[DOCID: f:hd204.108]
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The Cannon Centenary Conference
The Changing Nature of the Speakership
Cannon House Office Building
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Speaker Joseph G. Cannon, circa 1909
108th congress, 2d session house document no. 108-204
The Cannon Centenary Conference
The Changing Nature of the Speakership
Cannon House Office Building
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Compiled Under the Direction of the
Joint Committee on Printing,
Chairman Robert W. Ney
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 2004
This conference was sponsored by the Congressional
Research Service, Library of Congress, and the
Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies
Center, University of Oklahoma; and funded in part
by a grant from the McCormick Tribune Foundation.
Walter J. Oleszek, the editor of this document,
gratefully acknowledges the production assistance
of Daphne Bigger and Karen Wirt of the
Congressional Research Service and Suzanne Kayne
of the Government Printing Office.
The Congressional Research Service has produced
six videotapes of the Cannon Centenary proceedings
for use by Members of Congress. The videotapes
cover, respectively, the O'Neill, Wright, Foley,
and Gingrich speakerships, as well as the
presentation of Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and
Professor Robert V. Remini.
House Concurrent Resolution 345
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the
Senate concurring),
SECTION 1. PRINTING OF DOCUMENT.
(a) IN GENERAL.--The transcripts of the
proceedings of ``The Changing Nature of the House
Speakership: The Cannon Centenary Conference'',
sponsored by the Congressional Research Service on
November 12, 2003, shall be printed as a House
document, in a style and manner determined by the
Joint Committee on Printing.
(b) ADDITIONAL COPIES FOR HOUSE AND SENATE.--There
shall be printed for the use of the House of
Representatives and the Senate such aggregate
number of copies of the document printed under
subsection (a) as the Joint Committee on Printing
determines to be appropriate, except that the
maximum number of copies which may be printed
shall be the number for which the aggregate
printing cost does not exceed $65,000.
Contents
Page
The Cannon Centenary Conference
Part I
The Changing Nature of the Speakership
INTRODUCTION............................................
3
Daniel P. Mulhollan, Director, Congressional Research
Service, Library of Congress..........................
3, 6
Gary Copeland, Director, Carl Albert Center...........
4
THE O'NEILL SPEAKERSHIP.................................
9
Gary Hymel
...................................................
9, 22, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31
John A. Farrell.......................................
11, 30
The Honorable Dan Rostenkowski
................................
22, 29, 30, 31
The Honorable Mickey Edwards..........................
24, 30
THE WRIGHT SPEAKERSHIP..................................
33
Janet Hook
.......................................................
..............
33, 48, 54, 56
Speaker James C. Wright, Jr...........................
34
The Honorable David E. Bonior.........................
48
The Honorable Tom Loeffler............................
54
REFLECTIONS ON THE ROLE OF THE SPEAKER IN THE MODERN DAY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES................................
59
Introduction, The Honorable Robert H. Michel..........
59
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert.............................
60
THE FOLEY SPEAKERSHIP...................................
65
Jeff Biggs
.......................................................
.........
65, 80, 82, 84, 86
Speaker Thomas S. Foley
..............................................
69, 80, 83, 84
The Honorable Bill Frenzel............................
75
The Honorable Vic Fazio...............................
77
THE HISTORICAL SPEAKERSHIP..............................
87
Introduction, James C. Billington, Librarian of
Congress ...
87, 95, 97
Professor Robert V. Remini, Kluge Scholar.............
89, 96
THE GINGRICH SPEAKERSHIP................................
99
Donald Wolfensberger .................................
99, 107, 110, 115, 117, 118
Speaker Newt Gingrich
...................................................
100, 115, 118
The Honorable Leon E. Panetta
............................................
107, 117
The Honorable Robert S. Walker........................
110
Part II
Perspectives on the Speakership
Chapter 1: The Speakership in Historical Perspective, by
Ronald M. Peters, Jr....................................
121
Chapter 2: Speakers Reed, Cannon, and Gingrich:
Catalysts of Institutional and Procedural Change, by
Walter J. Oleszek and Richard C. Sachs..................
128
Chapter 3: The Speaker of the House and the Committee on
Rules, by Christopher M. Davis..........................
141
Chapter 4: The Speaker and the Senate, by Elizabeth
Rybicki.................................................
158
Chapter 5: The Speaker and the Press, by Betsy Palmer...
168
Chapter 6: The Speaker and the President: Conflict and
Cooperation, by R. Eric Petersen........................
181
Chapter 7: Speakers, Presidents, and National
Emergencies, by Harold C. Relyea........................
195
Chapter 8: The Changing Speakership, by Ronald M.
Peters, Jr..............................................
218
Part III
Appendices
Biographies.............................................
239
List of Conference Participants.........................
248
Part I
The Changing Nature
of the Speakership
The Cannon Centenary Conference
Introduction
Introduction
Mr. MULHOLLAN. I'm Dan Mulhollan, Director of the Congressional
Research Service, and it is my distinct pleasure to welcome all of you
to this first-ever conference on the changing nature of the speakership.
I say first-ever because never before has there been a conference at
which all living former Speakers--Jim Wright, Tom Foley and Newt
Gingrich--have participated with the current Speaker, Dennis Hastert, to
discuss their role as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
In addition, I am pleased to welcome the other important presenters
at this conference: the former House Members who will serve as
commentators on the various speakerships, the four moderators for each
speakership period, and, of course, Jack Farrell of the Denver Post, who
will start things off with an examination of the O'Neill speakership.
Professor Robert Remini, one of our Nation's most distinguished
historians, will present his views on the evolving speakership. I
believe all of us are in for a unique and historic opportunity. We will
listen to several of the most knowledgeable people in our Nation discuss
the variety of elements necessary to lead such a large and complex
institution as the House of Representatives.
This conference has been organized to commemorate the election on
November 9--3 days ago, but also 100 years ago, in 1903--of
Representative Joseph Cannon, Republican of Illinois, as Speaker of the
House. How fitting it is that we convene this conference in the Cannon
Caucus Room, after whom this entire building is named. Joe Cannon, the
first person ever to grace the cover of Time magazine, was one of the
most powerful and controversial Speakers in the entire history of the
House. When Cannon neared retirement from the House in 1922 after nearly
50 years of service, he modestly said, ``A hundred years from now people
will say it does appear that there was a man from Illinois by the name
of Cannon, but I don't know much about him.'' But we are here more than
100 years later and if ``Uncle Joe,'' as he was fondly called by some,
was still around he would find many books, articles, and Ph.D.
dissertations written about his long career and impact on the House.
This conference on the contemporary speakership is another reminder
that people still remember Speaker Cannon's significant influence on the
House and the course of the country at the dawn of the 20th century. To
expand upon this welcome I'd like to introduce Gary Copeland, director
of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at the
University of Oklahoma with whom CRS is fortunate to be able to co-
sponsor this event.
Mr. COPELAND. Thank you, Dan. I'm pleased to be with you today
representing the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center
at the University of Oklahoma, which is a co-sponsor of this important
conference on the changing nature of the House speakership. It is
appropriate that we use the centennial of the Cannon speakership as the
occasion to hold this conference because his service reflects the
dynamic relationship between the Speaker and his colleagues in the
House.
The Speaker, as we know, must possess and utilize enough authority
to effectively lead a body of 435 individuals who are formal equals, yet
he must exercise that authority with enough discretion that Members
accept it as in the best interest of the Nation, the body, and
themselves.
As we look over the last 100 years, we see a constant shift on where
that balance is comfortably found. The balance will be affected by the
personality of the Speaker, the formal powers given to him at the time,
the character of the membership of the body, and the social and
political culture of the time. There is no magic point that guarantees
both effectiveness and widespread support. The Speakers we will consider
today each approached the office in his own way and each reflected the
times in which he served as well as dramatically affecting those times.
Understanding the changing nature of the speakership puts the records of
previous Speakers in appropriate historical perspective but also
provides guidance as we move forward into the future.
The Carl Albert Center is very pleased to serve as a co-sponsor of
this conference with the widely respected Congressional Research Service
[CRS]. CRS is, of course, uniquely qualified to put together a
conference of this sort and to contribute their expertise on the
changing nature of the speakership. On this topic, the partnership
between the CRS and the Carl Albert Center seems particularly
appropriate and Dan Mulhollan has allowed me to elaborate a little bit
on that.
The Carl Albert Center, named for the 46th Speaker of the House, has
played a role in the academic understanding of the House generally and
the speakership specifically for almost 25 years. The Carl Albert Center
was founded and directed for over 20 years by the leading scholar of the
speakership, Ron Peters. Ron's major work, The American Speakership, is
the foremost book on the topic, providing a thorough analysis and
interpretation of the speakership in historical perspective. Professor
Peters has published numerous other works on the topic, and he is with
us today contributing a paper to this conference.
Beyond the speakership, the Carl Albert Center faculty and graduate
students have researched a variety of other topics including campaign
finance, committees, the seniority system, and so forth. But the center
has multiple missions, which I will briefly mention to you, in addition
to the research function. We offer unique academic programs at both the
graduate and undergraduate level, including a congressional fellowship
for graduate students that includes a year working on the Hill in
affiliation with the Congressional Fellowship Program of the American
Political Science Association. And we have an undergraduate program that
matches our students one-to-one with faculty members to develop a
mentoring relationship. Many of those students have become partners in
the research projects with which they were originally assisting and have
gone on to present their research findings at professional meetings.
Third, and perhaps of interest to many of you in this room, is that
the Carl Albert Center serves as an important resource on the history of
Congress, primarily through our congressional archives, a collection of
20th century papers. We hold the papers of notable Oklahoma lawmakers
such as Speaker Albert, Representatives Mike Synar and Mickey Edwards,
and Senator Robert S. Kerr, as well as some out-of-state Members, such
as Representatives Millicent Fenwick and Helen Gahagan Douglas. Our most
recent additions include the important papers of two retired Republican
leaders: Congressman J.C. Watts and Majority Leader Dick Armey.
Finally, the center fosters a variety of programs to provide
outreach to the community at large. We are pleased to sponsor the Julian
J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture in Representative Government, and we
also frequently host speakers from Washington, including current and
former Members of Congress. The center is actively engaged in programs
aimed at students and young people, including being a partner in the
Project 540 Grant which some of you should be familiar with. We've
worked with the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers
University to develop a leadership program aimed at encouraging women to
become involved in politics. We've worked with the Close-up Foundation
on their Great American Cities Project to encourage teenagers in
effective citizenship skills and participation in political life.
Everything we do is aimed at reflecting the quality of life and
leadership practiced by our namesake, Carl Albert.
As we'll understand better as a result of this conference, Speakers
are unique and special individuals who have perhaps the toughest task in
our political system. Just as Speaker Albert led the House in a critical
period of change, each of his successors that we will discuss today had
unique circumstances and unique gifts. The Carl Albert Center is pleased
to present this conference with the CRS with the hope of promoting
better understanding of each of the Speakers and the special challenges
and opportunities of their position. I thank all of you for being here
today and, like the rest of you, I look forward to the proceedings.
Mr. MULHOLLAN. Thank you, Gary. Many people on Capitol Hill assisted
CRS in initiating and organizing this conference, including the joint
leadership of the House Administration Committee: Chairman Bob Ney and
Ranking Member John Larson, who just came in. John, thank you very much.
Thanks go as well to the leadership of the House Rules Committee. But I
especially want to thank Speaker Hastert and Democratic Leader Nancy
Pelosi for endorsing the organization of this conference. And last, but
certainly not least, I must acknowledge the critical support not only of
the Carl Albert Center but also the McCormick Tribune Foundation without
whose support this conference would not have taken place. John Sirek is
representing McCormick Tribune. Thank you, John, very much.
Now to some logistics. It's our plan that CRS will use the videotape
of this conference for the benefit of Members of Congress and their
staff. In addition, we expect that the transcript of today's
proceedings, along with several reports on various aspects of the
speakership, will be published and made available to Members of
Congress. One of these reports is by Professor Ron Peters, who was just
mentioned by Gary Copeland. Professor Peters is the noted scholar on the
speakership. His paper is available as a handout to everyone who is
attending this conference. At this point, in an effort to minimize
distraction in today's program, please turn off your cell phones. Should
today's program be preempted by an emergency or test alarm, all
occupants should exit the building and proceed to designated assembly
areas. If you don't know where your assembly area is, just ask a helpful
police officer in an orange vest.
