Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked (14 page)

Then, in 1946, the year after World War II had ended,
a wild card suddenly appeared on the horizon, changing the political game not just for Cambridge but eventually for Massachusetts as well. And, later, the country, too. This newcomer knew little of how Tip O’Neill’s world was supposed to work and certainly had never heard of—nor was in need of—a snow button. What he possessed was a dazzlingly heroic war record and a father, one of the richest men in
the country, anxious to sell it to the voters. If he didn’t fit in politically, well, that was a truth he was aware of from the get-go. Jack Kennedy understood better than anyone to what extent he came on the scene as a carpetbagger.
“I had never lived very much in the district,” he dictated into a tape recorder fifteen years later, in what appears to have been the beginnings of a memoir, “. . . and on top of that I had gone to Harvard, not a particularly popular institution at that time in the 11th Congressional District.”

In the way such matters normally were taken care of, Tip had the seat earmarked for a pal of his, another Cambridge street-corner guy, Mike Neville.
He, like Tip, was a wait-your-turn good soldier—and, now, his time seemingly had come. Neville looked to be a shoo-in, especially once the experienced pols had taken a good look at the new kid on the block.
“By the time I met Jack Kennedy, I couldn’t believe this skinny, pasty-looking kid was a candidate for anything,” Tip remembered thinking, and so had simply dismissed the Kennedy scion’s chances.

By this time a skilled veteran of the Massachusetts political wars, with a good sense of what would play on his home turf and what wouldn’t, he simply didn’t, or couldn’t, see the obvious: that is, the pure magic of John F. Kennedy. Instead, he put his belief in the system he knew, ignoring the evidence of change squarely facing him. In fact, the opinion of other observers, then and now, has held that the handsome, charming young Kennedy could have beaten Mike Neville even without all the money his father spent to ensure his triumph.

The sweeping Kennedy victory, however, did nothing to interfere with O’Neill’s own ambitions. In 1948, Tip saw the potential for a Massachusetts-wide canvass to recruit young war heroes and other attractive veterans to run for the state legislature and, recognizing this, he organized the effort, which was successful. It made
for an historic coup, with the Democrats achieving a majority of seats and Tip himself elected, at the age of thirty-seven, as the first Democratic and first Roman Catholic Speaker in the history of the commonwealth.

Four years later, in 1952, with Kennedy claiming his right to move up to the U.S. Senate—he would defeat the Republican incumbent, the effortlessly upper-class Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.—Tip O’Neill himself had ambitions for the House seat vacated by Jack, which he won after a tough primary fight. For decades afterward he would publicly pay glowing tribute to the man he’d succeeded, even though, privately, he was slow to admire the younger man’s political skills. The truth was, he had little choice, given the Kennedy family’s influence in both Boston and the state, and so could only bridle at the role he found himself forced to play, not being entirely his own man and having to do their bidding as needed. He would spend decades regretting the slighting words the Kennedys had given him to say about the much-respected Lodge in an election-eve radio broadcast. And to add insult to that indignity, even after he’d done their dirty work, he heard from trustworthy sources that Bobby Kennedy, one of the two younger brothers, was considering a run against him, looking at Jack’s onetime seat as family property. Furious, Tip promised Jack that if his kid brother decided to pursue such a challenge it would be “the
dirtiest campaign you ever saw.”

Jack Kennedy did do one favor for Tip. It came as a piece of cagey advice. In early 1953, just as the country was getting used to calling General Dwight D. Eisenhower “President,” and he himself was moving across Capitol Hill to his Senate office, Kennedy told O’Neill, now a member of the House freshman class, to “be nice to John McCormack.” McCormack had been second only to Sam Rayburn in the Democratic leadership since before the war. Clear to him were Tip’s institutional ambitions. Jack figured that once Tip
found his footing and acclimated himself to the House, ingratiating himself with McCormack, who’d been elected from Massachusetts to the House of Representatives in 1928, was the surest route for O’Neill to reach leadership himself.

