Burning Down the House

by Julian E. Zelizer

  The prominently displayed story in The Washington Post, noted the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Daley, “caused as much consternation among House Democrats as any element of the 11-month ethics investigation of Wright’s personal and financial dealings.”94 Despite all the unease that Democrats felt toward Gingrich’s renegade and reckless tactics, the John Mack story was like a punch in the gut. Ringle’s story seemed to give credence to the idea that although Gingrich was unsavory, reckless, and unfair, his targets, the Speaker and the Democratic majority, were vulnerable because of the broken ethical culture they had normalized.

  In the Los Angeles Times, the radical feminist theorist Andrea Dworkin wrote, “There’s no way to live with what John Mack did to Pamela Small in 1973.” Dworkin argued that Mack thought that “bludgeoning the skull of a woman with a hammer” and “slashing her throat repeatedly with a steak knife” were things that “any man” could do under pressure. And although she took equal aim at a negligent press—“If Wright’s time had not come, if he were not under indictment by the House Ethics Committee, the public would not have been told about Mack”—in her mind, Democratic insiders in Congress knew about his crime, and they did not care.95

  For congressional Republicans, the Mack–Wright saga, as it played out on the airwaves and across the nation’s news and opinion pages, could not have come at a better time. Conservative talk radio shows devoted broadcasts to Mack. One caller after another spoke about how angry they felt. This was like the battle over the pay raise on steroids. Considerable attention was paid to the question of how and why Wright could have decided to hire Mack to begin with. Wright’s judgment was questioned, as was his patriotism. The shows, looking to duplicate the results they’d achieved during the pay raise controversy, urged listeners to call their House members.96

  An elated National Republican Congressional Committee put out a press release containing some of the most controversial lines from Ringle’s article. It reminded readers, if they even needed reminding, that Mack, the man who had assaulted a woman and then left her for dead, was executive director of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. He was “Speaker Wright’s ‘right-hand man’” and had never served a day in a federal penitentiary. The release then asked why Democratic leaders like Coelho had defended him.97 When Guy Vander Jagt told Ed Rollins, with whom he now cochaired the NRCC, that he thought the statement had gone too far, one of the most brilliant masters of hardball politics responded, “We’ve got to go after the Tony Coelhos of the world when they give us openings.”98

  The Mack story left Democrats at a loss. They needed to respond to the tsunami of bad press coming their way but had no good options. Their Speaker had once again fumbled the ball and had given their opponents an opportunity to carry it across the goal line.

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  The Speaker and his staff were learning that once a scandal accelerated, it was difficult to control and, like hot embers jumping a fire wall, could easily burst into new areas that even the original accusers had not anticipated.

  The conversations in Washington about Wright’s resignation intensified as a result of the Ringle story. The New Yorker, the National Journal, and The Washington Post all ran stories speculating on how Tom Foley would be as the next Speaker of the House. Though Foley refused to talk about the issue and firmly stood by his leader, most of the stories about him were extraordinarily positive, portraying him as someone who was cautious and a skillful agent of compromise without any kinds of skeletons in his political closet. When Dick Gephardt was asked at a breakfast with reporters about the odds that Foley would become the new Speaker if Wright had to step down, the congressman turned visibly uncomfortable as he admitted, “Foley is very, very popular with Democrats in the House. He is a personal friend of mine. He is doing very, very well as majority leader.”99 Gephardt managed to say something without saying anything, intimating that Foley would be good for the job without slamming Wright directly.

  When the Speaker returned to Washington from a visit to his district on May 8, just four days after Ringle’s story appeared, the swell of reporters following his every move became so intense that he ran into an office to escape. “I am besieged,” he complained to his aides. “I’m surrounded, like Travis at the Alamo,” a reference to the head of the Texas forces killed by Mexican soldiers at the end of a thirteen-day standoff at the historic fort in 1836.100 Mack felt the same. He and his wife had sent their children out of town until the storm died down. Their home was perpetually monitored by television cameras and reporters waiting for them to come out, while the family allegedly received threatening calls in response to what he had done.

  On May 11, Mack announced that he would resign, one week after the story appeared. “When I was 19 years old, I made a terrible and tragic mistake that caused great harm to another human being. For that I am and always will be full of remorse. I wish I could rewrite the past, but unfortunately I can’t,” Mack said in his statement. “To Pamela Small, and also to my family, all I can say now is what I have said many times before and to myself every day since this happened. And that is, I am sorry. Truly sorry.”101 The Speaker accepted the resignation with “sadness and regret.” In his formal response, Wright repeated what had become his mantra since his original decision to hire Mack back in the 1970s. “I was told that he had served some 27 months upon conviction of a crime but was not told the details of the crime. My heart goes out to the young woman who was the victim of that crime so many years ago, and I wish there was something I might do to be of benefit to her.” The Speaker reiterated that “I was willing to give this young man another chance, and in the intervening years I have never had occasion to regret it.”102

