Richard Bolling; Congressman for 34 Years

Richard W. Bolling, the 17-term Democratic congressman from Missouri known as a parliamentarian and tactician throughout his Capitol Hill career, died Sunday at 74.

Bolling’s wife found him dead of an apparent heart attack at their home here.

Bolling had a history of heart trouble. In 1977, five years before retiring from Congress, he suffered a heart attack at his vacation home in the Caribbean and in 1981 He underwent triple-bypass heart surgery at Georgetown University Hospital.

Bolling, a robust Missourian who served on several of the most powerful committees in the House for three decades, was always amazed at his success as a vote-getter.

“I really was not a natural-born politician,” said the congressman who represented Missouri’s 5th District for 34 years to become the fourth most-senior House member.

“I never could learn to slap backs.”

Consistently described as one of the most brilliant men in Congress, Bolling said his brightest congressional accomplishment--”the one that has given me the most pride”--was his work on civil rights legislation.

He was known for an often acerbic style and a reluctance to suffer the foibles of colleagues, which did not make him the most popular man in Congress.

“Dick treaded on a lot of toes he could have avoided if he wanted to,” then-House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill, a longtime friend, said at a 1982 dinner honoring Bolling’s retirement.

From 1978 to 1982, he was chairman of the House Rules Committee, which decides which legislation will be debated on the House floor and how it can be amended.

“He was the most brilliant legislator in this century who never became Speaker,” Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) once said. Bolling was twice rebuffed in attempts to become majority leader, a post that frequently is a steppingstone to the Speaker’s job.

Despite a somewhat conservative constituency, Bolling allied himself early with President John F. Kennedy and the New Frontier Administration. But he reminded voters in Kansas City that he was still his own man.

“I consider myself a liberal who is more interested in legislative accomplishment than talking about what should be done,” he said in a 1962 speech.

Although he first won his House seat in 1948 against a candidate supported by Kansas City political boss James Pendergast and President Harry S. Truman, Truman supported him for reelection over Pendergast’s objections.

After retiring from Congress, Bolling was a visiting professor of political science at the University of Missouri in Kansas City and a professor of politics at Boston College in Massachusetts.