The O'Neill Speakership Mr. HYMEL. Thank you, Walter, and thank you for putting together this excellent panel of people who knew Tip. It's been 10 years since Tip was with us but a week doesn't go by that his name isn't in the paper, usually associated with that saying, ``All politics is local,'' something his father taught him. It was used last Tuesday, in the Kentucky election, for instance. The Democratic candidate was upset and a consultant said afterward that Tip O'Neill was right--all politics is local. Many Kentucky voters were angry with the previous Governor's sexual escapades. I'm not so sure Tip meant that his saying should apply in that context, but if it fits I guess it's all right. Just last month I was talking to Lindy Boggs and she was telling me about when she was at Tip's funeral. It was very crowded because it was at Tip's parish church in Cambridge. And the fellow next to her said, ``They should have had this funeral at a cathedral where they could accommodate everybody. This is too crowded.'' And Lindy said, ``I looked at him and said, `All politics is local.' '' Two weeks ago in The Hill newspaper, there was a cartoon strip about a Congressman who wants to get all the benefits for his district but didn't want to vote for an increase in taxes. The last cartoon panel said, ``Well, you taught me `all politics is loco.' '' Another case when Tip was invoked occurred when Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected Governor of California. The reporters interviewed John Burton who is the president pro tem of the California Senate, and they asked, ``How are you going to get along with Governor Schwarzenegger?'' And Burton said, ``I'm going to treat him like Tip O'Neill treated Ronald Reagan.'' He said, ``They had a wonderful personal relationship and they fought over policy, as we should.'' Tip ruled by anecdote and he ruled by humor, and I'm sure you all know that. Senator John McCain, last week in a Washington Post story about the disappearance of the real characters in Congress, said, ``To be honest my favorite was Tip O'Neill.'' He said, ``One time I spent five hours with him on a plane, and it was probably the most entertaining five hours of my life.'' The other day I was taking a client through the Rayburn Building. He said, ``I need a shoe shine.'' So we went in the barbershop and Joe Quattrone, the longtime barber there said, ``Gary, I got to tell you my favorite Tip O'Neill story.'' And my client's listening, of course. He said, ``You know Richard Kelly,''--some of you may remember the Congressman from Florida who got in trouble for taking a bribe and was about to be sentenced. Quattrone said to Kelly, ``I'm sorry for what happened,'' and Kelly said, ``Joe, don't worry about it. I'm at peace with myself. I'm really feeling good about myself. I was just on the House floor and Tip O'Neill put his arm around me and said, `I'm sorry for what happened, and my door will always be open to you.' '' That was Tip O'Neill. I want to tell one last story, one former Congressman Joe McDade told me about 2 weeks ago when I saw him at a book signing. Joe said, ``Gary, you don't know this story but one time we were traveling with Tip through Europe and we stopped at the airport in Shannon, Ireland,''--and if you ever took a trip with Tip, you always stopped at the Shannon Airport because they have a great duty-free shop. ``So everybody was getting off the plane and Tip said, `You know I'm not feeling well. You go on and shop, I'm going to stay on the plane.' '' Joe said, ``Tip, I'll stay with you and keep you company.'' So they're sitting there shooting the bull--I'm sure talking sports and politics, and the pilot, an Air Force colonel, came back and said, ``Mr. Speaker, can I get you anything?'' Tip said, ``No, no. Everything's fine. On second thought, could you take the plane up so we can see Ireland from the air?'' And the colonel said, ``Sure.'' So Joe said they revved up the engines and took this United States of America airliner up and circled for awhile. Tip saw Ireland from the air, and then they landed and got everybody on and went home. To me that typified Tip O'Neill. Now let me tell you about some of the people who will speak about him today. First is Jack Farrell. Now Jack didn't know Tip as well as Danny Rostenkowski or Mickey Edwards or myself, but he got to know him. Jack spent 6 years researching Tip's life. He did 300 interviews and wrote a book called, Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century. It sold 38,000 copies. You can still buy it today. Jack did an excellent job. Everybody co-operated with Jack because former Congressman Joe Moakley, Tip's very dear friend, said you could trust Jack Farrell. Jack is now the bureau chief of the Denver Post, and he will talk to you about what he learned about Tip. Next on the podium is former Congressman Danny Rostenkowski, who was very, very close to Tip. They are very similar. They're both big persons, their fathers were in politics, they are Catholic, ethnic, big- city organization Democrats. Danny had a lot of ideas about how the House could be run better and he was very generous about giving his opinions to Tip O'Neill. And some of his ideas are still in place today. For instance, Danny is the guy who came up with the idea to have weekly whip meetings. They had never had them before. The practice of rolling votes from Monday into Tuesday, which helped the ``Tuesday-to-Thursday Club,'' also was Danny's idea. Dan could have been on the leadership ladder. He could have been the whip for Tip, but he chose to be chairman of the Ways and Means Committee instead. Mickey Edwards, our final panel member, is a former GOP Congressman from Oklahoma. He was sworn in by Tip when he was a freshman. He became a member of the loyal opposition. Edwards was head of the Republican Policy Committee, and chair of the American Conservative Union. In fact, he now teaches a class in American conservatism at the Kennedy School at Harvard, which he's meeting this afternoon at 2:30. We'll let each panel member speak and then take questions from the audience. With that, I'll turn it over to Jack Farrell. Mr. FARRELL. Good morning. So a few months ago I got a call from Walter, who has now slunk away somewhere, and he asked me if I would give a talk about Tip O'Neill. And I thought I was going to be in a small conference room with maybe a few members of the Congressional Research Service staff. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I actually got an invitation and noted that this was going to be a historic event featuring all three living former Speakers and the current Speaker. And it came to me that Speakers Foley and Wright and Gingrich were all going to be here, appearing in person, giving first- hand accounts with behind-the-scenes nuggets that historians would prize forever. And if that was not daunting enough I had been selected to stand in for one of the greatest storytellers of all time, Speaker Tip O'Neill. So I was struck by one of those moments of stark panic. Desperately, I came up with the idea that I was going to deliver this speech in the first person, like Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain. I would dress up like Tip, comb my hair back, sprinkle some flour in it so I'd have that grand O'Neill white shock of hair. Maybe strap a pillow around my waist and speak through the stub of a cigar. I ran this by Gary and Walter and got what I guess could be described as politely nervous chuckles. But as always the sharpest perspective came from my wife Catharina. She said, ``Jack, I love you. But you're a lousy actor and you're a worst mimic. In all the weeks of your book tour, all the stories you told, you never once gave a good impression of Tip O'Neill. Your `dahlings' and your `old pals' were never persuasive. Your Boston accent is unconvincing and when you sing it's off key. You barely need the pillow and you can douse your head with as much flour as you want. It's never going to make you look like Tip O'Neill, but a little bit more like snow on Old Baldy. You just don't have enough trees at the peak.'' So Tip remains to be played maybe in a one-man show by John Goodman or Ned Beattie or Charles Durning. And having watched John Goodman play a Speaker on ``West Wing'' this fall, I think he might be the best bet even though he did play a Republican. So now I get to talk about Tip, not to try and channel him. And the sound that you are hearing is that of 1,000 C-SPAN viewers sighing in relief. Though I spent 6 years on my biography of Speaker O'Neill, I'm very modest about my ability to describe his motivation on many matters. As he once said, ``You cannot look into a man's heart. Human beings keep great secrets.'' But I do believe--I do know that Tip would have approved what we're doing here today. He revered the House and the Speaker's Office and, this may come as a surprise to some in the room, he was a life-long student of history. Many of you may travel to Boston for the Democratic Convention next summer or to New England to see the leaves of autumn, and if you pause at Minuteman Park and follow where the Redcoats were chased by the Rebels down the road from Concord to Lexington, or you go to Charlestown to walk the decks of Old Ironsides or you visit the Old North Church or the Paul Revere House or many of the other carefully preserved historic sites on the Freedom Walk in Boston, you should tip your hat to Tip, who was responsible, or at least shared in the responsibility, of winning Federal protection and funding for these sites when he served with great enthusiasm on the National Historic Sites Commission. Tip's ability to bring home the bacon for matters of historic preservation is part of a pattern. For one of the things I discovered when doing the research for my book was that in the days before he entered the House leadership he was a colossal collector of ``pork'' for Massachusetts. From a junior seat on the Rules Committee, according to one reputable academic study, Tip's share of Federal postal, health, welfare, anti-poverty and education funds was demonstratively greater than those claimed by the chairman of the authorizing committee or the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee that had jurisdiction over those matters. And I see heads nodding among the cognoscenti in appreciation of that particular trick. Congressman Jim McGovern wherever you are, eat your heart out. If you go to Massachusetts to visit those historic sites, you'll no doubt travel on roads that Tip played a major role in building. Not just the multibillion dollar Central Artery Project which is rightly known as Tip's Tunnel in Boston, but also the aging elevated Fitzgerald Expressway that they're tearing down to make way for the new artery. Tip helped build it when serving as the first Democratic