  “It is like a never-ending funeral with an open casket,” one Democrat admitted, aptly describing the deep dilemma they shared with Wright. The Kansas Democrat Dan Glickman said that the Mack story “personalized the Speaker’s problems out there [with voters]. The ethics charges were abstract, financial, legal, and complicated. But this thing was something people could relate to.”103 According to the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Beryl Anthony of Arkansas, “We heard it in the Congressional committee. We got telephone calls. The reaction was a normal emotional outpouring for the victim of an indefensible crime.”104

  The evening of Mack’s resignation coincided with the twenty-sixth annual Democratic Congressional Dinner at the Washington Hilton hotel. Wright slipped on his tuxedo jacket, knowing he would be running the gauntlet that night. As the Democrats were gathered for the $1,500-a-plate black-tie fund-raising gala for congressional candidates, the printed programs at each place setting ironically read, TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF GREAT LEADERSHIP. As soon as he and Betty walked into the building, television cameras and photographers swarmed them as they made their way to their table. Reaching to grab his wife’s hand while they moved through the media horde, the Speaker mumbled, “We’re going to win, we’re going to win,” when asked about the Ethics Committee. When another reporter called out, asking for Wright’s thoughts about John Mack, he said angrily, “I don’t know anything.”105

  So uncomfortable were his colleagues that the Oklahoma Democrat Mike Synar stepped in between the press and the Speaker in order to protect him. “You get up off of him. Come on, let him have a break,” Synar snapped. The Ways and Means Committee chairman, Dan Rostenkowski, a tall and imposing Chicago pol, made his position clear by walking away from the reporters as they tried to ask him questions. But he couldn’t resist turning around and grumbling at them, “You fellows are trying him and beating the crap out of this guy. I’m going to wait to see what develops. Jesus!” Then he turned back and stomped off.

  The Mack scandal undermined any remaining confidence Democrats held with regard to their leader. Without allowing reporters to attribute statements to them, many legislators anonymously told the press that Wright’s time was over. A midwestern Democrat ruefull
y confided to the Post, “I would like him to step down. . . . Even if he survives the ethics problem, I don’t think he can survive the political problem,” while another from the Northeast insisted, “There is nobody who thinks the guy can make it. Nobody.” One prominent Washington lawyer acknowledged, “He’s a fighter, but even Rocky Marciano went down occasionally. How many body blows can he take?”106

  Republicans sat back and watched with delight. Gingrich hardly said a word during these tense days, happy to temporarily take himself out of the story as Wright imploded.

  And the Democrats really seemed to be destroying themselves. As if the committee report and the Mack scandal weren’t enough, yet another scandal connected to the Speaker moved into the spotlight, with devastating effects. Tony Coelho, the Democratic whip whose reputation was already damaged as a result of his close association and strident defense of Mack, suddenly announced that he would resign in mid-June because of ethics problems. Many Democrats had long viewed Coelho with suspicion. His taste for the world of money and lobbyists as well as his extremely aggressive fundraising style didn’t feel right in an era of higher political accountability. The rules had changed, but the Californian had not changed with them.

  Coelho’s ethics scandal started in April when The Washington Post reported that he used campaign funds to purchase $100,000 in junk bonds underwritten by the notorious Wall Street firm Drexel Burnham Lambert. With the media investigating how members earned money as a result of Wright’s case, Coelho’s financial records came under greater scrutiny. Drexel had been at the forefront of the sale of controversial bonds, which were both high yield and high risk, and Coelho’s earnings were eye-popping. Moreover, Coelho held the bonds in 1986, when he headed the DCCC and the committee received $100,000 from Drexel’s political action committee. The investment banking firm, known for its aggressive political outreach and lobbying, also gave money to Coelho’s personal political action committee. Adding to the bad optics, Michael Milken, Drexel’s junk bond king and a personal friend to Coelho, was indicted on a securities violation charge. Milken was at the center of a series of high-profile financial scandals then shaking Wall Street. Coelho’s team insisted that the majority whip’s problems with the firm were the result of a Drexel computer error. The firm had listed the campaign committee as the bonds’ purchaser, even though it had really been Coelho personally. Coelho also stood by the claim that he had not consulted with Drexel or Milken about the investment. Common Cause called on the House Ethics Committee to investigate whether the investment was the kind of “favor or benefit” that legislators were prohibited from obtaining.