Please direct any questions or concerns regarding today's program to
any CRS staff member wearing a tag. Further, most of today's panelists
will be available for questions following their presentations. A
wireless microphone will be circulating the room so if you have
questions, please raise your hand and we'll try to accommodate you. At
this point, before we begin, I must turn to the person who is the
originator, the conceiver, and implementer of this whole conference,
Walter Oleszek, a senior specialist in American National Government at
CRS.
Mr. OLESZEK. Thanks very much, Dan, for those kind remarks, but
there are a lot of people who helped put this conference together. Dan,
I'm sure, will highlight them at a later point. My job is to introduce
the moderators so we can get under way with the program at hand. Not
only do we have a whole group of wonderfully knowledgeable people about
the House of Representatives who we're all anxious to hear from, but we
also have a terrifically talented crew of moderators. I want to
introduce the moderator for this panel right now. He is Gary Hymel, whom
many of you may know from his time on the Hill. He served for 8 years as
administrative assistant to Majority Whip and Majority Leader Hale
Boggs. He also served for 8 years as administrative assistant to Speaker
Tip O'Neill. Mr. Hymel co-authored a book with Tip O'Neill called All
Politics is Local, a classic statement for which Speaker O'Neill is
famous. Currently, Mr. Hymel is senior vice president at Hill &
Knowlton. Gary, take it away.
?
U.S. House of Representatives photographer
Hon. Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr., Speaker 1977-1987
The O'Neill Speakership
The Cannon Centenary Conference
The O'Neill Speakership
Mr. HYMEL. Thank you, Walter, and thank you for putting together
this excellent panel of people who knew Tip. It's been 10 years since
Tip was with us but a week doesn't go by that his name isn't in the
paper, usually associated with that saying, ``All politics is local,''
something his father taught him. It was used last Tuesday, in the
Kentucky election, for instance. The Democratic candidate was upset and
a consultant said afterward that Tip O'Neill was right--all politics is
local. Many Kentucky voters were angry with the previous Governor's
sexual escapades. I'm not so sure Tip meant that his saying should apply
in that context, but if it fits I guess it's all right.
Just last month I was talking to Lindy Boggs and she was telling me
about when she was at Tip's funeral. It was very crowded because it was
at Tip's parish church in Cambridge. And the fellow next to her said,
``They should have had this funeral at a cathedral where they could
accommodate everybody. This is too crowded.'' And Lindy said, ``I looked
at him and said, `All politics is local.' '' Two weeks ago in The Hill
newspaper, there was a cartoon strip about a Congressman who wants to
get all the benefits for his district but didn't want to vote for an
increase in taxes. The last cartoon panel said, ``Well, you taught me
`all politics is loco.' '' Another case when Tip was invoked occurred
when Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected Governor of California. The
reporters interviewed John Burton who is the president pro tem of the
California Senate, and they asked, ``How are you going to get along with
Governor Schwarzenegger?'' And Burton said, ``I'm going to treat him
like Tip O'Neill treated Ronald Reagan.'' He said, ``They had a
wonderful personal relationship and they fought over policy, as we
should.''
Tip ruled by anecdote and he ruled by humor, and I'm sure you all
know that. Senator John McCain, last week in a Washington Post story
about the disappearance of the real characters in Congress, said, ``To
be honest my favorite was Tip O'Neill.'' He said, ``One time I spent
five hours with him on a plane, and it was probably the most
entertaining five hours of my life.'' The other day I was taking a
client through the Rayburn Building. He said, ``I need a shoe shine.''
So we went in the barbershop and Joe Quattrone, the longtime barber
there said, ``Gary, I got to tell you my favorite Tip O'Neill story.''
And my client's listening, of course. He said, ``You know Richard
Kelly,''--some of you may remember the Congressman from Florida who got
in trouble for taking a bribe and was about to be sentenced. Quattrone
said to Kelly, ``I'm sorry for what happened,'' and Kelly said, ``Joe,
don't worry about it. I'm at peace with myself. I'm really feeling good
about myself. I was just on the House floor and Tip O'Neill put his arm
around me and said, `I'm sorry for what happened, and my door will
always be open to you.' '' That was Tip O'Neill.
I want to tell one last story, one former Congressman Joe McDade
told me about 2 weeks ago when I saw him at a book signing. Joe said,
``Gary, you don't know this story but one time we were traveling with
Tip through Europe and we stopped at the airport in Shannon,
Ireland,''--and if you ever took a trip with Tip, you always stopped at
the Shannon Airport because they have a great duty-free shop. ``So
everybody was getting off the plane and Tip said, `You know I'm not
feeling well. You go on and shop, I'm going to stay on the plane.' ''
Joe said, ``Tip, I'll stay with you and keep you company.'' So they're
sitting there shooting the bull--I'm sure talking sports and politics,
and the pilot, an Air Force colonel, came back and said, ``Mr. Speaker,
can I get you anything?'' Tip said, ``No, no. Everything's fine. On
second thought, could you take the plane up so we can see Ireland from
the air?'' And the colonel said, ``Sure.'' So Joe said they revved up
the engines and took this United States of America airliner up and
circled for awhile. Tip saw Ireland from the air, and then they landed
and got everybody on and went home. To me that typified Tip O'Neill.
Now let me tell you about some of the people who will speak about
him today. First is Jack Farrell. Now Jack didn't know Tip as well as
Danny Rostenkowski or Mickey Edwards or myself, but he got to know him.
Jack spent 6 years researching Tip's life. He did 300 interviews and
wrote a book called, Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century. It sold
38,000 copies. You can still buy it today. Jack did an excellent job.
Everybody co-operated with Jack because former Congressman Joe Moakley,
Tip's very dear friend, said you could trust Jack Farrell. Jack is now
the bureau chief of the Denver Post, and he will talk to you about what
he learned about Tip.
Next on the podium is former Congressman Danny Rostenkowski, who was
very, very close to Tip. They are very similar. They're both big
persons, their fathers were in politics, they are Catholic, ethnic, big-
city organization Democrats. Danny had a lot of ideas about how the
House could be run better and he was very generous about giving his
opinions to Tip O'Neill. And some of his ideas are still in place today.
For instance, Danny is the guy who came up with the idea to have weekly
whip meetings. They had never had them before. The practice of rolling
votes from Monday into Tuesday, which helped the ``Tuesday-to-Thursday
Club,'' also was Danny's idea. Dan could have been on the leadership
ladder. He could have been the whip for Tip, but he chose to be chairman
of the Ways and Means Committee instead.
Mickey Edwards, our final panel member, is a former GOP Congressman
from Oklahoma. He was sworn in by Tip when he was a freshman. He became
a member of the loyal opposition. Edwards was head of the Republican
Policy Committee, and chair of the American Conservative Union. In fact,
he now teaches a class in American conservatism at the Kennedy School at
Harvard, which he's meeting this afternoon at 2:30. We'll let each panel
member speak and then take questions from the audience. With that, I'll
turn it over to Jack Farrell.
Mr. FARRELL. Good morning. So a few months ago I got a call from
Walter, who has now slunk away somewhere, and he asked me if I would
give a talk about Tip O'Neill. And I thought I was going to be in a
small conference room with maybe a few members of the Congressional
Research Service staff. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I
actually got an invitation and noted that this was going to be a
historic event featuring all three living former Speakers and the
current Speaker. And it came to me that Speakers Foley and Wright and
Gingrich were all going to be here, appearing in person, giving first-
hand accounts with behind-the-scenes nuggets that historians would prize
forever. And if that was not daunting enough I had been selected to
stand in for one of the greatest storytellers of all time, Speaker Tip
O'Neill. So I was struck by one of those moments of stark panic.
Desperately, I came up with the idea that I was going to deliver this
speech in the first person, like Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain. I would
dress up like Tip, comb my hair back, sprinkle some flour in it so I'd
have that grand O'Neill white shock of hair. Maybe strap a pillow around
my waist and speak through the stub of a cigar. I ran this by Gary and
Walter and got what I guess could be described as politely nervous
chuckles. But as always the sharpest perspective came from my wife
Catharina. She said, ``Jack, I love you. But you're a lousy actor and
you're a worst mimic. In all the weeks of your book tour, all the
stories you told, you never once gave a good impression of Tip O'Neill.
Your `dahlings' and your `old pals' were never persuasive. Your Boston
accent is unconvincing and when you sing it's off key. You barely need
the pillow and you can douse your head with as much flour as you want.
It's never going to make you look like Tip O'Neill, but a little bit
more like snow on Old Baldy. You just don't have enough trees at the
peak.'' So Tip remains to be played maybe in a one-man show by John
Goodman or Ned Beattie or Charles Durning. And having watched John
Goodman play a Speaker on ``West Wing'' this fall, I think he might be
the best bet even though he did play a Republican.
So now I get to talk about Tip, not to try and channel him. And the
sound that you are hearing is that of 1,000 C-SPAN viewers sighing in
relief. Though I spent 6 years on my biography of Speaker O'Neill, I'm
very modest about my ability to describe his motivation on many matters.
As he once said, ``You cannot look into a man's heart. Human beings keep
great secrets.'' But I do believe--I do know that Tip would have
approved what we're doing here today. He revered the House and the
Speaker's Office and, this may come as a surprise to some in the room,
he was a life-long student of history. Many of you may travel to Boston
for the Democratic Convention next summer or to New England to see the
leaves of autumn, and if you pause at Minuteman Park and follow where
the Redcoats were chased by the Rebels down the road from Concord to
Lexington, or you go to Charlestown to walk the decks of Old Ironsides
or you visit the Old North Church or the Paul Revere House or many of
the other carefully preserved historic sites on the Freedom Walk in
Boston, you should tip your hat to Tip, who was responsible, or at least
shared in the responsibility, of winning Federal protection and funding
for these sites when he served with great enthusiasm on the National
Historic Sites Commission. Tip's ability to bring home the bacon for
matters of historic preservation is part of a pattern. For one of the
things I discovered when doing the research for my book was that in the
days before he entered the House leadership he was a colossal collector
of ``pork'' for Massachusetts. From a junior seat on the Rules
Committee, according to one reputable academic study, Tip's share of
Federal postal, health, welfare, anti-poverty and education funds was
demonstratively greater than those claimed by the chairman of the
authorizing committee or the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee
that had jurisdiction over those matters. And I see heads nodding among
the cognoscenti in appreciation of that particular trick. Congressman
Jim McGovern wherever you are, eat your heart out.
If you go to Massachusetts to visit those historic sites, you'll no
doubt travel on roads that Tip played a major role in building. Not just
the multibillion dollar Central Artery Project which is rightly known as
Tip's Tunnel in Boston, but also the aging elevated Fitzgerald
Expressway that they're tearing down to make way for the new artery. Tip
helped build it when serving as the first Democratic speaker of the
Massachusetts House after World War II. In those days, before the
creation of the interstate highway system, the States paid for their own
roads and the Massachusetts government cut corners in the form of exit
and entrance ramps to save money when building the expressway. Soon it
would take 45 minutes to get from one side of Boston to the other. So
when he came to Congress, Tip set about solving this. In a way, he
inherited his own problem and the way he solved it 40 years later was by
tapping the U.S. Treasury to the tune of $12 billion, and Massachusetts
thanks you.
As he raked in the Federal largesse for his State and district,
O'Neill also took the time to make sure that the Minuteman Park and the
Old North Church were protected. It's a small but perhaps telling
indication that in Tip O'Neill you have a somewhat more complicated
character than the popular image suggested. He was a wardheeler to be
sure, but one of the first to be blessed with a college diploma from
Boston College. No one was better at swapping favors, but when he first
ran for office, and in his years in the Massachusetts State House, he
had the tiniest bit of a hint of a sheen of a middle-class reformer
about him. He was certainly no James ``Take a Buck'' Coffey, that
memorable State rep from Beacon Hill who so eloquently summed up the
code of a certain class of Massachusetts politicians. Coffey publicly
announced, ``I'll take a buck. And who the hell doesn't know it? I'm
probably the only one who has guts enough to say I'll take a buck. I'd
like to see the guy who doesn't.''
Tip knew the ways, and could throw a mean elbow, but he appreciated
youth and idealism and was able to change with the times. He had street
smarts and Jesuit schooling. Representative Barney Frank, a Harvard
graduate, once told me that he thought Tip was smart enough to teach
history on the faculty at Boston College. It was only after leaving the
interview and upon some reflection that I began to worry that Barney was
playing with me and that his comment said more about how Harvard views
Boston College than it does of Tip's particular gifts and abilities. But
I brought it up with him later and Barney assured me that he meant it as
a compliment to Tip, not a knock at BC.
