Part II
Perspectives on the
Speakership
Chapter 1
The Speakership in Historical Perspective
Ronald M. Peters, Jr.
Regents' Professor, Carl Albert Research and Studies Center and
Department of Political Science, University of Oklahoma
Just over 100 years ago, on November 9, 1903, the Honorable Joseph
Gurney Cannon, a Republican from Illinois, was sworn in as the 34th
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. ``Uncle Joe'' Cannon
became, perhaps, the most powerful Speaker in the history of that
office, exercising almost complete control over the legislative process,
dominating the committee system, often determining the content of
legislation, and standing toe to toe with Republican Presidents Theodore
Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Cannon was a colorful figure, earthy
in appearance, demeanor, and sense of humor. He was the most prominent
legislator of his day and perhaps, at that time, the only Member of
Congress to gain extensive public recognition. In fact, his power in the
House of Representatives became increasingly controversial until
finally, on St. Patrick's Day 1910, the Members of the House rebelled
against him, stripping him of control over the Rules Committee and
putting the party regime that had evolved since the Civil War on the
path of extinction.
The speakership of the House had not always been so powerful an office
nor such a pure expression of party interest as Cannon made it. During
the formative years of the Republic, the political party system was in
flux, and House Speakers were not usually cast in the role of national
party leaders. Henry Clay of Kentucky, the most important Speaker of the
antebellum period, was indeed a partisan figure; but his influence
extended beyond the circle of his partisan supporters and as a national
figure he, in effect, transcended the offices that he held. Other
antebellum Speakers were less noteworthy. It was not until after the
Civil War, with the rise of the stable, two-party system that we have
known since, that the speakership became defined as a position of party
responsibility. This development sharpened the fundamental tension
between the Speaker's partisan and institutional roles that is latent in
the constitutional design. From 1865 until the turn of the 20th century,
the political parties became more entrenched and the speakership became
an increasingly important position of party governance. Several Speakers
during this period became powerful political leaders. These included
Republicans James G. Blaine of Maine, Thomas B. Reed of Maine, and
Cannon himself, and Democrats such as Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania,
John G. Carlisle of Kentucky, and Charles F. Crisp of Georgia. Clearly,
however, Cannon was the most powerful of them all, and his speakership
represented the apotheosis of the office. Cannon came to the speakership
just as that office reached its zenith under the rules of the House and
of the Republican conference. The Speaker controlled floor recognition,
named the members of committees, chaired the Rules Committee, determined
referral of bills to committees, and controlled the floor agenda.
Speaker Cannon's power was made emblematic by one disgruntled GOP
progressive Member who, when asked by a constituent for a copy of the
rules of the House, sent a picture of the Speaker.
Today, we remember Cannon as the Czar of the House, and the office
building that bears his name is a monument to his power. It is equally
important to remember, though, that Cannon's speakership witnessed the
peak of the Speaker's powers and the beginning of their decline. The St.
Patrick's Day revolt of 1910 stripped the Speaker of his control over
the Rules Committee and led to the defeat of the Republican Party and of
Cannon himself in the 1912 elections. Cannon was reelected in 1914 and
the Republicans recaptured their House majority in the election of 1918.
The speakership, however, was never again as powerful as it had been
under Cannon. It is ironic that the building that bears Cannon's name
was emblematic of an institutional shift that would, over time, erode
the power that he had enjoyed.
When the Cannon House Office Building was completed in 1908, it was
the first detached office building serving the U.S. House of
Representatives, and it symbolized, and gave further effect to, an
underlying transformation in American politics and in the House of
Representatives. It was at or near the beginning of the era of
``institutionalization'' of the House.\1\ The demands of legislative
work and constituency service had created the need for each Member of
the House to have adequate staff and appropriate office space in which
to operate. No longer would Members have to meet with constituents in
the halls, lobbies, hotels, and restaurants. Henceforth, Members would
have their own space and that space would be at some distance from the
legislative Chamber. The first step in isolating Members from each other
was taken out of institutional necessity.
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\1\ Nelson Polsby, ``The Institutionalization of the House of
Representatives,'' American Political Science Review, v. 62, March 1968,
pp. 144-168.
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The Cannon House Office Building opened during a period of electoral
realignment and the attendant sharp political conflicts. Progressive
western Republicans allied with northern and southern Democrats to
dislodge Cannon from the Rules Committee. When the Democrats took the
House in 1911 their Speaker, Champ Clark of Missouri, relinquished to
Floor Leader Oscar Underwood of Alabama control over the House floor.
