(FORTUNE Magazine) – Cometh now another investigative reporter trumpeting the evils of how corporations, unions, and trade associations give money to Senators and Congressmen. His book is called Honest Graft; his name is Brooks Jackson; he writes for the Wall Street Journal. Do we care? How many of us have become indifferent to Washington's cynical biennial cycle of furious fund raising, often through political action committees (PACs), then elections, and then hand wringing over the need for ''reform''? Even the star players have grown jaded. A lobbyist told the Washington Post early last year when recently reelected Senator Robert Byrd introduced a bill to limit PAC giving -- while Byrd also accepted substantial PAC money -- ''He's saying, 'Stop me before I kill again.' '' But Honest Graft (Alfred A. Knopf, $18.95) is different. Beautifully written, it is light on morality and heavy on substance. The book's heart is the author's apparently total access to the money-raising files of Congressman Tony Coelho (D-California), the acknowledged wizard of PAC fund raising and No. 3 in the Democratic House leadership at only 46, with but ten years of service. Jackson's outstanding contribution in Honest Graft is his treatment of Coelho as a remarkably successful entrepreneur whose business happens to be congressional politics. The chapters that detail Coelho's comings and goings in the modern enterprise of political money raising and money spending are by far the best, and they constitute most of the book. We see in fascinating detail how modern congressional politics has become capital intensive and how the new generation of leaders will therefore need to excel at managing that type of effort. This book is, among other things, a road map for those who fancy themselves fledgling entrepreneurs in the business of politics. Characteristic of good entrepreneurial profiles, Jackson's offers a psychological study of the hero -- or, depending on your views, antihero. In particular, Jackson believes that Coelho is so good at what he does because he loves what most Americans hate: asking for money. Implicit in Jackson's treatment of how Coelho accumulated success and power is the thesis that success in modern congressional politics requires a passion for fund raising. Coelho has the passion to an extraordinary degree. It is a critical component of his psychological makeup, and according to Jackson, it is why Tony Coelho is today a legend and a power in Washington. THE STORY of Coelho's rise to the top has all the hallmarks of American entrepreneurial success, and Jackson manipulates masterfully the unspoken but now predictable themes of up-by-the-bootstraps heroism. -- Coelho rises from obscurity and overcomes crippling handicaps. Born in 1942, he grows up in rural central California, the son of struggling dairy farmers, themselves the children of Portuguese immigrants. At 16, in the wake of a head injury suffered in a truck accident, he begins to experience mild epileptic seizures that by his early 20s evolve into grand mal seizures. When he is diagnosed an epileptic, his parents deny it; they accept the ancient Portuguese belief that epilepsy is a disgrace, a divine punishment for some sin in the family. At the same time his fervent hope to become a Jesuit priest is dashed when he is informed that under Catholic church law epileptics cannot become priests. For almost a year Coelho drinks heavily, cannot find even menial work, and flirts with suicide. -- He is spiritually adopted and helped on his way by others who believe in him. His Jesuit priest gets him a caretaker's job at Bob Hope's estate in Palm Springs. Hope tells him that if he cannot be a priest, then be a politician. He gets a trial internship with his local California Congressman and is a success. In six years he is the top aide in Washington, and eight years later, in 1978, his employer of 14 years retires and Coelho wins his seat. He is 36. -- He rockets to the top by doing what no one else wants to do and most think impossible. He sees that the Republicans stand a chance of regaining control of Congress through business PAC money, so he seizes that conduit for House Democrats -- and he is very good at it. He becomes chairman of the House Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after only two years in Congress (no one else really wants it). He bludgeons business PACs into giving more to Democrats by ''marketing tactics ((that)) sometimes resembled a legal version of the old protection racket,'' as Jackson says. In 1986, PACs give $87 million to House candidates, and Democrats get 63% of it. Coelho has overcome the odds. -- He piles success upon success. He works fanatical hours at a furious pace. He is always in motion. No detail is too small for him. He alienates himself from his establishment elders, many of whom think he's sleazy: Jackson says that Speaker Tip O'Neill, heir to the Kennedy-Camelot seat, keeper of Democratic congressional symbols and power, cannot stand the brash California upstart. He deliberately calls him KWAY-lo instead of KWELL-o. The Speaker refuses to appear at business PAC events that Coelho, in his quest to overcome the Republicans, has painstakingly arranged and publicized; other Democratic elders begin calling Coelho immoral. Jackson says that Representative Pete Stark (D-California), a senior member of the House tax- writing committee, ''saw the chairmanship of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as a position demanding ethical compromise. 'You can't be in that job and not sell part of your soul,' Stark said. 'There is no way.' '' -- Coelho wins over the establishment because he is right for the times. All of his background, deemed originally to be disadvantaged, is now seen as an advantage. Coelho is elected Democratic whip, third in the House leadership, in 1986. He is 44 and has been in Congress only eight years. He has risen so impressively by creating a national machine to dispense favors, through the political process, to businesses that rely heavily on federal government tax breaks, regulations, and subsidies -- agribusiness, entertainment, oil, housing, real estate. Their growth in California is congruent with Coelho's life span; more important, their increasing involvement with federal assistance dates almost precisely from the time when Coelho went to work in Washington for a California Congressman. Coelho has been at the center from the start. JACKSON'S BOOK portrays the Coelho success story as well as it can be done. Other parts of the book rework old material -- mainly the alleged influence peddling and alleged money-taking escapades of House Speaker Jim Wright (D- Texas) and House Banking Committee Chairman Fernand St Germain (D-Rhode Island). The book closes with a chapter on how bad things have become and how desperately reform is needed. ''More than ever,'' Jackson says, ''members of Congress are political freebooters, financially beholden not to their party but to scores of favor-seeking groups.'' Jackson proposes heavy-duty reforms: He would abolish all PAC donations and all corporate giving to out-of-state candidates, and he would provide public funding for the major political parties, enough to provide a minimally adequate campaign budget for every House and Senate race. I find no fault with Jackson's diagnosis of the problem and his prescription to cure it; his book is the best evidence yet that the appetite for congressional fund raising has reached such gluttony that dieting, perhaps even fasting, is necessary. My objection is that the author wants it both ways: He convinces you first that Coelho is in charge because he is the best at making today's political system work, and then he seeks to convince you that Coelho and his colleagues should modify precisely those levers of power that they pushed so hard and so adroitly to get where they are. This engrossing book will probably spawn lots of ''little Coelhos.'' Perhaps that is the opposite of what the author intended, but it will be a credit to the book nevertheless.

BOX: EXCERPT: Coelho talks of politics itself as a ''business.'' Among his major financial backers are a grain merchant who was a central figure in the Koreagate scandal of the late 1970s, a scandal-ridden Wall Street firm, and a Texas wheeler-dealer under federal grand jury investigation.