Tip's ability to bridge the gap between the new and the old would
prove to be an invaluable asset as he rose to the speakership. He and
his predecessor, Carl Albert, are rightly known amongst students of
Congress as the key transitional figures in the development of the
modern Speaker. And, in fact, I have my own thanks to give to the Carl
Albert Center and to Mr. Peters for much of the analysis that I'm about
to present, and for also preserving and sharing a remarkable oral
history by Carl Albert in which Carl laid it down as he saw it, with
absolutely no reservations, when commenting about the character of his
peers in all those years in Congress.
Albert and O'Neill presided over the transition from old to new,
there's no doubt. Consider what preceded them for most of the 20th
century--a rigid seniority system with tyrannical old southern chairmen,
and a closed-door leadership characterized by Speaker Sam Rayburn's
``board of education.'' The board was located in a high-ceilinged room
one floor below the House Chamber and Tip visited when he was invited by
his patron Speaker John McCormack, who was then majority leader. Tip sat
around with Mr. Sam's closest buddies drinking hard liquor, and using
the small sink that, as D.B. Hardeman and Donald Bacon so memorably put
it, ``served as a public urinal for some of America's most famous
political figures.'' It was from that room that Harry Truman was
summoned to the White House to be sworn in as President when Franklin
Roosevelt died. And Mr. Sam routinely invited a few up-and-comers like
Albert, Hale Boggs, and Tip O'Neill to listen as he and Lyndon Johnson
and John McCormack or House Parliamentarian Lewis Deschler discussed the
day's events and struck a blow for liberty.
That was the House as Tip knew it when he arrived in Congress in
1953. Even the arrival of Jack Kennedy did not change things. The
southern chairmen remained in control, and Tip found it particularly
frustrating because--though JFK was from Massachusetts--political rivals
on the President's staff kept O'Neill away from the new President. When
he turned 50, he took his daughter Rosemary to dinner.
``That's it. My career is over,'' Tip told Rosemary. ``We had a
President from my own State, from my own district and I can't get in to
see him.'' Well, as someone who's just a few months from turning 50, I
hope that the next 35 years do for my career what the next 35 did for
Tip. The war in Vietnam turned out to be his great opportunity. He was
an early foe, representing a district that turned against the war before
much of the rest of America. His stance against the war gave him
credibility, and a following, among the flock of young representatives
who were then beginning to arrive in Washington. Like them, he was
frustrated by the way that the tough old southern chairmen refused to
allow recorded votes on the war. Out of sympathy, and expediency, he
joined many of their attempts to reform Congress.
Though a northerner, Tip was a veteran Democrat who could appeal to
the South; he could also appeal to both the ``old guard'' and the ``new
turks.'' So he was selected by Albert and Majority Leader Boggs to
become the Democratic whip. Then, of course, came the stroke of fortune
that put Tip just a step away from the Speaker's Office. Boggs' airplane
took off in unsettled weather in Alaska and he was never seen again. So
it was Tip who faced off against Richard Nixon. He found himself the
leader of the House Democrats in the turbulent years of Watergate. And
it was clear throughout the early seventies that his strength in the
House came from his ability to span this gap between North and South,
young and old, new suburban representatives, and the lingering captains
of the old city machines. It was a very delicate balancing act but it
got him where he wanted to be--the Speaker of the House in 1976, just in
time for the return of a Democratic Presidency.
But as he took the oath of office, O'Neill looked out on a House
that was far different from the one he had joined in 1953. ``The group
that came in 1974, the ``Watergate babies,'' were a bunch of
mavericks,'' said Jim Wright. ``All of them had run on reform platforms
intent on changing anything and everything they found that had needed
changing.'' Indeed, while the turbulence of the sixties, the Vietnam
war, and the years of Watergate had led millions of young Americans to
abandon the political process and turn inward, those who persisted in
politics--in Democratic politics--were highly committed activists who
had cut their teeth on civil rights, the anti-war movement or the
Kennedy, McCarthy and McGovern campaigns. They viewed Washington as a
capital in need of purging.
Tip recalled that ``these youthful, able, talented people, they
didn't like the establishment. They didn't like Washington. They didn't
like the seniority system. They didn't like the closeness of it and they
came down here with new ideas. They wanted to change the Congress of the
United States, which they did.'' The old politics had fallen into
disrepair. The Democratic Members of the classes of 1970, 1972, 1974,
and 1976 were prototypes of a new kind of Senator and Representative.
They were comfortable with their ideological allies in the press corps
that was undergoing similar changes. They were conversant in the
politics of televised imagery and campaign commercials and generally
beholden to few party leaders. They were independent political
entrepreneurs who raised their own funds, hired professional advisors,
and reached out to the voters using direct mail appeals, single-issue
interest groups, radio, and television advertising. Said Tip, ``About 50
percent of these people had never served in public life before. When I
came to Congress the average man had been in the legislature, had been a
mayor or district attorney or served in the local city council. They
grew up knowing what party discipline was about. These new people came
as individuals. They got elected criticizing Washington. They said,
`Hey, we never got any help from the Democratic Party. We won on our own
and we're going to be independent.' They started in 1974 and they broke
the discipline.''
The House was thoroughly remade from the sleepy institution of Tip's
early years in Congress. The southern autocracy was broken; the
shuffling old bulls swept from the Capitol's halls. Of 292 Democrats
when Tip took over as Speaker in January 1977, only 15 had served in
Congress longer than he had. The average age in the House had dropped to
49.3, the youngest since World War II. The regional distribution of the
two parties had begun to reflect the transformative success of the
Republican southern strategy. And the old urban strongholds of ethnic
white Democrats had been washed away by the great post-war migration of
black Americans from the South and the subsequent white flight to the
suburbs. The new breed of Democratic office holders, Tim Wirth, Gary
Hart, Paul Tsongas, Michael Dukakis, and the rest, were neoliberals who
sold the notion of political reform and their own personalities to
suburbanites who gathered political information from television, not the
local block captain. Ticket splitting was far more common. The
percentage of voters who chose the party line dropped in House elections
from 84 percent to 69 percent in the 20 years after 1958. Without an
old-time party machine to distribute winter coats and turkeys, those new
political entrepreneurs invested considerable resources into
sophisticated constituent service operations, answering mail and
telephone calls, staffing satellite mobile field offices, chasing down
wayward Social Security checks.
Between 1971 and 1981 the volume of incoming mail to Congress more
than tripled. Watts lines, word processors, and computerized mailing
systems became commonplace features in congressional offices. Members of
this new Congress depended on televised imagery and telegenic forums.
The number of committee and subcommittee chairmen had doubled to some
200 during the time O'Neill had been in Congress. The duties of
constituent service and the work of these subcommittees fueled the
demand for more staff. The 435 Members of the House had 2,000 employees
on their payroll when O'Neill arrived in 1953. There were 7,000 such
employees in 1977 and another 3,000 working for committees,
subcommittees, and the party leadership. The Rules Committee served as a
prime illustration. Chairman Howard Smith (D-VA), had two committee
aides in 1960 when Tip served on Rules. Twenty years later there were
42. Congress was now a billion-dollar business with a commensurate
demand for more lobbyists, special interest groups, trade associations,
and journalists.
The average number of days in session jumped from 230 in the
Eisenhower years to 323 in the 95th Congress. And the number of recorded
votes went from 71 in O'Neill's first year to 834 in 1978. Gone were the
days when Carl Albert, following Sam Rayburn's advice, would spend his
days in the House Chamber soaking up knowledge and forging collegial
relationships. Gone as well were the hours when Harold Donohue (D-MA),
and Phil Philbin (D-MA), would slump in the soft leather chairs of the
House Chamber each afternoon like aged hotel detectives, whiling away
the hours with gossip and the occasional rousing snore. A 1977 study by
a House Commission found that Members worked 11-hour days of which only
33 minutes were spent at contemplative tasks like reading, thinking, or
writing. The House became a place to cast a vote and flee, not as much
to mingle, converse, or enjoy the debate.
For many it was hard not to hearken back to George Washington
Plunkett, the legendary sage of Tammany Hall who asked in 1905, ``Have
you ever thought what would become of the country if the bosses were put
out of business and their places were taken by a lot of cart-tail
orators and college graduates? It would mean chaos.''
And so, in the early years of Jimmy Carter's Presidency, O'Neill
pioneered a process by which he would govern the House for the next
decade. It came to be known as the ``politics of inclusion.'' The idea
was to rope your colleagues in to secure their allegiance by giving them
a stake in the results, to share the responsibility as well as the
spoils, and to co-opt resistance. Did the new breed of congressmen and
congresswomen--the political entrepreneurs--demand a piece of the action
and a ticket to the 5 o'clock news? Then O'Neill would give it to them
in return for their loyalty. Starting with an Ad-hoc Energy Committee
and three energy task forces, soon every major issue had a task force
and bright, young Members to chair it: willing to trade their
independence for the power and celebrity of serving in the leadership.
``O'Neill didn't direct his colleagues to do his bidding,'' said Phil
Sharp (D-IN). ``He entrusted them.''
The rise of Representative Richard Gephardt, elected in 1976, was
illustrative. Soon after taking office, the Carter administration had
discovered that the cost-of-living increases were soaring in a time of
high inflation and threatening to bankrupt Social Security. The
Democrats ultimately concluded that a massive hike in the payroll tax
was the best way to keep the system solvent. To head the Social Security
Task Force, O'Neill selected the 36-year-old Gephardt, and they pushed
the bill through the House before the 1978 election season. It passed in
1977 by a 189 to 163 margin, the largest increase in payroll taxes in
history--$227 billion over 10 years--but Gephardt and his task force had
gotten it done. He moved into the leadership's favor and was soon being
hailed in the press as a force to be reckoned with because of his
ability to deal with a cross section of House Members.
O'Neill aide Irv Sprague later wrote a memo to Tip about the task
force system, saying it triumphed because it ``involved as many people
as possible and gave them a personal stake in the outcome.''
``We have the Policy Committee. We have the Whip Organization
working. We got the Rules Committee working and we got the Chairmen all
working together,'' O'Neill told the National Journal. ``They're part
and parcel of the organization. They're part and parcel of making
decisions. There are more people in the decisionmaking. That's the way I
like it and I'm sure that's the way the members like it.''
It wasn't enough. The Carter years were a political disaster for Tip
O'Neill's Democrats and justly so. When handing the Democrats control of
both the White House and the Congress in 1976, the voters had looked to
the party for competence, resolve, and the promise of national revival.
Handed the opportunity the Democrats staged a thoroughly miserable
performance. They had been petty, selfish, and spiteful. They had looked
beholden to oil companies, the health care industry, and other special
interests. They had refused to curb their insistent liberal base and
chosen to fight a destructive and self-indulgent civil war in the
Presidential primaries. They were intellectually clueless, politically
inept, and O'Neill stood as the symbol of their failure. I don't know
how many here remember, but the Republican television commercials showed
a white-haired burley actor who ran out of gas on a highway. It clicked
not because it represented just any generic big-city pol, but because it
lampooned the Speaker of the clownish House in Washington.
After a fine first year as Speaker with the passage of ethics and
energy packages, O'Neill's performance had lapsed to adequate in 1978
and piteous in 1979 and 1980. There were good reasons for the disaster
and few in Washington were more adept than Tip at deflecting the blame
toward the White House, the centrifugal effects of congressional reform,
or the ideological incohesion of his party. But at a time of economical,
international, and political crisis when his party and countrymen looked
at Tip, he had failed. His was the party of Tongsun Park and CETA
[Comprehensive Education and Training Act], of 18 percent inflation and
gas lines. When they could have been addressing the problem of America's
economy, the Democrats had spent their time squabbling. The electorate's
retribution had been just and severe. It was not just that the
Republicans won--the White House, the Senate and the 33 seats gained in
the House of Representatives in 1980--it was who won: Ronald Reagan.
``Until such time as we nominate a new Presidential candidate you
are the leader of the Democratic Party as well as the highest public
official of the party,'' leadership aide Burt Hoffman wrote the Speaker.
``You are also more than ever the only person in a position to continue
representing the ideas of justice and compassion.''
It would be the final battle, the defining historic moment for this
bruised, old, white-haired guy, and O'Neill knew it. He would sit alone
in his darkened office brooding over each day's reversals. He would be
betrayed by captains, scored by old foes, challenged by young rebels in
his rank. His name and his pride were on the line, but so, more
importantly, was what he believed. If Tip O'Neill bungled this job, if
he failed to hold the bridge, the hill, the last foothold, he knew his
place in history would suffer, but so would Roosevelt's legacy: the
elderly whose fears of poverty and illness had been eased by Social
Security and Medicare; the working class kids carrying their families'
dreams of going to college with the help of Pell grants; the water and
the air that were getting cleaner and the wilderness preserved from
development.
