‘How Long You Gonna Stay Around Here? I Figure It’s Time to Get Out.’ : After 34 Years in Congress, O’Neill to hang Up His Hat

Thomas Philip O’Neill Jr. remembers the night in Boston, decades ago, when he stumbled through a dull speech, returned to his seat, and the Honorable James Michael Curley, mayor and governor before he went to jail, whispered two words in his ear.

“You stank.”

Now, in the twilight of his political life, the reviews are rosier for Tip O’Neill, for 34 years the congressman from the 8th District of Massachusetts, and, for the past decade--a continuous tenure unmatched--the Speaker of the House.

He’s going home now, to a modest house two doors up from the one in which he was born, though many folks in the 8th, those in the barbershops and the shoeshine parlors and the veterans’ halls, would argue that, at heart, he never really left.

“Oh, I guess I’ll have to get an office someplace,” he says, toying with the foot-long cigar he has just tamped out during a farewell session with congressional reporters. “Millie has already told me she still doesn’t want me home for lunch.”

O’Neill, 73, retires as the only Speaker that most of his colleagues in Congress have ever known, and he leaves a legacy that looms larger than that of the fabled Texas Democrat Sam Rayburn (Speaker for 17 years in stints of 7, 4 and 6 years and member of the House from 1913 to 1961), in whose shadow he toiled virtually unnoticed for years. Indeed, partly by his own hand, partly by circumstance, O’Neill presided over profound changes in the character and role of the “People’s Chamber,” including the elevation of the speakership, largely through courtship of the news media, to the second most visible--and powerful--job in government.

“Sam Rayburn could have walked down the streets of Spokane (Wash.) without anybody noticing him,” says Democratic Rep. Thomas S. Foley of Washington, who will become House majority leader when Rep. Jim Wright of Texas moves up to O’Neill’s job. “Tip O’Neill couldn’t do that, and it is very unlikely that any future Speaker will be anonymous to the country.”

A Cartoonist’s Dream

It is difficult to imagine that there was a time of relative obscurity for O’Neill, even as an equal among the 435 members of the House. Physically, he is the very model of the political boss, a cartoonist’s dream: 6-foot-3, a hefty 280 pounds, with thatched, Olympian white hair, busted-plum nose, heavy lids drooping over warm, blue-gray eyes. And a friendly mug with something like a road map of County Cork etched from jowl to jowl.

American Express has asked him to sign on for one of those “do-you-know-me” commercials, but O’Neill, one of the least affluent members of Congress, refused. “I thought it would possibly be cheapening the position of the Speaker,” he said. “I couldn’t do that.”

And yes, he confesses some second thoughts, regrets setting in, about his decision to leave. “Millie noticed it over the weekend,” he said. “I normally talk with her about everything. And she said, ‘You know, you’ve been awfully quiet.’ ”

But “Jim Wright’s been behind me for 10 years,” the Speaker said. “A more faithful person you couldn’t have. So finally, I said to myself, ‘How long you gonna stay around here?’ I figure it’s time to get out. These fellows, Jim Wright and Tom Foley, I owe them an obligation.”

O’Neill has commanded the only federal outpost of Democratic strength since the Republican capture of the White House and the Senate in 1980. He has been drawn into personal battles with President Reagan, and was targeted by the GOP as symbolizing the excesses of the past. Republicans tried especially to make him the villain of their 1982 campaign, ridiculing him with a television commercial showing a plodding fat man, wearing a Tip-alike wig, stranded aside a limousine that had run out of gas.

But just as O’Neill underestimated the President’s strength and suffered major legislative defeats on Reagan’s tax and spending cuts in 1981, the White House and GOP underestimated the Speaker’s durability. He has consistently commanded strong personal ratings in the national polls, and, to Reagan’s consternation, Congress has been edging back to O’Neill’s own priorities, increasing funds of health and education while trimming the Pentagon budget.

“He held his finger in the dike and protected a whole lot of values that the country is glad now he protected,” says Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) “He never forgets the whole purpose of policy is to have a positive impact on human beings. That’s what he shames people into being mindful of time and again.”

Says O’Neill: “In 1981, after President Reagan was in, there was an ill feeling, almost a hatred towards the have-nots of America. Whether you were old, or whether you were black, or whether you were an infant, no matter, if you were a have-not, they seemed to say, ‘Hey, I’ve got mine. I have no obligation.’ That’s not an American way of thinking.”

That “spirit of meanness prevailed for about a year,” said the Speaker. “It was a passing glance.”

Still, rarely does O’Neill utter a word about Reagan without mentioning the word “fairness.” Americans, he says, “believe in fairness. They are willing to make sacrifices, but only if those sacrifices are spread fairly. President Reagan disagrees. He believes that the best government is government that gives incentives to the wealthy and pays for those incentives by cutting the poor. He believes in welfare for the wealthy, punishment for the poor, and nothing but smiles for the middle class. He is a genial man, but there is nothing genial about his policies.”

