Burning Down the House

by Julian E. Zelizer

  “Have I contributed unwittingly to this manic idea of frenzy of feeding on other people’s reputations? Have I—have I caused a lot of this? So maybe I have. God, I hope I haven’t. But maybe I have. Have I been too partisan? Too insistent? Too abrasive? Too determined to have my way? Perhaps,” he confessed. He offered the men and women in the chamber a “proposition,” which was the real basis of his decision to resign instead of fight. He said he would “give you back this job you gave to me as a propitiation for all of this season of bad will that has grown among us. Give it back to you. . . . I don’t want to be a party to tearing up the institution—I love it.” And then, about fifty-seven minutes into the speech, Wright announced in the formal voice he used to read a resolution, with both hands gently tapping the lectern, that he would step down. With his voice trembling, he said, “You need—you need somebody else. So, I want to give you that back. And we’ll have a caucus on Tuesday. And then I will offer to resign from the House some time before the end of June.”

  Before finishing, Wright implored members of both parties to treat his resignation as a “total payment for the anger and hostility we feel toward each other. Let’s not try to get even with each other.” He ended by assuring the chamber that he was not a “bitter man. I’m not going to be. I’m a lucky man. God has given me the privilege of serving in this greatest institution on earth for a great many years, and I’m grateful to the people of my district in Texas. I’m grateful to you my colleagues—all of you. God bless this institution. God bless the United States.” The California Democrat Don Edwards observed, “It was almost like out of Hamlet, a prince on his knees.”67

  As Wright brought this rousing valediction to a conclusion, Gingrich jotted down some notes on a pad of paper to record his thoughts at this critical juncture in the history of the legislative branch. If this result—Wright’s exit, the humiliation of the Democratic majority, and the opening created for a Republican takeover of the chamber—had been achieved, Gingrich nonetheless felt extraordinarily unhappy about Wright’s main message. The Speaker had attempted to distract the public and his colleagues from the very real offenses he had committed. His speech, Gingrich fumed, was about the dangers of partisanship rather than the problems with his own decisions. The tone of his speech “angered” him. It was insulting to the House Ethics Committee, chaired by an upstanding Democrat, “to talk about the process of standards as mindless cannibalism.” Gingrich continued to scribble on his pad: Wright had incorrectly blasted his colleagues over a “feeding frenzy” with Tony Coelho. The majority whip had made serious mistakes in failing to disclose financial transactions.68 Moreover, Gingrich rejected the charge that he had been “nitpicking” with the rules in order to find fault with Wright. All that the Speaker had done with this unsatisfactory speech was to blame the institution and blame the press.

  Gingrich knew there would be hell to pay and that Democrats in the room would be out to get him when this ended. Yet he was confident that if he was judged by the same standards as Wright, he would be found innocent. And he noted, “Isn’t having an honest House the business of the House?” He believed that Wright was “a symbol of how sick the institution has become.” The speech, from Gingrich’s point of view, “was an insult to the E.C. [Ethics Committee], ethics process, & the whole idea that letting the facts out in the open is better than covering them up.” The thin-skinned minority whip could hold up a mirror to his own image and take consolation in the fact that because so much of the focus of the farewell speech was on him, it meant that he had now officially arrived as a major figure in Washington. “Must be doing good at my job,” Gingrich thought, his confidence spiking, “for them to come after me like this.”69

  When the Speaker finished, the House burst into another standing ovation. To be polite, Gingrich joined in a show of collegiality. This was not, after all, the time to look like a “red hot.” Feeling a sense of relief and sadness, Wright gathered up his notes and walked toward his colleagues, turning back to the lectern to make sure he had not forgotten any of his folders. About a dozen members from both parties walked toward him to express their support. They showered him with handshakes and hugs, whispering words of praise into his ears.70

  Wright, looking remarkably poised as he turned to exit the floor, continued to accept the good wishes of his peers. Yet no one envied him for a moment. This final walk up the aisle was the longest and saddest Jim Wright had ever made. “Dreams die hard,” The Washington Post’s Tom Shales wrote, quoting an unnamed network anchor, “and it isn’t easy to see somebody’s dreams shattered right in front of you.”71