Tip was no saint. Win or lose there would be no canonization of
Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr. In a lifetime in politics, he'd gouged eyes,
thrown elbows, bent the law, and befriended rogues and thieves. He could
be mean and small-minded. But at his core there lay a magnificence of
spirit, deep compassion, and a rock-hard set of beliefs. He had a sense
of duty that he refused to abandon for those whom Heaven's grace forgot.
He would sooner die on the floor of the House or watch his party be
vanquished and dispersed than desert them.
``You know you're right?'' his wife Millie would ask him as she
adjusted his tie at the door in the morning. ``Yes,'' he would say and
he knew it. He knew it like he knew the sidewalks of North Cambridge,
the liturgy of the Sunday Mass, or how to stack a conference committee.
``Then do your best,'' Millie would say and off he would go. He may not
have had the looks of a movie star but he had great instincts and sound
judgment and a joy for life that could match Reagan's charm. And like
the new President, he had an innocence that had survived many years in a
cynical game, and given time and exposure, would allow Americans to come
to love him.
Indeed, Reagan and O'Neill had much in common. They were broad-brush
types who liked to joke and never let the facts get in the way of a good
story. They would take a punch and come back swinging. They prized their
downtime, loved to be loved, and bore without complaint, or much
interest in correcting, the liabilities of their parties. They each had
spectacularly talented staffs. Most important, despite their acting
talents, they stood out among the sharpies and trimmers in the Nation's
Capital as men of deep conviction. Each was sustained in much the same
way by his own distinctive mythology. Reagan was the son of the small-
town Midwest, a lifeguard and radio announcer who had made his way to
the Golden State and become a wealthy movie star. He revered individual
liberty, and his icons were the cowboys, the entrepreneurs, the singular
heroes of sporting fields and war. His speeches never failed to cite the
American Revolution, which had thrown down the government of a rotten
tyranny and claimed the freedom and rights of man.
O'Neill was the product of the East. Of the great crowded cities. He
reveled in the collectivity of purpose and the fruits of charity,
neighborhood and fellowship. His was the creed of Honey Fitz and Jim
Curly, Roosevelt, and the Sermon on the Mount. He, too, revered the
Founding Fathers--but for the magnificent system of government they had
built which had proven so adaptable and addressed so many social ills.
Tip O'Neill versus Ronald Reagan. This was no sophistic debate: these
were world views clashing--hot lava meeting thundering surf. And good it
was for the country to have the debate--to stake the claim of a ``more
perfect union'' against the demand for ``life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness'' once again. History was happening. The heritage of the
New Deal, a philosophy of governing that had lasted for half a century
was at stake. Reagan didn't want to trim the sails. He wanted to turn
the ship around and head back to port. For more than 50 years
Republicans had argued that the country had taken a horribly wrong turn
in the thirties, that Roosevelt's social insurance programs and the
taxes that supported them were seductively undermining the American way:
breeding lethargy, dependence, and corruption of the spirit. Nor was
there ambivalence at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, in the
Speaker's lobby.
As Reagan proved himself so formidable a foe, the Democrats
scrambled to reinforce their Speaker. Tony Coelho (D-CA), was recruited
to take over as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee, and he raised a lot of money. One of his first acts was to
put Chris Matthews on the payroll: detached to the Speaker to help, as
O'Neill put it, with ``the media stuff.'' Once again O'Neill's great
sense of timing extended to his selection of staff. Leo Diehl was his
indispensable pal and protector who had notified the wise guys that
times had changed. Gary Hymel had been a bridge to the southern barons
and envoy to the pencil press, and he helped Tip run the House when
O'Neill was majority leader. Kirk O'Donnell was hired in 1977 when the
post-Watergate era called for a legal counsel with well-honed political
instincts. Ari Weiss was the Speaker's chief policy analyst. ``I've
never seen a staff like Tip O'Neill's. There's not even a close
second,'' said journalist Al Hunt. It said a lot about O'Neill--that he
was an incredibly secure man.
Matthews found that O'Neill was self-conscious about his looks, and
dubious about competing with the movie star in the White House. ``He was
scared to death of it because it was live television. He was so afraid
he would say something wrong. He was afraid of being embarrassed. He
lacked confidence. He was never sure of his looks. He was always talking
about his cabbage ears and his big nose. He was mean to himself,''
Matthews remembered.
Television news liked simple stories. Reagan was a skilled performer
and his media advisor, Michael Deaver, and his colleagues were
exceptionally good at crafting scripted moments in which the President
could perform. Deaver recalled that cable TV had not yet arrived. You
could target the three networks and talk to 80 percent of the public.
O'Neill could never hope to match such superb Reagan moments as the 40th
anniversary of the D-day landings or the President's rallying address to
the stunned Nation after the space shuttle Challenger exploded.
But there was a sturdy journalistic imperative--``get the other side
of the story''--that provided O'Neill with an opening, as did the
media's unquenchable thirst for controversy. Reporters from the networks
and other national news organizations needed a Reagan foil, someone to
whom they could go and get the other side, and that was a role the
Speaker could play. But it was a tough, evolutionary process, especially
for a man who had just endured 3 years of pummeling from the press.
``You had to beg him to do interviews and when you did your butt was on
the line. If you strung two bad interviews in a row, you were dead,''
Matthews remembered. ``And I wanted desperately to say to him, I let the
reporters in because I came here to help you become what you can become.
And the way to do it is to be publicized. And the only way to be
publicized is to let people write about you and the only way to let them
write about you is to let them take some shots at you. That's the only
way to become a figure in American politics. You cannot customize it.
You cannot come in and tailor it. All you can do is go in, let them see
who you are and let them make their own judgments.''
The Speaker, who railed against the Reagan tax bill in July, was a
far better tailored, scripted and prepared politician than the befuddled
bear who had opposed the Gramm-Latta budget cuts in May 1981 or who had
replied, ``What kind of fool do they think I am?'' when House Democrats
urged him to seek network time to respond to Reagan's triumphant spring
attack on the Federal budget.
Said Representative Newt Gingrich, ``If you were to study Tip in his
last year as Speaker and compare him to the first year as Speaker, you
saw a man who had learned a great deal about television as the dominant
medium in his game.'' Democratic pollster Peter Hart remembered, ``At
the beginning he was the perfect caricature of old-time politics. The
Republicans took advantage of it. And he was compelled to take a
position to which he was ill-prepared and ill-equipped, which was the
voice of the Democratic Party.'' But by 1986 not only was he more
comfortable with his stature and his feel for the role, but as much as
the President represented an ideology and a purpose, the public saw that
Tip represented an ideology and a purpose as well, and it was a purpose
that as we moved through the eighties, Americans began to see as pretty
important--that it was an important set of values that this man
represents. He's not going to allow Congress to cut the safety net or
the environmental programs or Social Security or education.
In no small part due to Ronald Reagan, the United States would
embark on a new entrepreneurial era, claim triumph in the cold war,
reach giddy new heights of freedom and prosperity, and command both the
attention and the obligation of greatness at the end of the century. But
in no small part because of Tip O'Neill, the country would reach that
pinnacle without leaving its working families and old folks and sick
kids and multihued ethnic and racial minorities behind. Reagan had
turned the country in a new direction. The changing world with its
disorienting pace of economic, scientific, and technological advancement
would inevitably demand that the mechanisms of the New Deal be
reexamined and rebuilt. But in 1981 Tip O'Neill drew a line for his
party and his country and the core of Roosevelt's vision was preserved.
It was a stirring rear guard action worthy of Horatius at the bridge or
Kutuzov at the gates of Moscow.
The final point I'd like to make about the Albert and O'Neill
speakerships is how many of these changes that were made in this
period--television, the rise of committees, huge numbers of staff,
televised sessions of the House--all were seen as liberating, creative
adjustments by progressives at the time. But they helped bring on the
end of the Democratic era. The shattering of the seniority system, the
successful attack upon the old, southern chairmen, the advent of
television and its effect on the House all helped Republican as well as
Democratic young turks: Republican names familiar to us now--Jack Kemp,
Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich. The Democratic reformers had shown the way
and left it open for a group of real revolutionaries, the young
Republican entrepreneurs who finally triumphed in 1995 and took back
control of the House.
But that's a story for the rest of the day. I'm here to talk about
Tip O'Neill and to sum up by quoting from Rev. J. Donald Monan's eulogy
at Tip's funeral. ``Those of us who have lived through the decades since
the 1930s of dramatic change in the moral dilemmas that modernity
brings, in the crisis of wars and the threats of war . . . realize that
Speaker O'Neill's legendary sense of loyalty, either to old friends or
to God, was no dull or wooden conformity. It [was] a creative fidelity
to values pledged in his youth that he kept relevant to a world of
constant change.'' And that, in my opinion, was his greatest genius.
Mr. HYMEL. Congressman Rostenkowski.
Mr. ROSTENKOWSKI. I guess what you expect from me today is a
personal view and, also, a legislative view of Tip O'Neill. I think Tip
and I had a great deal in common.
We both came from an urban area. We saw poverty first hand. But, you
can't look at Tip O'Neill's speakership without first looking at what a
really unique challenge had been created for him by having Ronald Reagan
in the White House.
Reagan was a wonderful public speaker; a classic ``outside''
politician who had good sound bites but not creative legislative ideas
or interest in legislative detail.
Tip O'Neill was a classic ``inside'' guy. He looked like an old-
fashioned politician. Some people liked that image, some didn't. But,
there was no avoiding his physical structure. When Tip became the de
facto Democratic spokesman, it was not an uneven contest. He had a very
delicate balancing act. President Reagan was tremendously popular and
the question became how to moderate what he and the Congress were trying
to do without confronting the President head on.
In the first context, with the 1981 tax cuts, Democrats foolishly
got into a bidding war that made things worse than they otherwise would
have been. A lot of ``blow-dried'' Democrats elected post-Watergate
thought that O'Neill was the wrong face for the party at that time and
that it was their turn to govern.
So, even while Tip tried to present a united Democratic front, he
was challenged by plotting from within his own party. The fact that
there never was a public explosion is certainly to Speaker O'Neill's
credit.
Unlike today's situation, the committee chairmen in the House,
people like myself, had a lot of independence. The Speaker couldn't
order them to do anything because they wouldn't automatically all obey.
When Newt became Speaker, he centralized power, and was able to do
things, especially involving the scheduling of legislation in the House
of Representatives that Tip could never have accomplished.
Tip just didn't have the powers conferred on Newt. I should know. I
was appointed chief deputy majority whip by Jim Wright. As a matter of
fact, Tip didn't like the idea that I was going to be the deputy whip,
but Jim Wright insisted because of the fact that we had had a hell of a
fight for majority leader. Leo Diehl, a top O'Neill aide, who was
orchestrating it with the help of Jimmy Howard from New Jersey and Danny
Rostenkowski, had worked like the Devil along with people like Tony
Coelho to get Jim Wright elected majority leader. We had been the ones
who had talked Jim Wright into running for majority leader. Jim was very
comfortable on the Public Works Committee and, believe me, made more
friends in the Congress than anyone. But after the election and Tip's
ascension to the speakership it was kind of an intimate legislative
process.
Tip couldn't command Members to do things the way the Republicans
have done since. Instead, he had to convince them. Tip would put his arm
around you and give you one of these, ``Gosh darn, you gotta help me on
this.'' And, in most instances, Members of Congress would bend to the
wishes of Tip O'Neill. Tip O'Neill had a great deal of faith in the
system and he had tremendous respect for the individual legislator's
ability to govern.
It was in those days when committee chairmen were very powerful that
Speaker O'Neill recognized that he came from within that group of
representatives who wanted their voices to be heard. In contrast to the
present day leadership authority, O'Neill would wait for the legislative
process to work and come to the Speaker's office. What he did draw out
of you was a compelling competition to do the job. If you failed, it'd
be at dinner that night that he'd say, ``Jesus, you know Rosty, you're
not doing so well over there.'' And, it would really boil me just like
it would boil John Dingell or it would boil Jack Brooks.
Tip O'Neill had the ability to convince a legislator because he was
what was termed ``a legislator's legislator'' himself. He had come up
through the ranks and been in the trenches and that, I believe, was the
secret of the successes we had.
Certainly O'Neill competed with Ronald Reagan. You've got to
remember that Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, was probably one of the
most popular individuals who ever came to Washington. He broke all
precedents. He came to Capitol Hill as President-elect, visiting the
Speaker in the ceremonial office--never been done before. Came to the
House of Representatives for the State of the Union Message and violated
House rules by introducing people in the gallery--never done before. It
was this ``so-called'' warmth that Reagan expressed and brought through
to television. To his credit, and I just did a C-SPAN show this morning
about the creation of C-SPAN, during the time of this creation, no one
was more influential in having C-SPAN in the House of Representatives
than Tip O'Neill. Tip worked with C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb as hard as
I've ever seen anyone ever work to accomplish this.