‘All Politics Is Local’

Geniality is a major reason that O’Neill has remained in Congress for 34 years, moving up the ladder from backbencher to majority whip, to majority leader, and then to Speaker in 1977. Whatever his success in the Washington Establishment, he has lived by the credo that “all politics is local.”

Rarely has he neglected, on his regular long weekends at home, to take what he calls his “ethnic walk,” to the delicatessen run by Italians, the vegetable market run by Greeks, the saloon run by an Irishman, the hardware store run by a Jew, the “Chinaman’s where I pick up my shirts,” and “John, the shoemaker, whom I’ve known for 50 years, never knew his last name, but he’s a lovable guy.”

O’Neill has a story about everybody, and he tells this one about John: “Man goes in, says he left a pair of shoes there 10 years ago but lost his ticket. Shoemaker says he remembers. Are the shoes still there? ‘Sure. They’ll be ready Tuesday.’ ”

And, incidentally, shoemaker John Ginigliano, who says O’Neill is an 11-E, told a Boston Globe reporter a story about Tip a couple of years back: “This lady’s boy, he’s in a retarded hospital. He wasn’t getting good treatment, and I say, ‘Go see the Speaker.’ She come back later and says, ‘John, my boy, he’s happy. God bless Tip.’ They all say the same thing: ‘God bless Tip.’ When people say to me, ‘John, I got a problem. It would take the President of the United States to take care of it,’ I say, ‘We got someone better.’ ”

In Washington, O’Neill seldom accepts formal invitations, having passed up, by his estimation, more than 100 state dinners. “It’s just not my cup of tea,” he says.

Jim Curley Stories

He much prefers a night at Duke Zeibert’s corned beef emporium, talking with other members of the Massachusetts delegation, sipping a Canadian Club and trading old Jim Curley stories, singing now and then in a baritone bellow, “If You’re Irish Come Into the Parlor,” and trading new jokes, which he files away in one of the most retentive memories known to Washington since Hubert H. Humphrey.

Curley, by the way, didn’t simply leave O’Neill to stew about his horrid speech on that night 35 years ago. He summoned him to his home, and handed O’Neill a sheaf of poetry and quotations. “Learn these,” he said, “and you’ll never be at a loss for words regardless of the occasion.” O’Neill learned them and can still recite every word.

O’Neill is a politician of impeccable Irish credentials--product of parochial schools, son of an Irish city councilman, grandson of a bricklayer who immigrated during the potato famine. He got the nickname ‘Tip’ as a kid. He explains: “Every Irish family has a Tip O’Neill in it, because of a fellow in 1888 by the name of Edward O’Neill, playing with the St. Louis Browns. That was the only year in baseball that a base on balls counted as a base hit. He’d get up and foul them off until he got a walk. The Irish love him. . . . Everywhere there’s a Tip O’Neill, but he’s the original.”

He served in the Massachusetts house from 1936 to 1952, running for Congress for the seat vacated by John F. Kennedy, who won election to the Senate that year. In one precinct, he won by four fewer votes than Kennedy got in the Senate race, and he learned that all four detractors belonged to a family named Lefevre.

Asked How They Fared

Eight years later, Kennedy won the presidency and asked O’Neill at the inauguration how they fared in that same precinct. “I told him he was still ahead by four votes,” says O’Neill. Kennedy roared: “Tip, that Lefevre family is still off of you.”

O’Neill remembers his Presidents: Truman--”Just a beautiful man.” Eisenhower--”Looking better every day in history.” Kennedy--”He never had a legislative program . . . but he brought more people into public life than any man in history.” Johnson--”If you had four stars on your shoulder, he believed everything you said.”

Johnson, he says, “declared war on poverty, but it was Nixon who put those programs into full being. He’s responsible for food stamps, the cost-of-living increases in Social Security, a lot of those things. Nixon had great ability, a great foreign policy record, too, but he had no faith, no trust.”

O’Neill used to play poker with Nixon. “He was a terrible player. And then he’d scream about losing a few dollars. It made you wonder,” the Speaker said.

The only time he ever truly worried about the country’s survival, he said, was when Nixon was brooding in the depths of the Watergate scandal. “I often wondered, ‘Would he press a button?’ ” said O’Neill. “I talked with (Senate Majority Leader) Mike Mansfield about it, and he said, ‘No, things are in hand.’ Jerry Ford is there.”

‘Ford Was the Right Man’

“God gave us Jerry Ford,” O’Neill continued. “You guys in the press called him a bumbler and a stumbler, but, no question about it, he was the right man at the right time.”

Ford returns the compliment: “Tip O’Neill is one fine person. I am . . . honored by our long and wonderful friendship. I admire his leadership . . . and applaud his dedication.”

Then there was Jimmy Carter. “I love Jimmy Carter,” said O’Neill. “Of all the presidents I have known, Carter was the most able and talented and brilliant. But he had a bad staff around him. And everything happened to him. Inflation went wild. Unemployment, affected by the energy rates more than anything else, was responsible for the dismal feeling the public had. And then the Iranian situation . . . that’s what the election was all about, the unpopularity of Carter.”

