Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked (45 page)

“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

—M
ARK
T
WAIN

Ronald Reagan survived the Iran-Contra scandal,
though the fallout caused his job approval rating to take a deep dive—dropping more than twenty points in late 1986. The summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev—
Geneva in 1985,
Reykjavik in 1986,
Washington in 1987, and
Moscow in 1988—were thrilling. Peace between two long-standing enemies, they said, might at last be at hand. Without a shot being fired, the dread with which every American had lived ever since news the Soviets had gotten the “A-bomb” was gone.

For my part, I felt the wonder of its absence, and, clearly, so did my fellow citizens. I remember the morning late in 1987 that I found myself standing alongside throngs of other admirers at the
corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventeenth Street, all of us cheering the Soviet president who’d helped to change history. I recall, too, that Gorbachev, startled by such a reception, but pleased, had stepped out of his limousine to shake hands with admirers.

Within a year of Reagan’s leaving office, the Iron Curtain came crashing down across Eastern Europe—most movingly, when the ugly wall that had divided Berlin
for almost three decades was leveled in celebration. The actual end of the Cold War was surprising, however, and played out far differently from what anyone had expected. The T. S. Eliot phrase
“Not with a bang but a whimper” is apt. The sad, pinched bureaucrats of East Germany and the other Soviet Bloc capitals simply converted. As a sly government economist in Budapest cynically told me that spring, “The road to Damascus is very crowded these days.” An activist university professor I met was more sublime. “Freedom is contagious,” he said.

By 1989, George H. W. Bush was the occupant of the Oval Office, and I’d been working for two years as the
San Francisco Examiner’s
Washington bureau chief. Just as I’d loved being in the thick of the action in the Speaker’s office, I treasured the chance now to be a journalist during such a time of great events. That autumn, as the world watched the revolutions in Eastern Europe that signaled the downfall of communism, I devoted one of my twice-a-week columns to saying I wished Ronald Reagan were still president in November 1989.

I would have loved to hear the speech he’d have made. I remembered how, at the Berlin Wall,
in 1987, he’d looked ahead to the stirrings that were already in the air.
“We welcome change and openness,” he declared,
“for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.”

What had occurred, what was
still
then occurring, meant that
all Europe would soon be free, just as Roosevelt and Churchill had once hoped. In those exciting years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I shared in the glorious sense that the many wrongs of the twentieth century were truly being righted.

But what about my boss, the distinguished Speaker of the House, Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., and the end to his own Washington service? When he stepped down
in late 1986, his job approval rating stood at a heartening 67 percent.
“I was almost as well-liked as the president,” he noted in his memoir,
Man of the House,
and I know how much that notion meant to him. His book, published the year after he retired, gratifyingly, was an instant bestseller.

Ronald Reagan had held office in Washington for eight years,
Tip for thirty-four. They’d begun their political careers on opposite sides of the American continent, and would, I’m sure, never have known each other had not each man felt a compelling pull to affect—in great, not small, ways—the world in which he lived. Both knew, too, when to make a fist and when to shake hands.

At the same time, I’d say that, throughout the era during which I closely observed them, neither of these two highly individualistic, greatly determined men ever penetrated the mystery of the other. Nor did they really try. Their way of life comprised an ever-ongoing series of alliances and antagonisms, but did not include personal analysis of themselves or others. They were men born when the more formal nineteenth century remained the cultural backdrop. Tip would jolt his far younger staffers with casual references to “back in the days of high-button shoes” or when he would casually mention “Taft,” referring not to the prominent Ohio senator of midcentury but to the
man’s father, still in the White House at Tip’s birth. This may well have explained the restraint that marked both his character and Reagan’s. In his own way, each was a true gentleman in a way we don’t ask our leaders to be anymore.

When I worked for the Speaker I came to love the rituals and rhythms of the House, especially Thursday nights when the whole body would come together for the closing arguments and final vote. I recall one particular night that warms my heart even now. I’d begun observing a hot debate with two men in the very heat of it. When it was over, the big vote cast, the Republican member crossed the aisle to the other side and stopped before the Democrat with whom he shared the red-faced debate. “What are you doing this weekend?” he inquired warmly. And then, after a moment of chat, “Say hello to your wife.”

I seriously contend if Jefferson or Madison or any of the others had been present for those moments—the debate across the aisle and the getting together afterward—they would say, “We did well. This is what we wanted, what we most hoped would endure.”

I’ve now, in writing this book—but also in the decades before, as I
considered
writing it—thought a great deal about their relationship, where they meshed and where they emphatically parted ways. One thing I know: when I marry Reagan’s inability to connect personally to the roughness of the budget cuts to Tip’s inability to grasp his rival’s hold on the country, what’s remarkable is the way what needed to get done did—even with those stumbling blocks along the way.

Yet, given their pre–World War I births, Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill both lived to see nearly every great advance of the twentieth century. They knew, too, their own century’s harrowing wars and its generations of ever grimmer weapons. The span of decades to which they bore personal witness was monumental.

Each man, as I judge his behavior, thought it always preferable to propel the republic forward—even when the will of the people differed from his own. Why is that? Here I’d like to offer what I regard as the best explanations for their behavior,
at its best
.

1. Both had been brought up to show respect for positions of authority.
“Reagan took Congress very seriously,” as O’Neill once observed. For his part, the Speaker rarely referred to his political rival by his name but, most often, by his full title: “The President of the United States.” The lessons taught him at
St. John’s High School were long-lasting.

2. Both preferred to play by the rules. Tip understood that Reagan had won in 1980 and, as a result, did not delay action of his economic agenda. He gave the new president a “schedule” for votes on his fiscal program and stuck to it. For his part the Gipper recognized that he’d lost in 1982 and so allowed for the repair of Social Security based on the Democrats’ chosen approach.