I've got to admit that I was on the other side of the argument with
respect to C-SPAN. But, the day that we initiated C-SPAN, you couldn't
buy a blue shirt in Washington.
Tip, in my opinion, depended a great deal on staff, depended a great
deal on information that came through the legislative process, and tried
to make judgments based on the coalitions which he could put together.
He was good at it.
I'll never forget the first day as leadership when Tip; Jim Wright,
the majority leader; John Brademas, the majority whip; and Danny
Rostenkowski, chief deputy whip, went to the White House for an 8 a.m.
Tuesday morning meeting. We were ushered into a small dining room off
the East Room where then-President Jimmy Carter was hosting a
``breakfast'' for the leadership. There were little fingertip sandwiches
and small biscuits and Tip O'Neill looked at Jimmy Carter and said,
``Jesus, Mr. President, I thought we won the election for crying out
loud!'' The next Tuesday, and we were there every other Tuesday, you'd
have thought we were all ``Paul Bunyons'' at breakfast.
O'Neill, to his credit, came to the speakership at a time when I
think somebody up there liked us because it was very tough competing
with Ronald Reagan. I can say this personally. Ronald Reagan as
President made my job at the Committee on Ways and Means very easy
because all I had to do was try to bring Ronald Reagan to the middle and
he'd bring along the Republican votes that were necessary. That, coupled
with Tip O'Neill's coalitions, made it possible to pass legislation.
I've so many pleasant personal memories over the years with Tip and
Millie, with Silvio Conte, with Bob Michel. In summation, just let me
say this. Last night, I had dinner with Guy Vander Jagt, Bob Michel,
Leon Panetta, and Marty Russo. I wonder if in 10 years or 8 years, after
their service, the present majority and minority leaders will get
together for dinner. It's a sad commentary.
Mr. HYMEL. Thank you, Congressman.
Congressman Edwards.
Mr. EDWARDS. Well, first of all, I want to say that I probably feel
more comfortable in this room than some of the other people here, like
Jim Wright, Tom Foley, and Danny Rostenkowski, because we Republicans
always had to have our conferences in this room because the Democrats
were meeting on the House floor, so we couldn't use it. So I've spent a
lot of time in here.
I can't tell the personal stories about Tip because I wasn't
involved in the same way that the members of the Democratic Party were,
but I do have some reflections I'd like to share. I had great respect
for and friendship with the men who followed Tip as Speakers--men like
Jim Wright and Tom Foley--but when I came to the House they were just
``Mr. Chairman'' and every Democrat was Mr. Chairman of something. But
Tip was ``Mr. Speaker'' and he remained that. It was not only his
presence and the fact that he was the Speaker when I came to the House
and the man who swore me in, but he looked, he sounded, he acted the way
you would expect a leader of the Nation to look and sound and act. He
was that imposing and that impressive.
When I teach my classes at the Kennedy School, one of the things I
emphasize in the very first class period is the word ``passion.'' That
politics is about passion. Passion is what drives you to get up and do
the things you have to do to get elected and to go through the very
tiresome job of actually being a day-to-day legislator. You really have
to be driven by your beliefs. All politics is passion just like all
politics is local. And Tip was a very passionate person as those who
knew him realized. But he was a different kind of politician when he
first came to the Congress. He was, in fact, the quintessence of a local
pol.
He was passionate about issues, but he was passionate about issues
that mattered to the people in Cambridge and South Boston and the areas
that he knew. He was not a Massachusetts politician. He was strictly a
Boston politician, which is a lot different from Brookline or Wellesley
or Newton. It was inner city. It was neighbors. It was knowing the
people in the barbershop and the deli and the dry cleaners, and it was a
very personalized, localized, kind of bring-home-the-bacon politics. So
he was connected to the local highways and the local hospitals. What he
did when he came to Congress was to be the voice, the spokesman, for the
people of his area. Now I didn't realize until I started teaching at
Harvard that political scientists like to refer to what they call a
choice between being a ``delegate'' or a ``trustee.'' I had never heard
those terms before. But in the sense of being a ``delegate,'' somebody
who really represented the home people, that's what Tip O'Neill's
politics was about.
I am reminded of a story about one of my colleagues from Oklahoma,
Mike Synar, a really fine young man who died all too soon. Mike was once
interviewed by the New York Times and there was a little flap that
occurred as to whether Mike was an Oklahoma Congressman or a U.S.
Congressman from Oklahoma. He, of course, argued that he was a U.S.
Congressman from Oklahoma, which made people in Oklahoma very unhappy
because they wanted him to be an Oklahoma Congressman. Well, when he got
here Tip was a Boston Congressman. He was not a national Congressman in
that sense. He was very much a local kind of person.
And then something happened. I've got a photograph that I hope is
going to be passed out to the tables, something I found as I was going
through my files. Something happened to Tip that changed his life, that
changed his speakership, and to a large extent changed the country.
When Ronald Reagan was elected President, all of a sudden Tip became
not just the master of the institution which, as Danny said, he ran very
well by allowing various committee chairs to be powerful in their own
right. Suddenly, Tip O'Neill became the champion of progressive
politics. He became the national voice--the passion of the progressive
politics that had begun with FDR and had continued since and that Ronald
Reagan threatened.
What Reagan brought was not only a new vision, but if you were on
the other side of the aisle, an attempt to really undo a lot of what had
been done over the previous decade. So Tip O'Neill had thrust upon him
something he had really not prepared for. He had thrust upon him the job
of being the last bulwark of liberalism--becoming the champion of the
forces opposing the Reagan and Bush foreign policy proposals, preserving
domestic social programs.
All of a sudden it was Tip not just being in the Speaker's office,
but taking the floor, taking the microphone, and becoming the voice to
challenge Ronald Reagan.
Tip became the Democratic Party, and what happened as a result of
this was that we had these geniuses over at the National Republican
Congressional Committee who decided that the way for Republicans to take
control was to run against Tip, to demonize Tip O'Neill. That's where
those television spots came from that showed this actor playing Tip and
characterizing him, and, through him, the Democratic Congress as big,
fat, and out of control. It turned out that the voters really thought he
looked a lot more like Santa Claus. The public did not share the
antipathy toward Tip O'Neill that the Republican Congressional Committee
had anticipated, and the ad campaign didn't work.
There was also something else about Tip. I remember Tip, of course,
as an adversary, as the advocate of what we were trying to change. But
Tip's word was good. On the one hand, there was the public Republican
attempt to gain control, and so, those television spots attacking Tip
O'Neill. But in Republican leadership meetings, we all knew that Tip's
word was good. He was tough. He was a hard fighter, but he was fair.
Let me tell a little story. Actually Jim, the story is about you,
but also there is a lesson here about Tip O'Neill. I got an e-mail
recently from a political science professor on the West Coast. He said
he was watching a video of a debate on the House floor and since I was
very involved in that debate, he wanted my input about what had
happened. Jim Wright, who was then the Speaker, announced at the end of
the vote--Republicans, of course, were winning the vote--that he was
going to keep the vote open so people who had not yet voted could cast
their votes or people who wanted to change their votes could change
their votes. As it happened, of course, Jim Wright and his team being
very good at this, before time had run out, the Democrats were in the
lead on the vote. Then the gavel came down and the Democrats had won.
The political scientist wrote to me and said, ``I don't understand
what happened. The Speaker announced that he was going to keep the vote
open for anybody who wanted to change their votes, so why didn't you
Republicans do the same thing and say you wanted to continue this a
little longer while you tried to change people's minds.''
So I wrote him back and said, ``I don't think you understood. Jim
Wright was the Speaker. He had the gavel. He could determine when the
vote was over.'' The political scientist wrote back to me again and
said, ``Oh, I understand now. You didn't trust Jim Wright.'' And I wrote
back and said, ``No, you don't understand. We trusted Jim Wright. He is
a very honest, decent man, who believed passionately that what he was
doing was good for the country and that what we were doing was bad for
the country. And he would do everything that he could within the rules,
within the proper procedures of the House, to prevail on a cause he
thought was important.''
That, I think, is not only what Jim did, but it's also what Tip did.
What you always knew was that Tip O'Neill could be a tough adversary.
When we wanted to give Special Orders and make the whole world think we
were speaking to the entire Congress, he would order the TV cameras to
pan the Congress and show that we were giving these great orations to
nobody in particular except a couple of our Members and our staff. So
Tip was a very tough fighter, but he was always fair. He was always
decent. He was dignified and people on the Republican side liked him a
lot--we opposed him, but liked him a lot.
When he died, people said, ``Well, he was one of a kind. There will
never be another like Tip O'Neill.'' And I wrote a newspaper column in
which I said, I hoped that was not true. It would be a terrible loss to
America if there was never another like Tip O'Neill.
Mr. HYMEL. Thank you, Congressman. Before we take questions I'd like
to summarize by saying again that Tip ruled by anecdote and humor, but
there are four things he should be remembered for and only one has been
mentioned. First, Tip brought television to the House. A lot of
discussion had gone on before, and there was a lot of running up and
down hills by Members and staff. When he became Speaker he said, ``Turn
on the TV cameras.'' It was that simple and, of course, we wouldn't have
C-SPAN today if it wasn't for that decision which he made by himself.
Tip also destroyed the seniority system. One time in the Democratic
Caucus at the beginning of a Congress, we were doing reforms and Tip
offered an amendment that you could get a vote on a committee chairman
if one-fifth of the caucus wanted it. Before that, it was automatic that
the most senior person on the committee became the chairman--no
exceptions. Well, Tip's motion passed because you could always get one-
fifth of the Members. Two years later, three chairmen were thrown out.
Now, the committee leadership always had to run in the whole caucus.
Seniority didn't mean as much anymore. So Tip was responsible for
destroying the seniority system.
A third thing he did was eliminate the unrecorded teller vote. Some
of the oldtimers might remember that. Just like in the British
Parliament today, there was a procedure where Members walked through
lines and were counted and then the majority decided whether an
amendment wins or loses. Well, Tip and Charlie Gubser, a Republican from
California, had an amendment that abolished that procedure.
The other thing was a code of ethics. Tip established a commission
to write a code of ethics and Representative Dave Obey told me when
Members came to Tip and said, ``Tip, we have two versions--kind of a
soft one and a tough one. What do we go with?'' Tip said, ``The tough
one.'' Tip was linking that with a pay raise. By the way, the ethics
code did go through and it still exists today. So with that, I'd like to
ask the first question, if you don't mind, of Congressman Rostenkowski.
Please embroider a little bit on why would a Member of Congress, who has
a constituency and his own mind made up, and Tip would come over and put
that big arm around him and say, ``Can't you help us like a good
fella?'' And that's all he would say. Why would you then vote with Tip
O'Neill?
Mr. ROSTENKOWSKI. Well, we have to set the stage for that. We did
have a cushion. We had a lot more Democrats for a period of time,
certainly with Lyndon Johnson.
President Johnson could really work the room when it came to a whip
count. I think Tip credited Tom Foley and Danny Rostenkowski as probably
his best whip counters. Once you found out that a certain Member had a
problem with a particular vote, then you tried to figure out why. Was it
because he wanted something for his district, say a bridge? Was it
because he was mistreated by a chairman? Tip would do the groundwork and
then walk over the rail on the House floor and whisper in that
particular Member's ear, ``We're going to solve your problem. Now come
on, you've got to help us here. I mean, this is a Democratic vote. It
would be embarrassing for us not to pass it.'' And, with this big arm
around you, you'd cave. He had a natural, warm ability.
There are so many stories I could tell you about Tip as a person.
Tip O'Neill would enter a room with his ``God love you, darlin','' all
of a sudden, he'd take over the party. He was an empowering figure with
tremendous warmth. Every Democratic congressional campaign dinner, it
was Tip O'Neill's party, and you'd never leave that dinner without the
room joining him in singing the tune, ``Apple Blossom Time'' to his
lovely wife Millie. It was just a warm personality.
Mr. HYMEL. Thank you. Do we have any questions from the audience?
Mr. ROSTENKOWSKI. If I may I'd like to say one thing in response to
what my colleague has just pointed out. Over the years, Tip O'Neill
formed lasting friendships. One way he did this was that he honestly
believed that Members of Congress should visit overseas and that we
should have a legislative exchange with other countries. The most
outstanding congressional delegation trip that Tip O'Neill organized and
took was the one to Russia.