speaker of the Massachusetts House after World War II. In those days, before the creation of the interstate highway system, the States paid for their own roads and the Massachusetts government cut corners in the form of exit and entrance ramps to save money when building the expressway. Soon it would take 45 minutes to get from one side of Boston to the other. So when he came to Congress, Tip set about solving this. In a way, he inherited his own problem and the way he solved it 40 years later was by tapping the U.S. Treasury to the tune of $12 billion, and Massachusetts thanks you. As he raked in the Federal largesse for his State and district, O'Neill also took the time to make sure that the Minuteman Park and the Old North Church were protected. It's a small but perhaps telling indication that in Tip O'Neill you have a somewhat more complicated character than the popular image suggested. He was a wardheeler to be sure, but one of the first to be blessed with a college diploma from Boston College. No one was better at swapping favors, but when he first ran for office, and in his years in the Massachusetts State House, he had the tiniest bit of a hint of a sheen of a middle-class reformer about him. He was certainly no James ``Take a Buck'' Coffey, that memorable State rep from Beacon Hill who so eloquently summed up the code of a certain class of Massachusetts politicians. Coffey publicly announced, ``I'll take a buck. And who the hell doesn't know it? I'm probably the only one who has guts enough to say I'll take a buck. I'd like to see the guy who doesn't.'' Tip knew the ways, and could throw a mean elbow, but he appreciated youth and idealism and was able to change with the times. He had street smarts and Jesuit schooling. Representative Barney Frank, a Harvard graduate, once told me that he thought Tip was smart enough to teach history on the faculty at Boston College. It was only after leaving the interview and upon some reflection that I began to worry that Barney was playing with me and that his comment said more about how Harvard views Boston College than it does of Tip's particular gifts and abilities. But I brought it up with him later and Barney assured me that he meant it as a compliment to Tip, not a knock at BC. Tip's ability to bridge the gap between the new and the old would prove to be an invaluable asset as he rose to the speakership. He and his predecessor, Carl Albert, are rightly known amongst students of Congress as the key transitional figures in the development of the modern Speaker. And, in fact, I have my own thanks to give to the Carl Albert Center and to Mr. Peters for much of the analysis that I'm about to present, and for also preserving and sharing a remarkable oral history by Carl Albert in which Carl laid it down as he saw it, with absolutely no reservations, when commenting about the character of his peers in all those years in Congress. Albert and O'Neill presided over the transition from old to new, there's no doubt. Consider what preceded them for most of the 20th century--a rigid seniority system with tyrannical old southern chairmen, and a closed-door leadership characterized by Speaker Sam Rayburn's ``board of education.'' The board was located in a high-ceilinged room one floor below the House Chamber and Tip visited when he was invited by his patron Speaker John McCormack, who was then majority leader. Tip sat around with Mr. Sam's closest buddies drinking hard liquor, and using the small sink that, as D.B. Hardeman and Donald Bacon so memorably put it, ``served as a public urinal for some of America's most famous political figures.'' It was from that room that Harry Truman was summoned to the White House to be sworn in as President when Franklin Roosevelt died. And Mr. Sam routinely invited a few up-and-comers like Albert, Hale Boggs, and Tip O'Neill to listen as he and Lyndon Johnson and John McCormack or House Parliamentarian Lewis Deschler discussed the day's events and struck a blow for liberty. That was the House as Tip knew it when he arrived in Congress in 1953. Even the arrival of Jack Kennedy did not change things. The southern chairmen remained in control, and Tip found it particularly frustrating because--though JFK was from Massachusetts--political rivals on the President's staff kept O'Neill away from the new President. When he turned 50, he took his daughter Rosemary to dinner. ``That's it. My career is over,'' Tip told Rosemary. ``We had a President from my own State, from my own district and I can't get in to see him.'' Well, as someone who's just a few months from turning 50, I hope that the next 35 years do for my career what the next 35 did for Tip. The war in Vietnam turned out to be his great opportunity. He was an early foe, representing a district that turned against the war before much of the rest of America. His stance against the war gave him credibility, and a following, among the flock of young representatives who were then beginning to arrive in Washington. Like them, he was frustrated by the way that the tough old southern chairmen refused to allow recorded votes on the war. Out of sympathy, and expediency, he joined many of their attempts to reform Congress. Though a northerner, Tip was a veteran Democrat who could appeal to the South; he could also appeal to both the ``old guard'' and the ``new turks.'' So he was selected by Albert and Majority Leader Boggs to become the Democratic