3. Neither acted like the spoiled kid who when he’s losing yells, “It’s my ball and I’m taking it home!” Both believed in keeping the process going—through the myriad frustrations—and so filibusters, roadblocks, government shutdowns, all were avoided.

4. Each understood the important rule continually preached by my colleague Kirk O’Donnell: “Always be able to talk.” The two of them, Reagan and O’Neill, matched each other in this, and both had truly able staffs that supported them in keeping communication lines open.

5. Each had the confidence to recruit, and take counsel from, strong advisors. This showed a deep sense of personal security on the part of both men.

6. They had one very big thing in common. Not just their Irishness, but their age. Both were growing not just older, but
old,
and they knew it. Tip was facing the fact that Reagan would be his last president, while Reagan understood that this was the only presidency he was going to get. If each were to leave his mark, then he would have to do it, somehow, with the other. In
other words—together. The truth of this political reality became clear when, starting with the 1982 election, Ronald Reagan realized he could no longer shove Tip O’Neill aside.

In fact, as it turned out, their matchup over the course of six years was no zero-sum contest. Not at all. Rather, in combat, as gladiators do, each made the other look stronger, bigger. I can see now how Tip brought out the reformer in Reagan, forcing him to make the case for change as president as he had as a candidate. At the same time, I can’t deny that Reagan woke Tip up from years of complacency in a Congress the Democrats had dominated for years.

Fighting on many grand issues, they cast each other in brighter colors as they did so, creating for themselves larger parts in history, I believe, by their sharing of the stage. Reagan without Tip would have lacked the frequent pushback that kept him from the abyss of excess. Tip without Reagan would have been a man who’d reached his pinnacle but without a reason to be there. As it was, he could retire, proud of an undeniable accomplishment: he’d helped make Ronald Reagan a conservative president but not a radical one.

• • •

However, I worked for Tip, not the other guy. And just as my grandmother had intuited how much my Peace Corps stint in Africa had changed me, so would anyone be right if they remarked changes in me as a result of those intense, shining years spent in the Speaker’s office. Most important, I learned that convictions are not a burden but a strength; they are what separate the fighter from the quitter.

And then there were the lighter moments, rare and therefore treasured. Like the time he called me into his back Capitol office just to have me see him strutting across the room in his green top hat with his Blackthorn walking stick—all just for me.

After he retired, our relationship changed only a little. He took
an office at his son Kip’s law firm near Dupont Circle. We would have long lunches across the street at the Palm, where I’d listen to him ask the old question, the one that had brought me to attention each morning during all those years. “Whaddaya hear, Chris?”

I was very happy he liked the first book I wrote,
Hardball.
It had been, of course, my time with him—and all those thousands of hours next to Kirk O’Donnell, working
for
him—that inspired it and provided many of its stories. He seemed to enjoy my syndicated twice-a-week column, too. What he didn’t like, occasionally, was stuff he heard me say on television; he’d call when an opinion didn’t sit well with him and let me know. On that score, nothing had changed. He still looked upon me as “his” guy. I’d earned my political spurs working for him, after all.

Certainly, his pals saw me as Tip’s satellite for years after I was off doing my own thing. I remember once in the fall of 1988 when I picked up the phone at 8 a.m.—a
Saturday
!—and there he was. He must have been up all night at a card game and had had to endure ribbing from his buddies for the way I’d called the Bentsen-Quayle vice presidential debate that week. (Yes, incredibly, I’d awarded it to Quayle! I’d done it on points, ignoring the game-changing moment when he’d recklessly compared himself to Jack Kennedy.) What was affecting for me to hear, and accept—even though he didn’t come out and say it in so many words—was that, at some level, he felt that when I spoke I still spoke for
him
.

Of course, if you worked for Tip O’Neill, there were all those stories he recounted. He never stopped telling them, and even if we’d heard them before, we never stopped listening. We knew he wasn’t just one of a kind, but also one of a dying breed. And if Tip wasn’t, when you came right down to it, the most articulate of men, he was, as I’ve repeatedly emphasized, an Irishman through and through. His son Tommy once told me those stories I listened to
for so many hours back then were his father’s gift to me. His dad, he said, had known one day I’d write about them.

I was, after all,
his
writer.

I remember one of my last conversations with my old boss. He described a recent trip he’d taken and the young flight attendant who’d mentioned to him how she’d heard an important person was going to be aboard. She apparently had no idea who Tip O’Neill was.
“Chris, it goes away,” he said. And I heard him.

He died in January 1994. Later that year, Ronald
Reagan began his fade from public life. In a
handwritten letter to the country, he announced he was a victim of
Alzheimer’s disease.

I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience. When the time comes, I am confident that with your help she will face it with faith and courage. In closing, let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your president. When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.

With dignity and courage, his wife, Nancy, would keep alight the Reagan torch through all the years ahead.

The worse things get in Washington—the more threats of shutdown weaken the country’s confidence in government; the more eleventh-hour stopgap deals come along to demoralize us; the more personal attacks are performed on cue for the cameras; the more nasty tweets—the more people who care about our republic look back to an idea of when the world worked the way it’s supposed to.

At the start of this book, I mentioned
George Washington and Pierre L’Enfant riding on horseback up to Jenkins Hill, then looking down on the prospect before them. It must have taken great imagination for those two men—the general who’d won the war against the great British Empire and the immigrant architect—to see this swamp along the Potomac as the seat of a great new Republic. But how much more hope it must have taken to summon up an idea that had never taken root before, of a fresh and rugged country governed by its own citizens with all their passions and differences.