We were the first to be exposed to Gorbachev. Silvio Conte, myself,
Bob Michel, and Tip O'Neill sat with Mikhail Gorbachev. At that meeting
Mikhail Gorbachev suggested that we do this more often. You ought to
come here and visit us; we ought to come and visit you. We reported this
to President Reagan upon our return, and we told him we felt if there
was anybody in the leadership of the Soviet Union who was looking for
democracy, it might well be Mikhail Gorbachev. It was after that
congressional trip, which Tip O'Neill chaired, that we started to see a
so-called melting of the Iron Curtain. You can describe congressional
delegation visits however you want, but they are a very important
instrument in our democracy and friendship with other nations. Thank
you.
Mr. HYMEL. Anyone? Yes?
Question. Is there anyone in the House today like Speaker O'Neill?
Mr. ROSTENKOWSKI. The changing of the House of Representatives has
come so swiftly since I left it. I'm really not as close to the
membership as I'd like to be. I just don't know of anyone who has the
chemistry that Tip O'Neill had. Tip O'Neill, even as a liberal, had the
unique capacity to get votes from the southern Members of the Congress.
That's why he was able to work so well with people with very different
backgrounds, like Jim Wright.
With respect to electing Jim Wright the majority leader, Tip O'Neill
stayed as far away from that election as he possibly could because we
had Majority Whip John McFall, we had Representative Dick Bolling, we
had Representative Phil Burton in the race. Our plan was to get all the
McFall votes for Jim Wright on the second count. Tip would stay away
from that and, I think to his credit, when Jim Wright was elected the
majority leader, he was relieved that he had as stable an individual as
Jim Wright for the position. I don't know of anyone like Tip today, and
I don't know that the times are the same now as they were then. There's
a lot of hate in the air in the House of Representatives and that's a
sad thing.
Mr. HYMEL. Congressman Edwards.
Mr. EDWARDS. I was going to make the same point that Danny did at
the very end. I don't know the Democratic Members as well as I should
and I'm not sure that the times have changed for the better, but I think
it would be very hard for somebody with Tip's approach to bringing
people together and to lining up votes to succeed today. The balance
between the two parties is very close. Since 1980, there has been more
and more of a sharp divide between what the Democrats want to achieve
and what the Republicans want to achieve, so I'm not sure that's exactly
what's called for at this time.
But if I can tell a little story here. I went by to see David Obey,
who was chairman of the subcommittee of which I was the ranking member--
the Foreign Operations Subcommittee on Appropriations. I've always liked
Dave, and we were sitting and talking and he said to me, ``Mickey, it's
not the same anymore. They don't talk to us. They don't let us in. They
don't let us in on the decisions. It's all very partisan.'' And I said,
``No, Dave it's not different. You just weren't in the minority then.''
Mr. HYMEL. Jack, you want to respond?
Mr. FARRELL. I asked that question of Mike McCurry, who was then the
press secretary for President Clinton. Mike's theory at that time was it
would not happen again until conditions were such that ``all politics is
local'' was again important. You need politicians coming to Washington
whose basic connection with the voters was on the level of providing a
winter coat, or that had a gut feeling for what people were thinking.
And Mike said the Democratic Party is never going to be that Democratic
Party again until the day that we actually get together and meet at
bars, or we go out and we do car washes to raise money, like the Kiwanis
Club, or you bring it down once again to the party of $50 contributions.
So I would never say that Howard Dean has any kind of personality
like Tip O'Neill's. I don't know what it is that Howard Dean has tapped
out there in the country with his Internet fundraising, with the ``Move
On'' phenomenon, but it's interesting to me that what Mike forecast has
evolved from out of nowhere. Progressives on that side of the Democratic
Party are getting together and actually finding that it reinforces their
values, and they feel that they have a voice by doing this kind of
small-dollar fundraising that is coming back.
And for Democrats, it may be interesting to know that any Republican
fundraiser will tell you that they've had just huge success with small
donors and with making average people feel part of the cause. Whether or
not that would ever produce somebody of the kind of charismatic
personality of Tip would just be a roll of the dice.
Mr. HYMEL. Thank you Jack. One more thing from Congressman
Rostenkowski. That will wrap it up.
Mr. ROSTENKOWSKI. I don't mean to say to you that I believe Tip
O'Neill was totally unique. It was the time and I think also that Tip
was blessed with the fact that he had a Bob Michel as minority leader.
Because, from the day that we opened the session, we were legislators
and it was not a sin to compromise. If you compromised and you weren't
satisfied with all you got in the bill, you were coming back next year.
You were going to get a little more next year.
Those of us who had programs, and Tip O'Neill had programs, were
patient. We knew eventually that the social change would come. I believe
that had Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton listened the first year that
they initiated comprehensive health reform and done it incrementally, we
would today have had all we need as opposed to the dissent that's taking
place today in both the energy and the health bills.
Mr. HYMEL. Thank you very much for your attention.
?
Hon. James C. Wright, Jr., Speaker 1987-1989
The Wright Speakership
The Cannon Centenary Conference
The Wright Speakership
Mr. OLESZEK. To start the Speaker Wright years, let me introduce the
moderator for this segment, and that is Janet Hook. She is the chief
congressional correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Previously, she
covered Capitol Hill for many, many years with Congressional Quarterly.
Ms. Hook won the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for superlative
congressional coverage. She is also a graduate of Harvard University and
the London School of Economics. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to
turn the podium over to Janet Hook.
Ms. HOOK. Thank you, Walter. Walter's right. I have been covering
Congress for a long time. In fact at the very beginning of my career
working for Congressional Quarterly, I covered Congress when Jim Wright
was Speaker. It was in covering Speaker Wright's House that I developed
my now long-term affection for covering Congress. I've found it to be a
stimulating and tumultuous place to cover. And I first learned those
lessons covering Speaker Wright.
Jim Wright's career in the House spanned more than a quarter-century
of great change in Congress, the country, and the speakership. When Jim
Wright first came to Congress, Eisenhower was President, Sam Rayburn was
Speaker of the House, and, at that point, the baby boom was just a bunch
of babies. When Wright left Congress in 1989, George Herbert Walker Bush
was President, baby boomers were running around the House, and the
challenge of running the House as Speaker was far greater, or maybe it
was just different, than it was for Sam Rayburn.
Jim Wright began his career in the Texas State legislature and as
mayor of Weatherford, Texas. He was elected to the House in 1954 and
quickly found his legislative home on the Public Works Committee. He
unexpectedly leapt into the House Democratic leadership in 1976 when he
was elected majority leader in a hotly contested race, which in the end
was decided by a one-vote margin. That put him in position to rise
without opposition to become House Speaker in 1987 after Tip O'Neill
retired.
Jim Wright's role as Speaker was far broader than just being head of
the House. He was, like Tip, the leader of a Democratic opposition to a
Republican President. And he left his stamp on more than just House
procedures. He left his stamp on policy, particularly on U.S. foreign
policy in Central America where he played a key role in fostering the
peace process that eventually settled a decade-long conflict in the
region. He left the speakership and the House in 1989 in the middle of a
politically charged ethics investigation of the sort that was becoming
quite common around that time. And it was a trend in American politics
that Speaker Wright denounced as ``mindless cannibalism'' in his last
memorable speech to the House. Speaker Wright returned to Texas where he
has pursued an active life in business, education, and writing. He's
mined his Washington experience in teaching a popular course at Texas
Christian University called ``Congress and the President.'' He's been
writing newspaper columns, reviewing books and lecturing, and we're glad
he could come here to talk to us about his years as Speaker.
After we hear from Speaker Wright, we will hear a Democratic
perspective on Wright's speakership from David Bonior, who served in the
House for 26 years and rose himself to the upper ranks of his party's
leadership. He was first elected in 1976 and represented a blue-collar
district in southeastern Michigan for all those years. And one of his
first big steps into leadership came during Jim Wright's era when Mr.
Bonior was named chief deputy whip. In 1991 he was elected majority whip
by the House Democratic Caucus. He retired from the House in 2002 to run
for Governor of Michigan. Since then he's served on the boards of
several public service organizations and he teaches labor studies now at
Wayne State University.
After we hear from Mr. Bonior, we will hear from the Republican side
of the aisle, from former Texas Congressman Tom Loeffler, who was in his
day David Bonior's counterpart in the House Republican leadership. He
was chief deputy whip when Bob Michel was the GOP leader, and he helped
to round up the votes in 1981 for Ronald Reagan's tax and spending
policies. After leaving the House in 1986, he worked in the Reagan White
House and with Speaker Wright on resolving the conflict in Central
America. He's gone on to found his own law and lobbying firm, and he's
continued to be active in Presidential and party politics. Let's start
with Speaker Wright.
Speaker WRIGHT. Thank you for that gracious introduction. I can't
begin without commenting about the thoroughly sentimental attachment I
have to this occasion, this day, here in this gracious room. It was
exactly 31 years ago today--on November 12, 1972--that I had the
wonderful honor to be married to Betty. And it was right here in this
room, by the grace of Speaker Carl Albert, that we had our wedding
reception.
This has been a marvelous, even celebratory, occasion for me. I hope
that our collective recollections will be beneficial to all of us here,
and to those who view them on C-SPAN or read of them in the published
transcript. Looking back in retrospect and rejoicing in remembered
incidents that some of us shared together reminds me that to be chosen
by one's colleagues to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives is probably the greatest honor and among the highest
responsibilities that anyone could bestow, and I shall always be
grateful for that enormous privilege. The speakership provides fully as
much challenge as any Speaker is prepared to accept. Over the years, the
office has been what changing times and individual occupants have made
of it.
Sam Rayburn was Speaker when I entered the House in 1955. He
impressed me enormously. It was from his example, no doubt, that I
formed my basic concept of a Speaker's role. Rayburn was an effective
leader. He saw national needs and made things happen. Under his
guidance, the legislative branch was more creative than passive. During
the Eisenhower Presidency, it initiated most of the domestic agenda.
Mr. Rayburn was a stickler for polite and civil debate. He taught
that a lawmaker's greatest asset was the ability to disagree without
being disagreeable. He insisted that Members treat one another with
courtesy and respect. ``The Speaker,'' said Rayburn, ``always takes the
word of a Member.'' In his mind, we all were gentlemen--and ladies were
ladies.
One illustration of the way Rayburn led is vivid in my mind. It was
1957, my second term in Congress. The Senate, for the first time since
Reconstruction days, voted cloture on a civil rights bill and passed it.
Throughout the Old South, including Texas, there erupted a cascade of
editorial and vocal outrage. Several hundred letters of bitter
denunciation flooded my office.
As the bill came to the House, Speaker Rayburn sent a page to ask me
to come to the podium and talk with him. He didn't cajole and didn't
threaten. I remember exactly what he said: ``Jim, I think you want to
vote for this bill. I'm sure you're getting hundreds of letters
threatening you with all manner of retribution if you do. But I believe
you're strong enough to overcome that, and I know you'll be proud in
future years that you did!'' As things turned out, he was right on all
four counts.
That's the way he led. He appealed to the best in us. Never to fear
or hate, or negative motivations. That's why I loved him. And that's why
I wanted to emulate him.
From this, and from my personal friendships with Speakers John
McCormack, Carl Albert and Tip O'Neill, I had developed over a period of
32 years an exalted view of the Speaker's role, maybe even an impossibly
demanding conception of what a Speaker should be able to achieve for the
country.
Four Policy Changes
Challenges beset every Speaker. Perhaps my most difficult balancing
act lay in trying to advance a progressive domestic agenda that I
thought important, over the active opposition of a popular and
determined President, while trying to bridge the gap between that
President and his severest critics in matters of foreign affairs.
As I prepared to assume the Speaker's office in January 1987, our
government faced three problems of critical proportions: a historic
budget deficit, a threatening trade deficit, and a growing social
deficit. I firmly believed that all three deserved active attention.
Before I could implement a plan to address these problems, a fourth
challenge arose. We were suddenly and unexpectedly confronted with a
shocking constitutional crisis whirling around the Iran-Contra
revelations. That news exploded on the public consciousness just 6 weeks
prior to my election as Speaker.
These four realities of the historic moment would shape the thrust
and direction of my 2\1/2\ years of tenure. Although clearly related,
each of these problems represented a separate challenge and required a
separate strategy.
What we were able to do was far from a one-man effort. I discussed
these problems daily with Majority Leader Tom Foley, wise and more
cautious than I; Majority Whip Tony Coelho, brilliant and creative; and
my newly appointed deputy whip, David Bonior, a man of forthright
convictions and trusted implicitly by our Members.