whip. Then, of course, came the stroke of fortune that put Tip just a step away from the Speaker's Office. Boggs' airplane took off in unsettled weather in Alaska and he was never seen again. So it was Tip who faced off against Richard Nixon. He found himself the leader of the House Democrats in the turbulent years of Watergate. And it was clear throughout the early seventies that his strength in the House came from his ability to span this gap between North and South, young and old, new suburban representatives, and the lingering captains of the old city machines. It was a very delicate balancing act but it got him where he wanted to be--the Speaker of the House in 1976, just in time for the return of a Democratic Presidency. But as he took the oath of office, O'Neill looked out on a House that was far different from the one he had joined in 1953. ``The group that came in 1974, the ``Watergate babies,'' were a bunch of mavericks,'' said Jim Wright. ``All of them had run on reform platforms intent on changing anything and everything they found that had needed changing.'' Indeed, while the turbulence of the sixties, the Vietnam war, and the years of Watergate had led millions of young Americans to abandon the political process and turn inward, those who persisted in politics--in Democratic politics--were highly committed activists who had cut their teeth on civil rights, the anti-war movement or the Kennedy, McCarthy and McGovern campaigns. They viewed Washington as a capital in need of purging. Tip recalled that ``these youthful, able, talented people, they didn't like the establishment. They didn't like Washington. They didn't like the seniority system. They didn't like the closeness of it and they came down here with new ideas. They wanted to change the Congress of the United States, which they did.'' The old politics had fallen into disrepair. The Democratic Members of the classes of 1970, 1972, 1974, and 1976 were prototypes of a new kind of Senator and Representative. They were comfortable with their ideological allies in the press corps that was undergoing similar changes. They were conversant in the politics of televised imagery and campaign commercials and generally beholden to few party leaders. They were independent political entrepreneurs who raised their own funds, hired professional advisors, and reached out to the voters using direct mail appeals, single-issue interest groups, radio, and television advertising. Said Tip, ``About 50 percent of these people had never served in public life before. When I came to Congress the average man had been in the legislature, had been a mayor or district attorney or served in the local city council. They grew up knowing what party discipline was about. These new people came as individuals. They got elected criticizing Washington. They said, `Hey, we never got any help from the Democratic Party. We won on our own and we're going to be independent.' They started in 1974 and they broke the discipline.'' The House was thoroughly remade from the sleepy institution of Tip's early years in Congress. The southern autocracy was broken; the shuffling old bulls swept from the Capitol's halls. Of 292 Democrats when Tip took over as Speaker in January 1977, only 15 had served in Congress longer than he had. The average age in the House had dropped to 49.3, the youngest since World War II. The regional distribution of the two parties had begun to reflect the transformative success of the Republican southern strategy. And the old urban strongholds of ethnic white Democrats had been washed away by the great post-war migration of black Americans from the South and the subsequent white flight to the suburbs. The new breed of Democratic office holders, Tim Wirth, Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Michael Dukakis, and the rest, were neoliberals who sold the notion of political reform and their own personalities to suburbanites who gathered political information from television, not the local block captain. Ticket splitting was far more common. The percentage of voters who chose the party line dropped in House elections from 84 percent to 69 percent in the 20 years after 1958. Without an old-time party machine to distribute winter coats and turkeys, those new political entrepreneurs invested considerable resources into sophisticated constituent service operations, answering mail and telephone calls, staffing satellite mobile field offices, chasing down wayward Social Security checks. Between 1971 and 1981 the volume of incoming mail to Congress more than tripled. Watts lines, word processors, and computerized mailing systems became commonplace features in congressional offices. Members of this new Congress depended on televised imagery and telegenic forums. The number of committee and subcommittee chairmen had doubled to some 200 during the time O'Neill had been in Congress. The duties of constituent service and the work of these subcommittees fueled the demand for more staff. The 435 Members of the House had 2,000 employees on their payroll when O'Neill arrived in 1953. There were 7,000 such employees in 1977 and another 3,000 working for committees, subcommittees, and the party leadership. The Rules Committee served as a prime illustration. Chairman Howard Smith (D-VA), had two committee aides in 1960 when Tip served on Rules. Twenty years later there were 42. Congress was now a billion-dollar business with a