Underwood experimented with government through the Democratic Caucus
(much to the displeasure of their erstwhile allies, the progressive
Republicans), but eventually power flowed to the committee system where
it remained ensconced until the reform movement of the early seventies.
The transformation of the House from a party-centered to a committee-
centered legislative body was manifested by the construction of two
additional office buildings. The Longworth Building, named after Speaker
Nicholas Longworth (R-OH), was completed in 1933. The Rayburn Building
was completed in 1965 and was named in honor of the House's longest-
serving Speaker, Sam Rayburn of Texas. These buildings were monuments to
the power of the committees. While the Cannon Building had few committee
hearing rooms, both the Longworth and Rayburn Buildings are organized
around them. With the exception of the Appropriations, Rules, Standards
of Official Conduct, and Ways and Means Committees, which today occupy
offices in the Capitol Building, all other committees established their
operations in the detached office buildings. The party leaders occupied
space in the Capitol. Just as the physical layout of Washington, DC,
reflects the constitutional separation of powers, so, too, did the
arrangement of Capitol Hill reflect the institutional divisions between
the party leaders and the committees and their chairs.
The influence of political party competed with that of the committee
system under Democratic majorities from 1911 to 1918 and under
Republican majorities from 1919 until 1930. The Democrats experimented
with ``King Caucus'' while diminishing the role of the Speaker. The
Republicans managed business through a small group of legislators whose
most influential Member was Longworth. As Speaker, Longworth
demonstrated vestiges of the power that Cannon had enjoyed, but only
that. Beneath the surface, a trend was already underway that would alter
the House and the speakership for generations: longevity in service was
steadily on the rise. This trend was especially accentuated in the
southern States dominated by Democrats. When the Democrats returned to
power in 1931, southern Democrats were at the top of the seniority lists
and came to chair many key committees. The Democrats were to hold power
for all but 4 of the next 64 years, and, until the reforms of the early
seventies, the southerners sat astride the committees and the House like
statues on the balustrades of an ancient castle.
I have elsewhere labeled this the ``feudal'' era in the history of the
speakership because of the manner in which Speakers showed deference to
the committee chairs.\2\ There were related political and institutional
reasons for this deference. Politically, the ascendency of the
committees and the relative decline of the speakership was the product
of the Democratic Party and the coalition that supported it. The
Roosevelt coalition combined voters from northern cities with the
``solid South.'' The quid pro quo was always implicit: the South would
provide reliable congressional majorities and the North would leave
civil rights alone. To ensure that this political bargain stuck,
congressional Democrats opted for seniority as an almost inviolate rule
for advancement up the committee lists. They granted extraordinary
powers to the committee chairs, powers that enabled them to set the
agenda, determine committee meeting times, cast proxy votes, name the
subcommittees, and, in effect, control legislation. The southern barons
could block any legislation thought inimical to southern interests. The
Rules Committee, which had been the bastion of Cannon's power, now
functioned autonomously and often at odds with the leadership. The Ways
and Means Committee, whose chair had formerly served as floor leader and
deputy to the Speaker, now functioned autonomously in controlling vital
legislation and serving as the party's Committee on Committees. The
speakership that Cannon knew had become unrecognizably eroded.
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\2\ Ronald M. Peters, Jr., The American Speakership, 2d ed. (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990 [1997]).
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This was just fine with Democratic Speakers. Their job was to preserve
the Democrats' hold on power. This meant holding the coalition together.
Conflict resolved or avoided in the committee rooms would not infect the
Democratic Caucus or erupt on the House floor. It was in this context
that Sam Rayburn became the longest-serving (and by many accounts) most
esteemed Speaker of the House. Rayburn represented a district in a
southern State. His obligations as a national Democrat were always in
tension with the attitudes of his Texas constituents.\3\ Rayburn shaped
the culture of the House of Representatives. He was both feared and
revered by Members. Because he did not exercise active control over the
committees, he was not held to account for their actions. At the same
time, he was able to influence the committees when he needed to do so,
precisely because he cultivated relationships with their chairs, his
fellow southerners. Together, they taught a generation of new Members
that ``to get along, go along,'' go along, that is, with Rayburn and the
committee dons.
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\3\ Anthony Champagne, Congressman Sam Rayburn (New Brunswick, N.J.:
Rutgers University Press, 1984).