Budget Deficit
The budget deficit, unattended, could doom any serious effort to
come to grips with the other two deficits. In the past 6 years, we had
doubled military expenditures (from $148 billion in 1980 to
approximately $300 billion in 1986) while cutting taxes by approximately
$165 billion a year.
As a result, we had almost tripled the national debt. In 6 years it
had skyrocketed from slightly under $1 trillion to almost $3 trillion as
I took the Speaker's chair. The annual interest payments on the debt had
skyrocketed from about $50 billion in 1980 to some $150 billion,
draining away that much more money from our Government's commitments.
President Reagan, with all his winsome wit, inspiring charm and
unshakable faith in what he called ``supply side'' economics, actually
seemed to believe that we could double military spending, drastically
reduce taxes for the top brackets, and still balance the budget simply
by cutting ``waste, fraud and abuse'' in domestic programs.
Unfortunately, by 1987, the total elimination of all discretionary
domestic expenditures would not have balanced the budget. The President,
however, refused to agree to altering course. Obviously, if a change
were to come, Congress would have to take the initiative.
It seemed clear to me that the costly drift could not be arrested
except by a combination of three things: more revenues (translate
taxes), and cuts in both military and domestic expenditures. No one of
these three could attain the result alone. Most Members of Congress
recognized this truth, but convincing them that the public understood
and would applaud heroic action on the budgetary front was a major
challenge.
What is a Speaker to do? He sees the Treasury hemorrhaging but is
aware of his colleagues' nervousness about applying the only tourniquet
that will stop the bleeding.
I knew how hard it would be to patch together any budget resolution
that would pass the House, let alone one with real teeth in it. And the
country sorely needed serious increases in several vital domestic
programs.
Bill Gray of Pennsylvania was chairman of the Budget Committee and a
gifted ally. Articulate, knowledgeable and patient, he led the committee
with skill and understanding as its members worked and groped their way
toward a realistic plan. Several times, at his invitation, I came and
sat with them as they talked their way to a logical conclusion.
The resolution that emerged in mid-spring called for $36 billion in
actual deficit reduction, half of this in new taxes and half in spending
cuts. The $18 billion in reduced expenditures was divided evenly between
defense spending and domestic programs. This budget package passed the
House by a comfortable margin.
Congress still was a long way from achieving the goal, but we had
made a beginning. Ultimately, I would learn just how hard it was to pass
any tax bill with the White House adamantly opposed.
Trade Deficit
The trade deficit, as 1987 began, was only starting to command
serious public attention. It had already stretched its fingers deeply
into American pockets. Six years earlier, at the end of the seventies,
we were the world's biggest creditor nation. By the time I assumed the
speakership, our country had become the world's largest debtor. During
1986, Americans spent $175 billion more for goods from other countries
than we sold abroad in American-made products.
A growing number of forward-looking American business, labor and
academic leaders, alarmed by the trends they saw, had begun to ask for a
concerted national effort to stem the tide. Our role had reversed from
seller to buyer and from lender to borrower. We were borrowing from
other countries not only to finance our purchases from them but to
finance our national debt. More and more of our Government bonds, and
more and more private domestic assets were held by foreigners--land,
banks, factories, hotels, newspapers. We were like a family which used
to own the community bank but discovered suddenly that it no longer did
and owed more to the bank than any other family in town.
The Democratic Leadership Council held its annual conference in
Williamsburg, Virginia, on December 12, 1986. There I addressed the
trade issue--the need to improve America's competitive position by
enhancing productivity, reviving the level of industrial research,
modernizing factories, updating job skills, and tightening reciprocity
requirements in our trade agreements with other countries, to include
fair wages for workers who produced goods in bilateral trade.
Afterward, I had a long conversation with Lloyd Hand, former White
House Chief of Protocol. He and I went to see John Young who, along with
other business leaders, had in the past year at President Reagan's
request conducted an intensive study of the trade problem. The business
group issued a report, which they felt had been generally ignored.
At their encouragement, I began to explore the possibility of a
national conference on competitiveness to be attended by distinguished
specialists in the fields of business, labor and academia.
Eager that our efforts should be bipartisan, I talked personally
with House Republican Leader Bob Michel and Senate Minority Leader Bob
Dole, as well as with Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd. All agreed we
needed such a meeting, and we made up a broad list of invitees. We sent
out invitations to this blue ribbon list jointly in our four names.
This conference was scheduled for January 21, 1987, here in the
Cannon Caucus Room. I talked with Treasury Secretary Jim Baker and U.S.
Trade Representative Clayton Yuetter, inviting their attendance.
A week later the invitations went out to the selected cross section
of experts, and I discovered how difficult it would be to perfect a
truly bipartisan approach to the trade issue. Both Republican leaders,
Bob Michel and Bob Dole, called to tell me they were under heavy
pressure from Reagan administration officials to withdraw from formal
sponsorship of the event.
The White House may have felt that we needed no change in our trade
policies, or possibly it resented congressional efforts to take an
initiative. I was disappointed but not discouraged. It just meant we
would have to work that much harder to achieve bipartisan accord.
The conference took place as scheduled, attended by many Republican
and Democratic Members of each House. The panel of distinguished
authorities included corporate executives, union leaders, university
presidents, and academic specialists.
So broad was the range of their constructive suggestions--from
improved job training for America's work force to a renewal of business
incentives for modernizing America's aging industrial plants, from
antitrust enforcement to renegotiation of copyright and intellectual
property rights agreements--that I knew it would require the active
cooperation of at least 12 House committees.
On the next day, I hosted a luncheon for House committee chairmen in
the Speaker's private dining room. In the first 2 weeks of the session,
the House, at my urging, had already passed a clean water bill and a
highway bill by votes easily big enough to override vetoes. We had begun
committee hearings on the first major bill to provide help for the
homeless. A spirit of ebullience prevailed. We discussed the agenda for
the year, the bills which would comprise our effort to surmount the
three deficits. One famous first: committee chairmen all accepted
specific deadlines for having their bills ready for floor action.
On the trade bill I promised to respect each committee's turf by
assigning separate titles of a composite work to the committees that had
jurisdiction over the varied segments. Chairmen Dan Rostenkowski of Ways
and Means, John Dingell of Commerce, Jack Brooks of Judiciary, and Kika
de la Garza of Agriculture each promised to give top priority to their
segments of this important centerpiece of our common agenda.
Five days later, following President Reagan's State of the Union
Message, Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd and I divided the 30 minutes
allotted by the television networks for the Democratic response. Senator
Byrd addressed foreign and military affairs and I the domestic policy
agenda.
From the cascade of mail and spontaneous telephoned response, I knew
within days that we had struck a vital nerve with the public and could
count on a lot of popular support if we stuck with our promises.
Eager for a bipartisan approach, I invited leading Democrats and
Republicans from 12 House committees to sit together around the tables
in the Speaker's dining room and discuss ways to improve our Nation's
trade balance. We agreed to incorporate the best ideas from our several
sources into an omnibus bill and to schedule it for action in the House
on April 28.
This omnibus bill, H.R. 3, passed the House with Democratic and
Republican support by the preponderant vote of 290 to 137. H.R. 3
represented the most important trade legislation since the thirties. The
Senate held the bill under consideration for more than a year, altering
and fine tuning several of its provisions, before finally passing it
largely intact in the summer of 1988.
One provision, requiring advance notification to the workers before
summarily shutting down an American plant, drew the ire of President
Reagan. He vetoed the big bill, protesting that such a requirement had
no place in trade legislation.
We probably could have overridden his veto. To avoid conflict, we
simply removed that provision, made it into a separate bill, and then
reenacted both bills simultaneously without changing so much as a comma.
President Reagan signed the two bills. What mattered to us was the
result, not winning a partisan fight with the President by overriding
his veto.
Social Deficit
The social deficit--a growing backlog of human problems and unmet
social needs here in our country--presented a different challenge
entirely. As hard as I tried to promote consensus on issues of
international trade, I knew it would be futile to try to conciliate the
position of the congressional majority on social policy with that of the
Reagan administration. Too wide a gulf separated us.
Since the Reagan budget amendments and tax cuts of 1981, a lot of
Americans at the bottom of the economic spectrum had fallen through the
safety net. For the first time since the thirties, an army of homeless
people had begun to appear on America's streets.
The level of funding had been cut for education and civilian
research. Several years of underinvestment had begun to rip holes in our
social fabric. There'd been a slow deterioration of America's public
infrastructure--the roads, bridges, airports, dams, navigable waterways,
underground pipes--all that lifeline network of public facilities on
which Americans depend. The cities of America, and their problems, were
being ignored.
Since 1980 our annual investment in America--public services such as
education, transportation, law enforcement, environmental protection,
housing and public health--those things that tend to make life better
for the average citizen--had declined by about one-fourth.
Something else, new and alien to the American experience, was
beginning to appear--the disturbing phenomenon of downward mobility. For
the first time since polling entered the American scene, a majority of
Americans were saying they did not expect their children to enjoy as
good a standard of living as they, themselves, had enjoyed.
As Kevin Phillips would point out in his book, The Politics of Rich
and Poor, the gap between rich and poor was widening, thanks in
considerable part to the conscious economic policies of the past 6
years--less for student loans to improvident youngsters, more breaks for
upper-income taxpayers.
Our spending priorities during the eighties, I was convinced, had
been badly skewed. A big majority of the Democrats in Congress were
eager to begin a reversal of the 6-year trend, to restore some of the
necessary social underpinnings. There was evidence that the public
supported this objective. Polls showed that 62 percent of the people
rated the economy ``not so good'' or ``poor'' and 72 percent believed
Congress must do more for the homeless, for affordable housing and
educational opportunities.
As Speaker, I felt a strong obligation to set in motion a reversal
of the trends that were moving so rapidly toward the concentration of
America's wealth into fewer hands. This meant confronting the
administration directly on a wide range of domestic priorities. Tom
Foley, Tony Coelho, David Bonior, and I agreed that we would have to
begin with a few identifiable and achievable objectives.
Getting the Congress and the public to focus on these specific
objectives was the challenge. In my State of the Union response in
January 1987, I named six action priorities. We had reserved low bill
numbers to identify these agenda items. One year later, at the beginning
of 1988, I was able to give a televised progress report. The clean water
bill, the highway bill and the trade reform bill were H.R. 1, 2, and 3,
respectively. Each was passed on schedule and each prevailed over a
Presidential veto.
Additionally, we passed the first bill to provide help for volunteer
groups offering shelters and meals for the homeless, and the first
important expansion of Medicare for catastrophic illnesses, a bill which
later would be repealed in a fight over funding. We increased amounts
for college student aid. We authorized a massive effort to combat drugs,
and this omnibus bill, like the trade bill, was crafted and passed with
bipartisan sponsorship and support.
In 1988, for the first time in more than 40 years, Congress passed
all thirteen major appropriation bills and delivered them to the
President for signing into law before the start of the new fiscal year.
The public responded enthusiastically to this activist schedule.
Polls showed the American people were giving Congress higher job ratings
than they had done in many years.
Of the first three, overriding challenges, the 100th Congress made
good on two of them--the trade deficit and the social deficit. On those,
Congress may have earned an A-.
We did less well on the budget. While the House passed a budget
resolution cutting the fiscal deficit by an appreciable amount and also
pushed through by a hard-fought one-vote margin a reconciliation bill to
carry out that objective, that level of deficit reduction, particularly
as it involved taxes, could not be sustained in the Senate.
Our House budget resolution had called for a net deficit reduction
of $38 billion. We had divided this figure equally among military
expenditures, domestic expenditures, and selective reductions in the
Reagan tax breaks of 1981 for some of America's most affluent citizens.
The House reconciliation bill remained true to this pattern, and
confronted me with the most legislatively confounding day of my
speakership. That day was mentioned in the prior discussion segment.
Looking back, I am not sure I made the right or wisest personal
judgments that day.
That was the first and only time in my speakership when our system
of vote counters failed us. Their composite report had showed we could
pass the rule for the reconciliation bill. To my great surprise, we lost
the vote on the rule. The unexpected controversy involved inclusion in
the bill of some reforms in the welfare system that many Members thought
should be handled as a separate bill. They prevailed, and the rule went
down.
Ordinarily, this would have meant we would have to wait for the next
legislative day to consider an amended rule. Meanwhile, the news media
would have had 24 hours in which to trumpet the news that the House,
confronted with the tough decisions on taxes and the budget, had been
unable to face up to the hard choices.
Eager to forestall that, I adjourned the House and reconvened it a
few minutes later. Technically, we now were in a second legislative day
and could take up an amended rule and the bill, dropping the one
disputed provision to be handled separately, on its own.
