," he told Bari Weiss and Katie Couric, Joe Scarborough and teamsters leader Sean O'Brien, all in separate interviews.

Often referring to Pennsylvania's status as a perennial swing state, his messaging both in the last week and few months has focused more on his refusal to demonize the "other side" more than the kinds of criticisms that other Democrats routinely lob at the president and his allies. He's also appeared more often on conservative-leaning media outlets — to the point where he told MSNBC's Katie Tur at the end of an interview this week that it was "a pleasure to be back."

"I miss MSNBC. They stopped inviting me. I'm not sure why," Fetterman said on the air.

Scacco said if Fetterman was indeed having challenges getting access to MSNBC or other progressive outlets, a book might very well be a way in. Even if much of the coverage and questions he receives are critical, "attention is key" — "a major currency" in the modern environment.

"It keeps his name front and center as part of that conversation," Scacco said. "He might be making the calculus here that even some negative attention is better than no attention at all."

But Fetterman's attention on voters on the opposite side of the aisle is also in some senses part of a long Pennsylvania tradition, said Scacco, who is from Pennsylvania and worked briefly for former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, who represented the state as a Republican for 29 years before becoming a Democrat in 2009 and then losing reelection.

Since Specter left office, Pennsylvania voters have voted for President Barack Obama's reelection and for President Joe Biden, and they've pushed Trump over the finish line twice. They gave Democrat Josh Shapiro a record number of votes in 2022 and then Republican Stacy Garrity even more in 2024. Democrats' once sizable statewide voter registration advantage, meanwhile, has nearly vanished.

"Fetterman is trying to reach an electorate in Pennsylvania that seemingly shapeshifts quite a bit," Scacco said of his courting of Republicans.

Still, as his book tour and his frequent denials that he's switching parties have shown, he knows he can't completely lose his base of Democrats.

"Should he decide to run for reelection again he's going to need the base," Scacco said. "He doesn't want to end up in a Specter-like situation where he ultimately lost his party. And in the end, Specter switched parties and that did him little good."

Jordan said Fetterman's approach of tacking toward the middle and focusing on his personality may not ultimately be a liability "in today's political arena when people are voting mostly for a persona, for an image rather than someone who's actually going to legislate."

He pointed to people like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who hosts a podcast that's popular in conservative circles. And he noted the lengthy list of other senators who've authored books — the U.S. Senate website lists 107 books written by the 100 senators currently serving — many of which are also light on policy. (U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., has written three, including one about cultivating mentorship that was published after he took office this year.)

"He'll make a lot of money on this book," Jordan said. "This will be an airport book that people will pick up and read."

Scacco added that most Pennsylvania voters likely won't read it, though that doesn't mean it won't have an impact on Fetterman's aim to get voters back in his corner.

"Probably not much," Scacco said of its readers in Pennsylvania. "But the media messaging and the communications tour around the book, depending on where he goes, could move the needle."

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