Tip soon became a dedicated member of what was known on Capitol Hill as the “Tuesday to Thursday club.” Though it was a tiring commute, it was the option he, along with a group of colleagues from Massachusetts, chose. They’d carpool down to the capital on Mondays, returning on Thursday evenings. Only rarely would he ever spend four entire weekdays in Washington, preferring instead to enjoy as much time at home with his family as could be managed.
To make up for his regular absences, Tip would make breakfast and school lunches for the kids—he and Millie had five children: two daughters and three sons—on Friday and Monday so that Millie could sleep later.

During his Capitol Hill working days O’Neill led a bachelor’s existence,
rooming with another freshman member of the Massachusetts delegation, Edward Boland from Springfield. They were a definite odd couple: the short, quiet Boland, the large, ebullient O’Neill. The only things the two men kept in their apartment refrigerator were orange juice—which Boland would hand-squeeze—diet soda, beer, and cigars. For Tip, the evening ritual was dinner out, usually followed by late-night card games. On one evening he’d meet his pals at the University Club, on another at the Army-Navy.

All this time, O’Neill was counting the cards, and not just there on the table. He never stopped making friends—in both parties—recognizing the importance of keeping track of who was where and knowing how to connect the dots. That way, he’d have the high cards and the flushes when he needed them.
“Incidentally, I’m absolutely convinced,” he would say, “that one of the secrets behind my eventual rise to power is that I ate in restaurants every night with my friends
and colleagues from the House.” Hanging out in just the way he so skillfully—and genuinely—did over the years forged many a friendship, including across-the-aisle loyalties. These last came in particularly handy whenever a fellow member found himself in a situation where his ethics were being called into question. “I don’t
want to see any man go to jail,” Tip would say.

The practical results of his tireless networking, and also the lasting bonds he forged, formed the plus side of the lifestyle adopted by Tip in Washington. But there was a negative aspect, too: the pastimes he favored meant that his regular intake of rich food, alcohol, and cigar smoke, plus the late nights, continually offered a very real threat to Tip’s weight and overall health. It wasn’t hard to see. Yet, as he would point out, there were just three ways to spend those Tuesday-to-Thursdays: either drinking, chasing women, or playing cards.
“Some fellas like women. Some fellas like booze. Other fellas like cards. Cards keep you out of trouble.” He’d made his choice and stuck with it, and it gave him a bon vivant’s view of the city. “Many a morning I’ve seen that flag flying up there at dawn,” he once told me as we drove up Independence Avenue with the Capitol in full view.

One fellow with whom Tip had occasionally played cards was Vice President Richard Nixon. “Not a bad guy,” he’d say to me years later. In his 1987 memoir,
Man of the House,
he described Nixon as “bright and gregarious.”
The only problem with him, according to Tip, was that Nixon talked too much during the poker games. Still, they were amicable enough that Nixon felt able to ask the Democrat for help during the 1960 presidential race.
One week he passed on word to Tip that he hoped he might meet him at the game early so they could talk. When O’Neill obliged, Nixon made his pitch. Jack Kennedy, he said, wasn’t going to make it through the primaries; Lyndon Johnson was sure to be the Democratic candidate. Therefore, he felt it was all right if he asked O’Neill for the name
of a young gung ho campaign operative.
O’Neill, agreeing that this was fair, came up with one recommendation, who happened to be Senator Leverett Saltonstall’s administrative assistant. His name: Charles Colson, later a key figure in the Watergate scandal.

Besides running for and winning reelection every two years, thus amassing seniority as the 1950s turned into the 1960s, O’Neill was able to use that institutional advantage for the folks back home. From his position on the Rules Committee, and later in the House leadership, along with his close friendship with Eddie Boland and Silvio Conte, also from Massachusetts, on the Appropriations Committee, O’Neill played a central role in Boston’s latter-day economic development. He won federal money for Boston College and other universities, for medical research for the Massachusetts General Hospital, for new transit systems like the Silver Line in the Seaport district, and, finally, for the greatest public works project of them all, the Central Artery, best known as the “Big Dig.”