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This House of Representatives defined what political scientists later
called the ``textbook Congress,'' replete with ``norms'' such as
reciprocity, collegiality, deference, hard work, and, of course,
seniority. These values were ingrained in Members and those who best
adapted to them were the most likely to rise in the party hierarchy.
Rayburn's socialization of the House even stretched across party lines.
While the Republican Party always demonstrated a more centralized
tendency than did the Democrats, their most senior Members rose on the
committee rosters and learned that their best interests were served by
embracing the Democratic system and working with its leadership. Rayburn
developed a close friendship with Republican Leader Joseph Martin of
Massachusetts, and, when Martin served as Speaker during the 80th (1947-
1949) and 83d (1953-1955) Congresses, he perpetuated many of the values
that he had assimilated during his service in Rayburn's House. Rayburn
held daily sessions in a room at the Capitol that was dubbed the ``Board
of Education.'' Martin would join the Speaker in bending an elbow on
bourbon and branch water while discussing the issues of the day. A
generation of favored Democrats and Republicans assimilated bipartisan
norms as they absorbed the Speaker's liquor.
The ``textbook Congress'' did not last forever, indicating perhaps why
textbooks always need to be revised. During the fifties, there arose
increasing tension between the northern, liberal wing of the Democratic
Party and the southern conservatives. The two Texans leading the
Congress, Rayburn in the House and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B.
Johnson, were tugged to the left, Johnson by his Presidential ambitions,
Rayburn by the increasingly restless liberals in the Democratic Caucus.
When John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960, he realized that the
southern stranglehold on the House would frustrate many of his policies.
In 1961, in the last great battle of his career, Sam Rayburn led a
successful effort to enlarge the Rules Committee to give it a loyal
majority. Thus, the path was cleared for the subsequent passage of the
landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
After Johnson's landslide Presidential election in 1964, substantial
liberal majorities in the House and Senate swept away southern
opposition to enact his Great Society. Still, House liberals such as
Richard Bolling (D-MO.) believed that the time had come to break the
southern grip on the committee system. By the decade's end, they had
enough votes to push through the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970
and, during the early seventies, a series of Democratic Caucus reforms
that both strengthened the speakership and weakened the committee
barons. The Speaker was given operating control over the Rules
Committee. By party rule, he named the chair and the majority members of
the committee. The Democratic Steering and Policy Committee became the
party's Committee on Committees, and the Speaker appointed a number of
its members. All committee chairs were to be nominated by Steering and
Policy and ratified by the full caucus, as were the subcommittee chairs
of the Appropriations Committee. The caucus itself met monthly,
providing a venue for the liberal majority to express itself.
Even as the power of the speakership was thus enhanced, that of the
committee chairs was reduced. The Democrats pushed through a
``subcommittee bill of rights'' that guaranteed that bills would be
referred to the subcommittee of jurisdiction. Subcommittees were
provided staff, budget, and jurisdiction. With a more autonomous set of
subcommittees beneath them, and with the full caucus and its liberal
majority hovering over them, committee chairs could no longer control
the legislative process and dictate the content of legislation. The
erosion of the power of the full committee chairs reached its apex in
1975 when, led by the Watergate class of 1974, three southern committee
chairs were deposed by the caucus. After that happened, committee chairs
were more careful to nurture their relations with the caucus as a whole.
The general effect of these reforms may be described in three rings.
At the center, the party leadership, especially the Speaker, was
empowered by these reforms. Leadership stock went up, committee chair
stock went down. In the middle ring, power was decentralized within the
committee system. By the late seventies, over 150 members of the
Democratic Caucus served as subcommittee chairs. Each was granted
considerable autonomy in managing the subcommittee's business. To
sustain their influence, committee chairs had to negotiate relationships
with the subcommittee chairs. Rivalries naturally developed and the
committees became venues for bargaining and compromise. In the outer
layer, the House floor became a more important venue. The weakened
committee system was the subject of less deference on the floor. The
introduction of electronic voting, in 1973, made Members more
accountable. Televised coverage made the floor more accessible to the
public. Issues that might once have been resolved behind the closed
doors of the committee rooms were now settled in open floor fights. And
the floor was leadership territory.
Thus, the modern speakership was to operate in a very different
legislative milieu than at any time in the history of the House. During
the late 19th century, the Speaker was able to dominate the House.
During most of the 20th century, the committee barons were in control.
During the last three decades of the 20th century, the decentralization
of power created the need for other control mechanisms. Under these
circumstances, more power was given to the Speaker, but more was
expected of him as well. Thrust onto center stage, House Speakers became
more pivotal and more vulnerable. Members had higher expectations;
political opponents had greater incentive and opportunity to cause
mischief.