  After just a few weeks of investigation, it had become clear that the original charge, that Coelho had used campaign funds, was false. But on May 14, just three days after his friend and business partner John Mack resigned, Coelho admitted that Thomas Spiegel, a Drexel client and the head of a California savings and loan association, whom Coelho had previously identified as a “friend from southern California,” had provided him with the short-term loans that were necessary to finance the deal. COELHO SAYS BONDS WERE BOUGHT FOR HIM, read a New York Times headline.107 Coelho had repaid Spiegel, though he admitted to having failed to list the loan in his financial disclosure forms. Coelho also insisted that his accountant was responsible for the error, that the oversight was not intentional, and that there was no “sweetheart deal here.”108 Nonetheless, on May 20, Republicans demanded that the Ethics Committee launch an investigation into whether the majority whip had violated the ethics rules. Coelho “is vulnerable,” one House Democrat admitted in frustration. “People see him as a wheeler dealer. You know, it used to be macho to raise a lot of money and collect a lot of honorariums. Now all those things are seen as negatives instead of positives and Tony is feeling the results of that change in attitude.”109

  Coelho was especially shaken when he learned that Rollins, with whom he had been personal friends since their days in California politics, had authorized a series of fake polls to go out through the phones to six hundred of the top donors in the Fresno area. The robocall asked each donor if he or she would be less inclined to vote for Coelho if a number of alleged scandals turned out to be true. Rollins was licking his chops, sensing that he now had two top Democratic leaders directly in his crosshairs whom he could possibly take out before the 1990 midterms. When an enraged Coelho called Rollins to vent about what the Republicans were doing with the polls, his old friend warned him that much more of this would be coming his way.110 Coelho understood how ruthless the Rollins-Atwater combination could be. His future was in serious jeopardy.

  At the height of the media speculation about Wright’s stepping down, the forty-six-year-old Coelho surprised his colleagues on May 26 by announcing that he did not want to become another distraction to the party and so he would be leaving the House. Coelho, looking physically and emotionally worn down, stood in front of a jury of reporters and announced his own verdict. “I want to give my party a chance to move on,” he said. “I don’t intend to put my party through more turmoil.”111 He warned, “Newt has said the only way for Republicans to get control is to destroy the institution, tear it down and then to rebuild it.” Upon stepping down, the congressman implored President Bush to put the brakes on his Republican colleagues immediately. “The president can stop all this if he wants to.”112

  Democrats couldn’t believe the news. “House Democrats are in a state of shock today,” reported New York’s Tom Downey, a member of the class of ’74 who had hoped to clean up Washington.113 Coelho’s decision compounded the impression that the party was in a tailspin. It also gave new legs to the possibility that the Speaker might resign too. Now that Coelho had taken this step, it was easy to imagine Wright doing the same. “I’ve never seen our party in such disarray as it is now. This is scary,” said one Democrat who didn’t want his name published. “There’s going to be a panic.” Gingrich boasted over the phone to two reporters from the Los Angeles Times that Coelho’s downfall confirmed everything that he had been saying about the Democrats, namely that they had become corrupt after having been in power for so long: “I think the fact that the No. 1 and No. 3 Democrats apparently will both leave in June says something about 35 years of monopoly power.”114 Gingrich’s master plan seemed to be working.

  The curtain was rising on the final act of the drama Gingrich had set in motion. What began with Gingrich’s circulating negative stories in the press about Wright and accusing him of being the most corrupt House Speaker in American history was a much bigger story than even Gingrich had contemplated. Good-government organizations and mainstream reporters, not always thinking about how they might be playing into a concerted partisan attack, had moved the investigation forward on their own terms, finding time after time smoke that looked like fire. The media frenzy had produced a devastating portrait of Wright’s top staffer and the resignation of one of the most influential members of his leadership circle. Wright’s scandal had spiraled out of control before the formal trial had even begun.

  Seven

  GINGRICH ON TOP

  Republicans smelled blood. The ethics probe had progressed to a full-scale, klieg-lit, lawyered-up, all-hands-on-deck hearing. Pressure was on for the House to televise the hearings so that this stage of the process would not be conducted in secret.1 Though Dixon didn’t enjoy the television spotlight, he felt it essential to maintain the integrity of the committee process. His decision was reinforced when the Speaker himself hesitantly agreed to participate in televised hearings as a way to clear his name. His dirty laundry would be aired on screens across the nation. An emboldened minority was becoming more vocal in its criticism of the Speaker, warning Democrats and the media that Congress was in a state of crisis as a result of this turmoil. Legislating had reached a standstill, they said, because every member was focused on the future of the Speaker and could not devote the attention needed to make sure key policy issues were addressed. And at this historic moment, w
hen the Soviet Union was collapsing, the nation needed a leader of the House who could govern with authority.

  The House minority leader, Robert Michel, finally broke his silence about the Wright case when he called a press conference to say that the unfolding scandal had pushed the House of Representatives into a “state of suspended animation.” Six days after Mack’s resignation, he told reporters that the Speaker’s authority had so greatly eroded that Congress could not do its job.2