commensurate demand for more lobbyists, special interest groups, trade associations, and journalists. The average number of days in session jumped from 230 in the Eisenhower years to 323 in the 95th Congress. And the number of recorded votes went from 71 in O'Neill's first year to 834 in 1978. Gone were the days when Carl Albert, following Sam Rayburn's advice, would spend his days in the House Chamber soaking up knowledge and forging collegial relationships. Gone as well were the hours when Harold Donohue (D-MA), and Phil Philbin (D-MA), would slump in the soft leather chairs of the House Chamber each afternoon like aged hotel detectives, whiling away the hours with gossip and the occasional rousing snore. A 1977 study by a House Commission found that Members worked 11-hour days of which only 33 minutes were spent at contemplative tasks like reading, thinking, or writing. The House became a place to cast a vote and flee, not as much to mingle, converse, or enjoy the debate. For many it was hard not to hearken back to George Washington Plunkett, the legendary sage of Tammany Hall who asked in 1905, ``Have you ever thought what would become of the country if the bosses were put out of business and their places were taken by a lot of cart-tail orators and college graduates? It would mean chaos.'' And so, in the early years of Jimmy Carter's Presidency, O'Neill pioneered a process by which he would govern the House for the next decade. It came to be known as the ``politics of inclusion.'' The idea was to rope your colleagues in to secure their allegiance by giving them a stake in the results, to share the responsibility as well as the spoils, and to co-opt resistance. Did the new breed of congressmen and congresswomen--the political entrepreneurs--demand a piece of the action and a ticket to the 5 o'clock news? Then O'Neill would give it to them in return for their loyalty. Starting with an Ad-hoc Energy Committee and three energy task forces, soon every major issue had a task force and bright, young Members to chair it: willing to trade their independence for the power and celebrity of serving in the leadership. ``O'Neill didn't direct his colleagues to do his bidding,'' said Phil Sharp (D-IN). ``He entrusted them.'' The rise of Representative Richard Gephardt, elected in 1976, was illustrative. Soon after taking office, the Carter administration had discovered that the cost-of-living increases were soaring in a time of high inflation and threatening to bankrupt Social Security. The Democrats ultimately concluded that a massive hike in the payroll tax was the best way to keep the system solvent. To head the Social Security Task Force, O'Neill selected the 36-year-old Gephardt, and they pushed the bill through the House before the 1978 election season. It passed in 1977 by a 189 to 163 margin, the largest increase in payroll taxes in history--$227 billion over 10 years--but Gephardt and his task force had gotten it done. He moved into the leadership's favor and was soon being hailed in the press as a force to be reckoned with because of his ability to deal with a cross section of House Members. O'Neill aide Irv Sprague later wrote a memo to Tip about the task force system, saying it triumphed because it ``involved as many people as possible and gave them a personal stake in the outcome.'' ``We have the Policy Committee. We have the Whip Organization working. We got the Rules Committee working and we got the Chairmen all working together,'' O'Neill told the National Journal. ``They're part and parcel of the organization. They're part and parcel of making decisions. There are more people in the decisionmaking. That's the way I like it and I'm sure that's the way the members like it.'' It wasn't enough. The Carter years were a political disaster for Tip O'Neill's Democrats and justly so. When handing the Democrats control of both the White House and the Congress in 1976, the voters had looked to the party for competence, resolve, and the promise of national revival. Handed the opportunity the Democrats staged a thoroughly miserable performance. They had been petty, selfish, and spiteful. They had looked beholden to oil companies, the health care industry, and other special interests. They had refused to curb their insistent liberal base and chosen to fight a destructive and self-indulgent civil war in the Presidential primaries. They were intellectually clueless, politically inept, and O'Neill stood as the symbol of their failure. I don't know how many here remember, but the Republican television commercials showed a white-haired burley actor who ran out of gas on a highway. It clicked not because it represented just any generic big-city pol, but because it lampooned the Speaker of the clownish House in Washington. After a fine first year as Speaker with the passage of ethics and energy packages, O'Neill's performance had lapsed to adequate in 1978 and piteous in 1979 and 1980. There were good reasons for the disaster and few in Washington were more adept than Tip at deflecting the blame toward the White House, the centrifugal effects of congressional reform, or the ideological incohesion of his party. But at a time of economical, international, and political crisis when his party and countrymen looked at Tip, he had failed. His was the party of Tongsun Park and CETA [Comprehensive Education and Training Act], of 18 percent inflation and gas lines. When they could