That was legal, but it was a rarely used tactic. A good number of my
Republican colleagues thought my decision heavyhanded. Maybe it was. To
make matters worse, later that afternoon, on the final passage of the
reconciliation bill, there was a [one vote--205 to 206--defeat of a
deficit reduction bill.] Told that Democrats Marty Russo of Illinois and
George Miller of California, who were recorded ``no,'' had changed their
minds and were returning from the House Office Building to change their
votes, I held the vote open for about 10 minutes to accommodate them.
And their changed votes, of course, would have resolved the vote in the
affirmative. They didn't return.
Just as I was about to rap the gavel and declare that the bill had
failed of passage, Democrat Jim Chapman of Texas did return. He went to
the well of the House and changed his vote from ``no'' to ``aye.'' That
flipped the margin. That vital reconciliation bill passed by that one
vote!
But the way I had handled it provoked a storm of protest among the
minority. Trent Lott, for one, hit the back of a seat so hard with his
open hand that I supposed he'd broken it. Others, too, were quite angry.
The bottom line is that what I'd done that day did not contribute to
harmonious relations. Although the maneuvers were legal and in keeping
with the rules, my mind was too determined, my attitude too insistent. I
believe that I offended a number of my Republican colleagues. I won the
vote but sacrificed a more precious commodity--good will. In the end, it
wasn't worth it. If that day were to do over again, I like to think I'd
do it differently.
Our ultimate performance on the budget was impressive only in the
sense that it kept things from getting much worse. Maybe we deserve only
a C+ on the budget. Maybe a B+ overall.
As Speaker, I spent a large piece of my political capital in the
effort to make the tax burden fall more fairly, only to discover that I
had overmatched myself!
Any tax bill, I learned to my dismay, was virtually unattainable
absent the President's agreement. It takes two-thirds to override
vetoes. We simply could not get public opinion focused clearly on the
issue of tax fairness and the unambiguous fact that, without more taxes
from somebody, the budget can never be balanced. Having failed to draw
that issue sharply enough, I believe my leadership was just not quite
equal to that particular challenge.
Iran-Contra
One major challenge remained--to head off the constitutional crisis
brewing over the newly revealed Iran-Contra scandal, and to settle the
bitterly divisive issue of our covert involvement in Central American
wars.
On three occasions, Congress had voted to discontinue all military
assistance to the Contras attempting to overthrow Nicaragua's
Government. In the previous year, we had voted to ban the selling of any
weapons to Iran.
Now we learned that a secret group, operating out of the White
House, had contrived, contrary to these laws, to sell U.S. weapons to
Iran. Perpetrators had turned over the proceeds, without notifying
anyone in Congress, to the military forces trying to overthrow
Nicaragua's Government. President Reagan vowed that he had not known
personally of this, and I wanted ardently to believe him.
This was the most shocking revelation since the Watergate burglary
and coverup. At least four laws--the National Security Act, the Arms
Export Control Act, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, and
the Anti-Terrorism Act--had been blatantly violated.
So flagrant was the flouting of law that a hot volcanic lava of
anger began boiling inside the Congress. First whispers, the audible
demands for impeachment proceedings growled in private conversations
wherever Democratic Members met. Congress was out of session when the
shocking news broke, but pressure was building. Soon word leaked out
that Lt. Col. Oliver North was systematically shredding all written
evidence relating to the illicit adventure before Congress could
reconvene and subpoena the documents. This fanned the flames to a higher
intensity.
This situation had explosive potential. During December, several
House committee and subcommittee chairmen contacted me, each wanting to
schedule hearings on some separate facet of the big story, which
dominated Washington news that month. Without a clear sense of
direction, the new Congress could degenerate into a ten-ring circus as
committees vied with one another for sensational confrontations with
various officials of the executive branch.
The last thing we needed was an impeachment outcry, or a frontal
challenge to the President's personal integrity. Like other Members and
millions of private citizens, I had agonized through the long weeks in
1973 that led to the impeachment hearing on President Nixon, culminating
in his resignation. I wanted no repeat of that scenario. The country
could ill afford it.
Determined that all of the pertinent facts must be disclosed in a
dignified way, preserving the congressional authority without
precipitating a full scale constitutional crisis, I met with Senate
Majority Leader Robert Byrd. He felt exactly as I did. We saw no
national purpose to be served by embarrassing the President personally.
Jointly, we announced that there would be one congressional hearing
on the subject, not several. It would be a joint meeting of select House
and Senate committees. Senator Byrd and I would appoint Democratic
Members; Minority Leaders Michel and Dole would select Republican
Members.
Anxious to protect the credibility and prestige of the special
select committee, I very carefully chose the most respected authorities
I could find: Chairmen Peter Rodino of Judiciary, Jack Brooks of
Government Operations, Dante Fascell of Foreign Affairs, Les Aspin of
Armed Services, and Louis Stokes of Intelligence.
To signal the importance I attached to this mission, I asked House
Majority Leader Tom Foley to serve as my personal representative and
appointed Edward P. Boland to the panel, the principal author of several
of the laws that had been violated. And I told each of them personally
that I thought it would be a disservice to the Nation if anyone
mentioned the word ``impeachment.''
I thought a long while before choosing a chairman for the whole
group and finally settled on Lee Hamilton of Indiana, ranking member of
the Foreign Affairs Committee and former chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee. He had a reputation for objectivity and a
judicious, non-inflammatory manner. I did not want the hearing to be, or
even seem to be, a witch hunt. As much as I disagreed with Mr. Reagan on
domestic priorities, I disapproved anyone with a private agenda of
personally embarrassing the President. To complete my list of
appointees, I named Ed Jenkins of Georgia, a good country lawyer. I was
not trying to prejudge the committee's findings. I was trying to
moderate their explosive potential to split the country apart.
Senator Byrd also chose a responsible panel. He and I agreed that,
to the extent of our ability to influence it, the hearing must not smack
of partisanship. It would be open to the media and nationally televised.
Byrd's chairman, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, was ideally suited by
temperament and conviction for his role. His demeanor was calm and
rational. He and Hamilton did their best to be impartial and
scrupulously fair to Republican colleagues appointed by Dole and Michel
and to hold down temptations to inflammatory rhetoric.
Hamilton wanted to agree in advance to an arbitrary date to
terminate the proceedings. Otherwise, he argued, they could go virtually
forever to the detriment of other business. He also proposed giving
limited immunity from prosecution to induce testimony from Lt. Col.
North, the individual most involved in handling a number of the details
of the covert transaction. At least two of the House panelists privately
protested, but a majority agreed to back the chairman's decision. As it
turns out, this may have compromised the efforts of the special
prosecutor, Lawrence E. Walsh. But our overriding concern in the
congressional leadership, frankly, was less in embarrassing the
administration and sending people to jail than in getting at the truth,
maintaining the Nation's equilibrium, emphasizing the rule of law, and
avoiding a bloody constitutional confrontation.
Additionally, I felt that we had to heal the malingering wound that
had festered for 5 years over our country's secret and sometimes illegal
sponsorship of the gory attempts to overthrow the Nicaraguan Government
by force of arms. More than 100,000 people had died in Nicaragua and El
Salvador. Congress itself had been closely divided, vacillating between
funding and rebuffing President Reagan's demands for military aid to the
Contras.
In July 1987, my friend and former colleague, Tom Loeffler, came by
my office to inform me that he had been appointed by the President as an
emissary to Congress. We talked about Central America. I told him I
thought the Iran-Contra revelations had destroyed any chance of the
President's getting renewed funding to resume the war.
Tom Loeffler was already a good friend, a fellow Texan, and I
trusted his word implicitly. He suggested something entirely new and
different: That as Speaker I join President Reagan in a bipartisan
initiative for peace. We would jointly call on the Central American
nations to negotiate settlements in Nicaragua and El Salvador based on a
cease-fire, political amnesty for those who had been in revolt, and free
elections to resolve the issues in dispute by popular will. In other
words, ballots instead of bullets, with assurances of U.S. support.
That idea appealed strongly to me. After talking with the White
House, Republican House leaders, and the bipartisan Senate leadership, I
was encouraged. Some of my fellow Democrats were skeptical of the
President's intentions, but most felt I should take the risk if there
were a chance it could lead to peace. I talked also with Secretary of
State George Shultz, who was instructed by President Reagan to work with
me in the drafting of a joint statement.
Before formally agreeing, however, I wanted to test the waters in
Central America. I had personal conversations with Presidents Duarte of
El Salvador and Arias of Costa Rica. Both of them rejoiced at the
prospect. They believed a united propeace front in Washington could lead
to a series of negotiated settlements throughout Central America and end
the bloodshed.
House Republican Leader Bob Michel and I asked Nicaraguan Ambassador
Carlos Tunnermann to meet with us in the Capitol to probe the Nicaraguan
Government's probable response to such an initiative as we had in mind.
``What would it take,'' we asked, ``for your country to get rid of Cuban
and Russian military personnel, live in peace with your neighbors and
restore the constitutional freedoms of your people that were suspended
in the emergency law?''
Tunnermann answered that his government would be quite willing to do
all of these things if we would simply ``stop financing the invasion''
of Nicaragua.
The President and I jointly issued the call for a regional cease-
fire, and peace negotiations on August 5, just 2 days before the five
Central American Presidents were to meet in conference in Esquipulas,
Guatemala.
The result was better than I had dared hope. The Costa Rican
Ambassador called me from the conference site to report the happy news
that all five Presidents had entered a formal agreement embodying almost
all the elements of the Wright-Reagan plan. The principal architect of
the Esquipulas accord was President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica. For this
work, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
At my invitation, Arias stopped off on his way through Washington in
September and addressed the House. Meanwhile, the Nicaraguan Government
appointed a peace commission, opened newspapers and radio stations that
had been shut down, offered amnesty to those who had made war against
the government, and invited them to participate in the political process
including truly free elections, which ultimately would be held in 1990.
The same amnesty procedure was going on under Duarte's direction in El
Salvador. I was on cloud nine! From my point of view, everything was on
track.
At about this point, I discovered that the White House was far from
happy with the turn events had taken. While I fully expected our joint
statement to stimulate the movement toward peace, President Reagan's
advisors apparently anticipated refusal by the Nicaraguan Government to
comply. Negative comments emanating from the White House gradually made
it clear to me that highly placed people in the administration did not
actually want a peacefully negotiated settlement in Nicaragua. They
fully expected the talks to end in acrimony so they could use the
``failure'' of the attempted peace efforts as a justification for
renewing the war.
This confronted me with a moral dilemma. At the urging of the
administration, I had joined in the bipartisan call for peace. Overjoyed
at the initial success of our efforts, I had met, at the White House's
request, with leaders of the Contra directorate. Most of them, I saw,
had faith in the peace effort. I also met with the Sandinista leaders
whenever they came to my office. I was convinced that most Nicaraguans
on both sides were eager for peace. But some bitterness lingered.
Someone, aside from me, had to be a go-between, an honest broker who
could bring the two sides together. Ideally, a Nicaraguan.
The only Nicaraguan fully trusted by both factions, I had learned
from trips I'd taken to the region, was Catholic Cardinal Miguel Obando
y Bravo. Responsible people in both camps agreed that he was the one to
monitor the cease-fire and help arbitrate the differences. As Speaker
and co-author of the call for peace, I met with the cardinal, whom I
knew personally, at the papal nuncio's office in Washington, on November
13, 1987, and encouraged him to undertake that critical role. He agreed,
and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, at my personal urging, agreed to
give the cardinal a free hand.
The White House, bitterly resentful of my efforts in helping to keep
the peace process on track, began attacking me angrily in the press. The
President and Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams considered my
endeavors intrusive and presumptuous. Perhaps they were. But having
committed myself in good faith to the effort to make peace, I was
unwilling to be a party to its deliberate unraveling or allow that
result if I could prevent it. Too many lives already had been lost. As a
percentage of Central America's population, their war dead would equate
to something like 5 million Americans--more than we have lost in all of
our wars combined.
On two occasions--in December 1987 and February 1988--the
President's forces tried to forsake the peace process altogether and
revive the war by renewing military aid for the Contras. On both
occasions, a majority in Congress voted down the request. At my personal
urging, Congress did appropriate funds for humanitarian assistance--
food, clothing, shelter and medical needs--for the Contra forces during
the cease-fire.
As a consequence of my unwillingness to abandon the effort I had
helped set in motion, I became a target for many personal attacks, both
in the conservative press and from some of my Republican colleagues in
Congress. It is ironic that, in bringing peace to Central Americ