  The House doorkeepers requested that legislators remain in the chamber for a few minutes so that Wright could leave the building in peace. Taking to the floor while everyone waited, most still in a state of disbelief, Jack Brooks had something he wanted to get off his chest in front of his colleagues. He walked to the rostrum and expressed his anger about the damage that Gingrich had wrought: “There’s an evil wind blowing in the halls of Congress that’s reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition. It’s replacing comity and compassion with hatred and malice. . . . Conviction without trial is a new and dangerous rule for this Congress and this country. This scenario can destroy Congress.”72 Everyone in the chamber knew Gingrich was the target of Brooks’s remarks. Once they were allowed to leave, Gingrich took off without speaking to any reporters.

  With his career as a legislator now behind him, Wright hurried through the Speaker’s Lobby, eager to get out of the spotlight as quickly as possible. He passed the gilded framed portraits of all the Speakers who preceded him in their dark suits and starched collars, most of whom had enjoyed far more robust terms in office than he. The portrait of Speaker Joe Cannon, who had faced a revolt of progressives who stripped away his power in 1910, loomed largest as Wright walked down the hall. When one staffer walked up to him to say, “Mr. Speaker, that was wonderful,” the forlorn Texan tried to crack a smile before ducking into his office.

  By now Betty and Virginia had reached his side, and his wife stood by him in his office while he greeted well-wishers as they came to pay their respects. Most of the Texas delegation stopped in, and the Speaker thanked them for standing by him.73 When the friends finally departed, Wright, Betty, and Virginia left the building, and with his hand lightly touching his wife’s back, they climbed into the waiting limousine. He leaned back against the cushions and stared out the window. The car began to pick up speed as they headed to their home in McLean. Wright wasn’t sure what would come next. He might teach; he might write. But he felt certain he would never stop loving the institution in which he had served since 1955.

  Eight

  MINDLESS CANNIBALISM

  As legislators milled around Statuary Hall, just outside the chamber, digesting Wright’s speech, reporters sought their reactions. Congressman Henry Hyde, who often tussled with Wright from his opposing side of the aisle, agreed with his message and wanted his colleagues to get back to the business of legislation and governance. “I think most of us are weary of inhabiting the congressional Beirut we’ve been living in,” he said.1 The Texan Martin Frost believed the Speaker did the right thing, and he hoped the “Republicans were listening.” It was time “to stop making lists,” Frost said, “let’s stop all of that and let’s get on with the business of the country.” Congressman Dan Glickman said it was important to show the public that Congress was a “viable institution” of government. He praised Wright for sacrificing himself, for falling on his sword so that the partisan rancor would end. “There will be no vengeance,” promised a shaken California Democrat, Don Edwards. “We are not being paid to fight with each other.”2

  When asked about the impact of the resignation, a testy David Obey, whose ethics rules had been at the heart of his colleague’s downfall, predicted it would be “very difficult” for either party to find “quality candidates” to step into this “maelstrom.” Bill Richardson said the time had come to heal
under the next Speaker, the levelheaded Tom Foley, because Congress had become “a war zone right now, where you don’t know when the next bomb is going to drop.” He warned that if Gingrich decided to engage in “open warfare,” Democrats would respond. His preference, though, was to start healing.3

  Not everyone in Congress was in the mood to forgive Gingrich and his allies. When asked about Obey’s comment that Foley would be the first Speaker from the reformist generation to come of age after Watergate, Congressman Torricelli pushed back. He argued that legislators were already living with much higher personal ethical standards but “a decidedly lower standard in personal relationships, trust, and individual integrity as people relate to each other. The integrity of important, decent citizens in our country is being questioned by leaks, blind comments, charges without substantiation. That’s not integrity. A person who would do that to another, his integrity is no greater than someone who would steal, or rob, or violate rules.”4