Political scientists have written for a long time now about the
``post-reform House.'' The term remains useful in differentiating the
transition away from the committee-centered regime of the textbook
Congress. By now, however, it may obscure more than it reveals. It has
not been the reforms alone that have altered the context of the modern
speakership. An underlying realignment has reshaped the political
landscape that gives definition to institutional processes. The most
obvious manifestation of this realignment is the fact that in 1994 the
Republicans won control of the House for the first time in 40 years. As
early as 1968, pundits had been anticipating a rightward drift in
American politics.\4\ Barry Goldwater had prophesied it and Ronald
Reagan had pressed it forward. Newt Gingrich completed it. The linchpin
of this realignment has been the transition of the South from Democratic
to Republican control. This process began with the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, which drove many southern, white Democrats into the
camp of the Republicans. This development has led us to where we are
today. Richard Nixon carried a substantial percentage of the black vote
in 1960. More Democrats voted against the Civil Rights Act than
Republicans. The Republican decision to seek the votes of southern
whites had its intended effect, swinging a majority of southern
congressional districts, Senate seats, and electoral votes to the GOP;
but it has cost them dearly among black voters who now vote 95 percent
for the Democrats. This racial and regional polarization meshes with
religion and other cultural variables to shape the present narrow
political division in the country.
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\4\ Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (New Rochelle, NY:
Arlington House, 1969); Richard M. Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg, The
Real Majority (New York: Coward-McCann, 1970).
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The parity between the two parties shapes the political and
institutional context of the speakership today. The reformed House had
one set of consequences when it was run by entrenched Democrats holding
a comfortable majority of seats most of the time. It runs differently
when run by a narrow Republican majority determined to hold on to power
in a protracted war for control of the House. For example, the
relationship between the party leadership and the committees is
fundamentally different under the Republicans than it had been under the
Democrats. The Democratic committee chairs saw their power eroded, but
were never dominated by the party leaders. Even when several committee
chairs were deposed by the Democratic Caucus, the initiative came from
within the caucus and the leadership supported the chairs. The
Republicans have simply bypassed several senior Members as committee or
subcommittee chairs, and have punished deviating Members by denying them
chairs to which their seniority would have entitled them. Thus, if the
reformed House is different from the pre-reformed House, the Republican
House is different from the Democratic House. No matter which party is
in the majority, the narrow division that has been in place between the
two parties since 1995 has shaped the legislative environment in ways
that the reformers of the early seventies could not have anticipated.
One manifestation of this new environment is the upheaval that the
speakership has experienced in the past 15 years. Almost a century ago,
Uncle Joe Cannon was stripped of much of his power, defeated for
reelection and, upon being reelected, reduced to the role of elder
statesman within the Republican conference. During the 20th century, the
speakership has witnessed great stability, even as its stature was in
many ways diminished in relationship to the committee system. The reform
movement and the development of partisan struggle for control of the
House have created a more politicized environment than any since
Cannon's time. This has taken a toll on the speakership. One Speaker
resigned from office, a second was defeated for reelection, and a third
declined to seek another term in office. These events say as much about
the contemporary climate of American politics as they do about the
individual Speakers.
This inquiry into the speakership today, then, comes at a critical
moment in the history of that office. This volume presents a variety of
perspectives on the changing speakership. Part I provides the
proceedings of the Cannon Centenary Conference on ``The Changing Nature
of the Speakership,'' co-sponsored by the Congressional Research Service
and the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center of the
University of Oklahoma. (Funding for the conference was also provided by
the McCormick Tribune Foundation.) The conference addressed in detail
the speakerships of: Thomas P. ``Tip'' O'Neill (D-MA; 1977-1987); Jim
Wright (D-TX; 1987-1989); Tom Foley (D-WA, 1989-1993); and Newt Gingrich
(R-GA; 1995-1999). In examining each speakership, the book offers a
statement by the Speaker himself (or, in the case of the late Speaker
O'Neill, by his biographer, John Farrell) along with commentary from
Democratic and Republican Members who served with that Speaker.
Additional insight is provided by noted historian Robert Remini, who
traces the broad path of the speakership's evolution. Of particular note
is the contribution of Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL; 1999- ) who offers
his most definitive statement on the speakership and his conduct of it
to date.