have been addressing the problem of America's economy, the Democrats had spent their time squabbling. The electorate's retribution had been just and severe. It was not just that the Republicans won--the White House, the Senate and the 33 seats gained in the House of Representatives in 1980--it was who won: Ronald Reagan. ``Until such time as we nominate a new Presidential candidate you are the leader of the Democratic Party as well as the highest public official of the party,'' leadership aide Burt Hoffman wrote the Speaker. ``You are also more than ever the only person in a position to continue representing the ideas of justice and compassion.'' It would be the final battle, the defining historic moment for this bruised, old, white-haired guy, and O'Neill knew it. He would sit alone in his darkened office brooding over each day's reversals. He would be betrayed by captains, scored by old foes, challenged by young rebels in his rank. His name and his pride were on the line, but so, more importantly, was what he believed. If Tip O'Neill bungled this job, if he failed to hold the bridge, the hill, the last foothold, he knew his place in history would suffer, but so would Roosevelt's legacy: the elderly whose fears of poverty and illness had been eased by Social Security and Medicare; the working class kids carrying their families' dreams of going to college with the help of Pell grants; the water and the air that were getting cleaner and the wilderness preserved from development. Tip was no saint. Win or lose there would be no canonization of Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr. In a lifetime in politics, he'd gouged eyes, thrown elbows, bent the law, and befriended rogues and thieves. He could be mean and small-minded. But at his core there lay a magnificence of spirit, deep compassion, and a rock-hard set of beliefs. He had a sense of duty that he refused to abandon for those whom Heaven's grace forgot. He would sooner die on the floor of the House or watch his party be vanquished and dispersed than desert them. ``You know you're right?'' his wife Millie would ask him as she adjusted his tie at the door in the morning. ``Yes,'' he would say and he knew it. He knew it like he knew the sidewalks of North Cambridge, the liturgy of the Sunday Mass, or how to stack a conference committee. ``Then do your best,'' Millie would say and off he would go. He may not have had the looks of a movie star but he had great instincts and sound judgment and a joy for life that could match Reagan's charm. And like the new President, he had an innocence that had survived many years in a cynical game, and given time and exposure, would allow Americans to come to love him. Indeed, Reagan and O'Neill had much in common. They were broad-brush types who liked to joke and never let the facts get in the way of a good story. They would take a punch and come back swinging. They prized their downtime, loved to be loved, and bore without complaint, or much interest in correcting, the liabilities of their parties. They each had spectacularly talented staffs. Most important, despite their acting talents, they stood out among the sharpies and trimmers in the Nation's Capital as men of deep conviction. Each was sustained in much the same way by his own distinctive mythology. Reagan was the son of the small- town Midwest, a lifeguard and radio announcer who had made his way to the Golden State and become a wealthy movie star. He revered individual liberty, and his icons were the cowboys, the entrepreneurs, the singular heroes of sporting fields and war. His speeches never failed to cite the American Revolution, which had thrown down the government of a rotten tyranny and claimed the freedom and rights of man. O'Neill was the product of the East. Of the great crowded cities. He reveled in the collectivity of purpose and the fruits of charity, neighborhood and fellowship. His was the creed of Honey Fitz and Jim Curly, Roosevelt, and the Sermon on the Mount. He, too, revered the Founding Fathers--but for the magnificent system of government they had built which had proven so adaptable and addressed so many social ills. Tip O'Neill versus Ronald Reagan. This was no sophistic debate: these were world views clashing--hot lava meeting thundering surf. And good it was for the country to have the debate--to stake the claim of a ``more perfect union'' against the demand for ``life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'' once again. History was happening. The heritage of the New Deal, a philosophy of governing that had lasted for half a century was at stake. Reagan didn't want to trim the sails. He wanted to turn the ship around and head back to port. For more than 50 years Republicans had argued that the country had taken a horribly wrong turn in the thirties, that Roosevelt's social insurance programs and the taxes that supported them were seductively undermining the American way: breeding lethargy, dependence, and corruption of the spirit. Nor was there ambivalence at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, in the Speaker's lobby. As Reagan proved himself so formidable a foe, the Democrats scrambled to reinforce their Speaker. Tony Coelho (D-CA), was recruited to take over as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and he raised a lot of money. One of his first acts was to put Chris Matthews on the payroll: detached to the Speaker to help, as