  Wright’s defender and friend Dave Nagle, whose ill-conceived meeting of Democrats in mid-May had disintegrated into a series of public declarations that Wright needed to go, could not contain his anger. When a reporter identified himself as working for The Washington Times, the conservative paper that had recently printed a pointed article about a number of lawmakers being under investigation from the Justice Department for illicit sexual activities, Nagle did not hold back. “Get your goddamn hands off me,” the congressman yelled. “Don’t pat me on the back when your paper runs crap like that.” The Florida Democrat Larry Smith probably came closest to articulating the view of most as he called the entire Wright scandal a successful old-fashioned coup that Republicans orchestrated, trying to “do what they can’t do at the ballot box” by “throwing hand grenades.”5

  “It’s a stunning event,” noted the editors of The New York Times as they closed the door on the Wright investigation. “The Speaker of the House, third in line to the Presidency, resigns over charges that he violated House rules. . . . the Speaker, his support virtually vanished, yields his place as a peace offering. Stunning, sobering and sad but also necessary.”6 The evening news anchor Tom Brokaw began his broadcast by telling his audience that Wright turned the floor of the House “into a courtroom, a confessional, a stage, and finally a platform from which to say goodbye.”7 “Jim Wright did the right thing in resigning,” chimed in the editors of The Washington Post.8

  Speaking from London, where he had traveled to participate in a NATO summit, President Bush, whose decision to attack Wright during his 1988 campaign had helped to legitimatize Gingrich’s crusade, offered some complimentary remarks. “In spite of the present situation,” his statement read, “I believe the Wright tenure was one of effectiveness and dedication to the Congress of the United States. And I recognize his distinguished service to the people of his congressional district. Barbara and I wish Jim and Betty well in whatever lies ahead.”

  The congressional Republicans of course felt differently. Even if they disagreed with the way Gingrich had conducted his business, most of them did not feel guilty about how the process had unfolded. Moderate Republicans expressed their confidence in the system and the outcome. The ethics process had played out, they said, in a bipartisan manner and with a very reasonable committee chair and had determined that Wright had not lived up to the ethical standards the House adopted for itself. This was not partisan politics. This was congressional justice. What Republicans saw as Wright’s tyrannical leadership had created a toxic atmosphere that, in their minds, was as responsible for how this had unfolded as anything that Gingrich or the media had done.

  Gingrich seethed as the ex-Speaker returned to Capitol Hill during the short transition—his last official day as Speaker was June 6—and enjoyed a White House visit with his fellow Texan. It pained Gingrich to think Wright could shape the history of what had transpired, as if Gingrich and not the former Speaker had stopped the legislative work of Congress in its tracks. Wright was making himself the hero of this story, to Gingrich’s utter frustration. Letting his private feelings be known, the minority whip lashed out at his critics who were depicting him as a villain while they were praising the fallen Speaker. “Jim Wright was not the innocent sacrifice to some tribal ritual,” Gingrich said at a June 2 lunch that he organized with reporters to set the record straight. After all, it had been his vision, and he had orchestrated its execution. At the lunch, Gingrich radiated the kind of hubris that a person sometimes displays after an unexpected triumph. It was as if he had traveled back to his days as a small-town college professor, standing before mesmerized undergraduates. “Wright and Coelho pulled off this wonderful scam where they are the innocent victims of a mood in Washington. That is baloney. The guy was guilty.” While the Democrats were treating him as evil, Gingrich counterpunched: “Mr. Wright resigned because the weight of the evidence was that he had systematically engaged in behaviors unbecoming of the Speaker of the House. And the evidence is overwhelming.”9 Nor did Gingrich have any intention of relenting now that Wright was gone. In his mind, this scandal was not over until he said it was over. He joined the RNC’s Lee Atwater in calling on the House to take a straight up-or-down vote on whether Wright and Coelho were guilty of violating the ethics rules, even though both men were leaving. “There are only two ways to proceed,” Atwater said. “We need to get it behind us. One way is to sweep it under the rug. I personally am in favor of getting it behind us by getting the facts out on the Wright matter, on the Coelho matter, and on the eight or nine or ten others—Republican and Democratic.”10 The new Speaker, Tom Foley, did not agree with Gingrich and Atwater. After Wright’s decision to resign, the Democratic majority dropped any further investigation. Like Wright, the party had paid its price and it was time to move on.

