Ousted Speaker of House Refuses Chance to Gloat

Of all the people touched by House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s admissions of ethical wrongdoing, perhaps none has a better claim on finger-pointing than former House Speaker Jim Wright.

The Texas Democrat was forced to resign his position in 1989 over allegations involving a book deal and acceptance of improper gifts from a business partner. And the man most directly responsible for the investigation that brought Wright down was a then-obscure Georgia Republican named Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich was the one who filed the ethics charges against Wright, demanding again and again that the House Ethics Committee and the Democratic majority controlling the House at the time investigate and act against Wright.

Indeed, his role in leading the campaign against Wright was a major element in Gingrich’s rise to prominence.

Yet Wright, reached at his Fort Worth home Saturday in the midst of wrapping Christmas presents for his children and grandchildren, declared: “I don’t want to gloat about it. It’s no secret he was not my favorite colleague. We are diametric opposites.

“But I don’t get any joy out of his misery,” Wright said, adding that at the moment he was “besieged getting ready for Christmas, waiting for my children and grandchildren to arrive any minute.”

That reaction appeared to be consistent with what Wright has said repeatedly: that his return to private life has been much more rewarding than was his hectic political career.

“It really did turn out that way,” he said Saturday.

He returned home to write a weekly newspaper column and serve as a visiting professor at Texas Christian University. “There is a marvelously full life of which I had never been aware,” he said in 1992. “Wonderfully rich.”

But some remnants of his old life are hard to abandon. His office phone number is still found under “Jim Wright, Speaker.”