Part II provides additional depth of analysis in chapters arrayed
topically. Prepared by political scientists and congressional
specialists at the Congressional Research Service, these chapters offer
an analytic perspective on the speakership. In Chapter 2, Walter Oleszek
and Richard C. Sachs examine the impact of three Speakers--Reed, Cannon,
and Gingrich--on the rules of the House. They argue that these three
Speakers were distinctive in their proactive efforts to implement a
fundamentally new institutional order in the House. Their account
reminds us that Speakers are not entirely hostage to circumstance, and
that exceptional Speakers have been able to bring about important
institutional changes.
Chapter 3, by Christopher Davis, surveys the history of the House
Rules Committee and the relationships of House Speakers to it. During
the partisan era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Rules
Committee served as a reliable arm of the majority party leadership, and
Speakers such as Reed and Cannon used control over the committee to push
party legislation. With the rise of the conservative coalition in the
late thirties, the Rules Committee assumed considerable independence,
and became an impediment to legislation pushed by the liberal Democratic
majority. Since the reform movement of the early seventies, Houses
Speakers have once again taken control of the Rules Committee. The
Republicans, who complained bitterly about the tyrannical dictates of
the committee when in the minority have, Davis finds, been as assertive
as the Democrats in using their control over Rules to structure floor
debate and to shape legislation brought to the floor.
In Chapter 4, Elizabeth Rybicki traces the relationship between the
Speaker of the House and the leadership of the Senate. She identifies
the key differences between the two bodies that structure this
relationship, and examines how the role of the Speaker in bicameral
coordination has become more challenging in the modern era. Of
particular interest is her description of the mechanics of bicameral
relations. Among these are the legislative conferences through which the
two Chambers reach agreement on the final language of bills.
Of increasing importance has been the relationship between the Speaker
and the press, addressed by Betsy Palmer in Chapter 5. Her account
stresses the changing relationship between House Speakers and the media,
affected by the historical and partisan context, the personalities of
individual Speakers, and evolving media technologies. During most of
American history to date, Speakers had informal and sometimes personal
relationships with a core group of press corps veterans. With the
emergence of broadcast television, cable television, and Internet
technologies, Speakers have had to develop more sophisticated media
strategies to counter those of the President, Senators, and other House
Members. The decision to open House proceedings to broader media
coverage has changed the political environment. The increasing
partisanship we see today echoes that of a century ago, but the
relationship between the Speaker and the media is greatly different
today than it was then.
There has been no more important relationship for House Speakers than
that which they have encountered with Presidents of the United States.
In Chapter 6, Eric Petersen provides a template for understanding the
Speaker-President nexus by considering the relationship between Speaker
Cannon and President Theodore Roosevelt, on the one hand, and Speaker
Rayburn and President Franklin Roosevelt on the other hand. In the
former case, despite Theodore Roosevelt's efforts to court Cannon, the
relationship was at times strained, as Speaker Cannon often disdained
the legislative initiatives of the President. Forty years later, Speaker
Rayburn was a pillar of support for Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and
wartime policies. In each case, however, the Speaker's relationship to
the President was shaped by the needs and expectation of the Members of
the House.
Chapter 7 elaborates on the relationship between Speakers and
Presidents by considering that relationship in the context of national
emergencies: the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, and World
War II. In it, Harold Relyea argues that times of national emergency
affect the role of the Speaker and the relationship of the speakership
to the Presidency. In our system of separated institutions sharing
powers, the Presidency naturally emerges during times of national
crisis. The Congress, in general, and the speakership, in particular,
tends to defer to Presidential leadership. This may take the form of
passing Presidential legislation or in acquiescing to Presidential
actions. In such times, House Speakers tend to be supportive of Chief
Executives. Still, relationships between Speakers and Presidents during
national emergencies have varied due to personality, partisanship,
ideology, institutional stature, and statesmanship.
In the book's final chapter, I provide an overview of the many changes
the speakership has experienced and offer a reflection on its role in
the House today. This discussion echoes many of the specific themes
developed by the other authors. In particular, it reinforces the
perspective that the speakership has evolved over time according to
underlying changes in the American political system, producing periods
of partisan turmoil as well as periods of bipartisan stability. Speakers
have had to adapt their leadership style to the contexts in which they
were called upon to serve, yet each Speaker has put his stamp on the
office. The present period is characterized by a strong partisanship not
experienced since Uncle Joe Cannon was at the zenith of his power, a
century ago. Whether this augurs well or ill for the House of
Representatives, the speakership, and the country, is a story yet to be
told.