Tip’s political tactics, seasoned by years of effectiveness, were frequently of the hardball sort. When he needed to be tough, he never hesitated to hit, and hit where it hurt. His formidability showed itself most memorably in late 1963, just after Jack Kennedy’s funeral, when President Lyndon Johnson announced he was closing the Boston Navy Yard, not only one of the region’s most significant employers but also a symbolic one. The larger-than-life Texan in the White House, himself no political sissy and a man whose wrath (and revenge) was always to be feared, then went even further, adding insult to the injury. At the behest of top aide Joe Califano, an alumnus, he agreed to give the commencement address that year at Holy Cross rather than at Tip’s alma mater, Boston College—completely ignoring the Speaker’s invitation several months earlier—and this was, for certain, a swipe too many. Only when O’Neill used his position on the Rules Committee to keep
the vital Johnson bills from reaching the House floor did the angry president, boxed in and not liking it one bit, finally relent. The Navy Yard remained open.

However, with his stance on the increasingly polarizing issue of the Vietnam War O’Neill offered his boldest challenge to the Johnson White House. Tip’s children, especially Susan—all of them of the generation opposing continued U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia—had helped turn him around. It was because he listened to his kids that he was able to listen to the war’s critics, and not just the Pentagon. While it won him admirers among the Harvard crowd—in much the same way his rejection of teacher loyalty oaths had two decades earlier—his position on Vietnam brought a very different reaction at home in North Cambridge. In a neighborhood where enlisting in the U.S. Marines or other armed forces was the patriotic alternative to going to college, Tip’s position was a betrayal. There were those, even, who took it personally and despised him for it. With young townies dying each day in that far-off, unknown place on the other side of the world, he had broken faith with the faithful, even as he kept it with himself.

Though his opposition to the Vietnam War caused pain at home, the same moment was, in Washington, a juncture in Tip’s career when the possibility of the Speakership first started to be tangible. There were several political incidents—you could even call them “accidents”—that contributed to this. The first occurred at the raucous, unforgettable Democratic National Convention of 1968. With antiwar demonstrators massed in the Chicago streets and turmoil in the convention hall itself, President Johnson, watching on television at his Texas ranch and getting angrier by the minute, managed to reach Chicago congressman and fellow Democrat Dan Rostenkowski by phone on the convention platform. With all the force of his considerable personality, not to mention his presidential
authority, Johnson ordered him sternly to get things under control, pronto.
“Take the gavel. Get some order in the hall,” he demanded.

Rosty, as he was known, went to work.
Grabbing the microphone from the convention chairman, House majority leader Carl Albert, he managed to restore order. Unfortunately for Rosty, the diminutive Albert never forgot what the burly Chicagoan had done to him. Especially once he got wind that Rostenkowski was dining out on the story of how he’d physically wrested control from him, making sure that anyone who’d somehow missed it knew of this affront to Carl Albert’s dignity in full view of millions of people.

At this time, Representative Rostenkowski had imagined himself the likely next Speaker, especially since he already held the elective post of chairman of the Democratic caucus. However, by having acted the bully at LBJ’s bidding and then unwisely replaying his big moment for all it was worth, he was going to have to pay the price. Quite soon, he realized he’d gone as far as he was ever to get in the House leadership. When Albert himself became Speaker in 1971 and Louisiana’s Hale Boggs took the post of majority leader, this left open the party’s number-three leadership position of majority whip. Albert rejected Rostenkowski outright. To punish him further, and, obviously, to leave not the slightest doubt as to his vengeful purpose, he then recruited another congressman to run against Rosty for caucus chair, thus taking that job away from him as well.

At this point the choice of a new Democratic whip came down to a decision involving two men: O’Neill and Hugh Carey of New York. Unfortunately for Carey, a pair of fellow Irish-Americans from the New York delegation failed to support him as they might have been expected to.
Putting down the future New York governor by labeling him too “high hat” and too “lace curtain,” these two colleagues’ blackballing of Carey helped Carl Albert decide in favor of Tip O’Neill, awarding him the coveted position of majority whip in 1971.

Then, in the autumn of 1972, a tragic stroke of fate changed everything. A plane carrying Hale Boggs and three others was lost over Alaska, crashing in the wilderness, the bodies never recovered. With the help of Boggs’s aide Gary Hymel and the endorsement of his presumed widow, Lindy, Tip O’Neill pulled ahead of the other candidates jockeying for the job to replace Boggs as majority leader.
“You haven’t got an enemy in the place,” Florida congressman Sam Gibbons, the last to leave the field, told him.