  Wright, in turn, hoping to stave off that humiliation, sent out word through his press secretary, Mark Johnson, that his farewell address was not an attack on Gingrich and that his point genuinely was to end the bitterness in Congress.11 And now Robert Michel, still Gingrich’s superior, stepped in to have his own say.

  Sending a message to his party, Michel had stern words for his minority whip. He warned on CBS This Morning that Gingrich has “got to be much more responsible than he was as a junior member of Congress.”12 Of course, Michel was not the innocent he was making himself out to be. He didn’t like Gingrich personally, and he often found his political style distasteful. But over the past two years he had been complicit in his colleague’s campaign against the “corruption” of House Democrats. They all had been. And soon they would enjoy the spoils.

  * * *

  —

  Wright’s parting message had come much too late. The problem was that Wright didn’t understand that the debate over ethics was asymmetric. The purification that Gingrich was demanding from Democrats was almost entirely one-sided. Gingrich, who was under an ethics cloud of his own, one eerily similar to the charges he had leveled against the Speaker, had no intention of demanding the same strict standards from his own allies. The campaign against Speaker Wright was all about politics, not good government.

  The Speaker’s defeat was an unprecedented moment in congressional history and inspired a new confidence in Gingrich’s style of tactical warfare. Simply put, his tactics worked.

  Spearheading a campaign to bring down the Speaker of the House without clear-cut justification had been a big step for Gingrich to take. There was only one comparable example, the revolt against Speaker Joe Cannon in 1910, which Gingrich could look to. The traditions of Congress had persuaded most legislators to err on the side of caution so that these forms of high-profile takedowns did not become normalized. Ending the career of a major leader could not turn into a regular feature of partisan battles, most members agreed, or the possibility of legislating would become extremely difficult. Opening this door would trigger an unending cycle of retribution and generate a climate of total distrust. Leaders would lose the sense of security that was ne
cessary to push forward controversial decisions.

  Because of these calculations, the bar had always been set high by both parties. While it was true that Wright had done some unsavory things in his career, the evidence against him was hardly a smoking gun. In fact, at the moment he resigned, the Ethics Committee had failed to gather the necessary evidence to support claims that he had violated a single ethics rule. The process was never allowed to play out.

  The investigation had created such a frenzied political atmosphere that the Speaker had been pressured into stepping down before the Ethics Committee considered the soundness of the charges they had laid out to the House. This was a massive problem for the integrity of the ethics process and the institution because Gingrich had triggered his campaign based on sketchy evidence culled primarily from newspaper stories. A significant number of the original charges had been disproven. The standards for the committee to move forward had been extremely low. Even with Phelan’s lengthy report, which also relied heavily on articles and included discredited charges, the committee had not begun the important stage of their process where they would verify that the evidence before them met the highest possible standards.

  The Ethics Committee had not yet proven that Wright had broken any House rules or that he had engaged in any kind of extraordinary wrongdoing that went beyond the ethically gray behavior citizens often saw from legislators, including Gingrich himself. The blockbuster allegations were not proving to be true. But Gingrich had moved at such a fast and furious pace that his efforts paid off. He understood from the start that this scandal would be settled in a political arena, and he had figured out how to shift the opinions and the electoral calculations of fellow legislators. Investigative journalists and good-government reformers had provided him with the institutional support that he needed from legitimate, nonpartisan sources. The party guardians in the GOP, despite priding themselves on their civility, had allowed Gingrich to follow this campaign to its logical conclusion, rewarding him with a major leadership position in the process. “Remember when you’re kids and there’s always some tough-talking little kid, and when somebody stands up to him he caves in?” noted his disillusioned former press secretary, Lee Howell. “Newt’s never had anybody stand up to him.”13 President Bush, Minority Leader Michel, and all the others had some blood on their hands. As a result, the moment that Speaker Wright stepped down, the GOP had shown that they could “go there” in fierce partisan combat and get away with it.