A ‘Liberated’ Wright Explains Why He Resigned

House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), emotionally exhausted after months of fighting House ethics charges, said Thursday that he feels “liberated” by his decision to resign his House seat and acknowledged that his haste to “make my mark upon the future” may have contributed to his troubles.

Wright told reporters that he decided to quit when he realized that he would not win his sole objective of total exoneration without an “all-out harsh and bitter fight on the House floor.”

Although Wright said that he has a “great sense of relief” that the battle is over, participants in a two-hour interview said that at one point he appeared to be on the brink of tears. At another point, he chided reporters for asking too many questions about his ethics problems and not enough about his 34-year record as a lawmaker.

First Speaker Forced Out

The 66-year-old congressman’s dramatic resignation announcement Wednesday made him the first Speaker to be forced from office in U.S. history.

In the wide-ranging interview, a transcript of which was made available by the Speaker’s office, Wright conceded that House Majority Leader Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), his apparent successor, has a better temperament for the job than he does--”more cautious, more reasoned, less hurried.”

Analyzing his personality, Wright said: “I think I probably was obsessed with the notion that I have a limited period of time in which to make my mark upon the future, make my contribution and, therefore, I must hurry. . . .

“Maybe I was too insistent, too competitive, too ambitious to achieve too much in too short a period of time. Anyway, I couldn’t have changed. I couldn’t have been any different than I was.”

Seen as Choice Target

He suggested that partisan animosities inflamed by his approach made him a choice target for attack. The Ethics Committee inquiry of his financial affairs, initiated at the request of Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), produced charges that he improperly accepted $145,000 in gifts and schemed to evade a House limit on outside income through bulk sales of a book he wrote. He denied wrongdoing.

Acknowledging that he was late in recognizing the gravity of his situation and frustrated in trying to reverse the ethics panel’s decision to bring accusations against him, the Speaker said he realized last weekend that it was time to give up and avert the floor fight over his fate.

“I decided that maybe there is one thing I can change: Maybe I can stop the headlong rush of this runaway locomotive to that train wreck that I see coming down the track,” he said.

Strategy Not Viewed as Key

Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento), a member of the House Ethics Committee, indicated in an interview that Wright may not have been able to save his job, regardless of the strategy he employed.

He said that he sensed from the day he first heard the committee special counsel’s report on the evidence against the Speaker that it could lead to his downfall. “Some of the material looked pretty serious to me,” he said.

Fazio said that the committee was not swayed by the Wright lawyers’ counterattacks, and that the Speaker himself did not try to put pressure on the Democratic members of the panel. “There was never any overt effort to do that,” he said.

Cites ‘Ambiguities’

From his experience in the Wright case, Fazio--who heads a task force drafting new ethics rules--said that he thinks the House must clear up “the ambiguities” in an ethics rule governing gifts to members from persons with an interest in legislation. He said that he would prefer a flat prohibition on accepting gifts valued at more than a specified amount from anyone other than family members.

The committee had alleged that money and benefits Wright and his wife received came from a Ft. Worth business partner with a direct interest in congressional business.

Fazio denied that the committee interpreted the rules harshly in the Wright case.

“Obviously we were dealing in the context of our times,” he said, referring to increased sensitivity to conflicts of interest. “I don’t mean to say that we were pressured by outside events. But we were reading our newspapers.”

He added: “I don’t think we tried to hold him to a higher standard.”

Speaking over lunch to selected members of the press corps, Wright said that he looks forward to time away from the grind of legislation that has preoccupied him for the last 12 years since he became House majority leader and later Speaker.

“Maybe there comes a time when one wants a little bit more tranquility and a bit more serenity and an opportunity to do things at a pace that one can enjoy and savor, rather than hurrying from one thing to another,” Wright mused.

Wright said that he had not made any detailed plans--not even on whether he would return to Ft. Worth or remain in the Washington area--but that he hopes to spend time playing tennis and golf and going fishing.

He said that he made his decision to step down while in seclusion last weekend with his wife, Betty, in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Although his mind was set, he said, supporters from his home in Ft. Worth kept calling to urge him to fight the charges. Explaining why he rejected such advice, Wright said:

“They didn’t really understand the turmoil that was being created here. They didn’t realize the deadly distraction that this entire episode had wrought within the congressional process.

“They didn’t understand the wicked forces it had set in motion between Democrats and Republicans in the House, the anger and hostilities that it generated. And so they weren’t really in a position to evaluate what responsibility I might have to this institution.”

In addition, the Speaker said, he believes that his departure might have a calming effect on the House that will allow it to put aside vituperation and return to the nation’s business.

Staff writer Sara Fritz contributed to this story.