Ronald Reagan, he says, is “the least knowledgeable of any President I’ve ever met, on any subject. He works by three-by-five cards.”

And O’Neill has long expressed particular offense at Reagan’s memory of the facts. In 1980, he says, “One hundred and five times he gave speeches about the woman who had 110 welfare checks. No such woman ever existed. He was notified by the FBI. He was notified by the GSA. He was notified by HUD. He was notified by everybody. As a matter of fact, (Health Secretary) Joe Califano wrote him five personal letters, but he used it merrily along.”

Even Democrats Deserted

Which brings O’Neill back to the subject of his worst year, 1981, when he returned from a postelection trip to Australia to discover his House colleagues in a frenzy to enact Reagan’s economic program. Even his fellow Democrats were deserting him in the House, and one, Rep. Les Aspin of Wisconsin, now chairman of the Armed Services Committee, even wrote that O’Neill was “in a fog and has no idea where to go.”

“Yes, I put the President’s program on the floor. And then I got up and spoke against it,” said O’Neill. “I think the younger people, those who hadn’t seen the nation develop over the last 50 years . . ., they thought everybody was on food stamps. But I remember when 50% of America was impoverished, people worked seven days a week if they had a job. Three percent of those who managed to graduate from high school went on to college. There were poorhouses, and no insurance for the elderly. Only 8% of America had pensions. I had seen the nation grow. And here we were undoing what it had taken us 50 years, to develop a middle-class America.”

O’Neill got beat. But by the end of the year, the tough old Irishman had recovered his fire, and began lambasting Reagan’s “Beverly Hills budget” while urging disgruntled Democratic members to develop a credible alternative.

His standing in the polls soared when he scored the President for an ill-advised attempt to slash Social Security benefits. He put himself in front of the media, and let the party’s intellectuals, like Aspin, the late Gillis Long of Louisiana, Timothy E. Wirth of Colorado and others, develop the ideas, share the credit.

Demanded Greater Loyalty

Bolstered by a 26-seat pickup for the House Democrats in 1982, O’Neill and his lieutenants put the arm on the new members for greater loyalty, while according them a greater voice in party decisions. It worked, and by midway through Reagan’s first term, the President’s budget ideas were virtually dead on arrival. The Republican Senate, and eventually the White House itself, began compromising, and acknowledged the Speaker as a force once again to be reckoned with.

For all his ups and downs doing battle with Reagan, O’Neill says his worst decision was made at the behest of his friend and mentor, the late Speaker John McCormack, also of Massachusetts, over the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that served as Lyndon Johnson’s rationale for escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

“I remember that morning as if it was yesterday,” said O’Neill. “We were having breakfast, talking about the Tonkin Gulf and what happened. It seemed that a couple small boats shot at one of our destroyers and missed it by two miles. I said to McCormack ‘This reminds me of shooting a beanshooter at an automobile way down the street. It doesn’t seem legit. I don’t think I’ll vote for it.’

“Well, I got back upstairs and he called me in and said, ‘I want you to do me a personal favor. If you don’t vote for the Tonkin Gulf resolution you’ll be termed a traitor and you’re too close to me.’ Well, I acquiesced. And I’ve always regretted it.”

He harbors no grudges, though some of his critics learned the hard way it didn’t pay to get personal in their attacks. When Republican John LeBoutillier of New York called O’Neill “big, fat and out of control,” the Speaker replied: “I wouldn’t know him from a cord of wood.” LeBoutillier lost his reelection campaign.

Friends Include Political Foes

But O’Neill counts many of his political enemies among his closest personal friends. Republican congressman Silvio O. Conte of Massachusetts is a particular favorite, and the two have matched wits and shared good food and drink for years. As for O’Neill’s departure, Conte said simply: “Oh, my God. It’s going to be a hell of a loss to me.”

O’Neill and Reagan agreed years ago they would take the gloves off after sundown, so it came as no surprise when the President showed up among 2,000 others at one of what Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) called “the weekly series of Tip O’Neill retirement parties.”

“Sure, I’ve said some things about Tip, and Tip has said some things about me,” Reagan told the $1,000-a-plate gathering, proceeds going to Boston College. “But that’s history, and anyway, you know how it is--I forget.”

“To be honest,” said Reagan, “I’ve always known Tip was behind me--even if it was only at the State of the Union address. At each proposal I made, I could hear Tip whispering to George Bush, ‘Forget it.’ ”

When Reagan delivers his next State of the Union, it will be Jim Wright whispering in the vice president’s ear. O’Neill, meanwhile, isn’t quite sure what he will be doing. There’s a book in the works, and some speaking engagements, doubtless more golf, and likely a teaching post at Boston College. Most of all, he says, “I want a little time with Millie,” his wife of 45 years.

“He’s going to ride off into the sunset,” said golfing buddy Bob Hope. “That ought to be a hell of a collision.”