O'Neill put it, with ``the media stuff.'' Once again O'Neill's great sense of timing extended to his selection of staff. Leo Diehl was his indispensable pal and protector who had notified the wise guys that times had changed. Gary Hymel had been a bridge to the southern barons and envoy to the pencil press, and he helped Tip run the House when O'Neill was majority leader. Kirk O'Donnell was hired in 1977 when the post-Watergate era called for a legal counsel with well-honed political instincts. Ari Weiss was the Speaker's chief policy analyst. ``I've never seen a staff like Tip O'Neill's. There's not even a close second,'' said journalist Al Hunt. It said a lot about O'Neill--that he was an incredibly secure man. Matthews found that O'Neill was self-conscious about his looks, and dubious about competing with the movie star in the White House. ``He was scared to death of it because it was live television. He was so afraid he would say something wrong. He was afraid of being embarrassed. He lacked confidence. He was never sure of his looks. He was always talking about his cabbage ears and his big nose. He was mean to himself,'' Matthews remembered. Television news liked simple stories. Reagan was a skilled performer and his media advisor, Michael Deaver, and his colleagues were exceptionally good at crafting scripted moments in which the President could perform. Deaver recalled that cable TV had not yet arrived. You could target the three networks and talk to 80 percent of the public. O'Neill could never hope to match such superb Reagan moments as the 40th anniversary of the D-day landings or the President's rallying address to the stunned Nation after the space shuttle Challenger exploded. But there was a sturdy journalistic imperative--``get the other side of the story''--that provided O'Neill with an opening, as did the media's unquenchable thirst for controversy. Reporters from the networks and other national news organizations needed a Reagan foil, someone to whom they could go and get the other side, and that was a role the Speaker could play. But it was a tough, evolutionary process, especially for a man who had just endured 3 years of pummeling from the press. ``You had to beg him to do interviews and when you did your butt was on the line. If you strung two bad interviews in a row, you were dead,'' Matthews remembered. ``And I wanted desperately to say to him, I let the reporters in because I came here to help you become what you can become. And the way to do it is to be publicized. And the only way to be publicized is to let people write about you and the only way to let them write about you is to let them take some shots at you. That's the only way to become a figure in American politics. You cannot customize it. You cannot come in and tailor it. All you can do is go in, let them see who you are and let them make their own judgments.'' The Speaker, who railed against the Reagan tax bill in July, was a far better tailored, scripted and prepared politician than the befuddled bear who had opposed the Gramm-Latta budget cuts in May 1981 or who had replied, ``What kind of fool do they think I am?'' when House Democrats urged him to seek network time to respond to Reagan's triumphant spring attack on the Federal budget. Said Representative Newt Gingrich, ``If you were to study Tip in his last year as Speaker and compare him to the first year as Speaker, you saw a man who had learned a great deal about television as the dominant medium in his game.'' Democratic pollster Peter Hart remembered, ``At the beginning he was the perfect caricature of old-time politics. The Republicans took advantage of it. And he was compelled to take a position to which he was ill-prepared and ill-equipped, which was the voice of the Democratic Party.'' But by 1986 not only was he more comfortable with his stature and his feel for the role, but as much as the President represented an ideology and a purpose, the public saw that Tip represented an ideology and a purpose as well, and it was a purpose that as we moved through the eighties, Americans began to see as pretty important--that it was an important set of values that this man represents. He's not going to allow Congress to cut the safety net or the environmental programs or Social Security or education. In no small part due to Ronald Reagan, the United States would embark on a new entrepreneurial era, claim triumph in the cold war, reach giddy new heights of freedom and prosperity, and command both the attention and the obligation of greatness at the end of the century. But in no small part because of Tip O'Neill, the country would reach that pinnacle without leaving its working families and old folks and sick kids and multihued ethnic and racial minorities behind. Reagan had turned the country in a new direction. The changing world with its disorienting pace of economic, scientific, and technological advancement would inevitably demand that the mechanisms of the New Deal be reexamined and rebuilt. But in 1981 Tip O'Neill drew a line for his party and his country and the core of Roosevelt's vision was preserved. It was a stirring rear guard action worthy of Horatius at the bridge or Kutuzov at the gates of Moscow. The final point I'd like to make about the Albert and O'Neill speakerships is how many of these changes that were made in this period--television, the rise of committees, huge numbers of staff, televised sessions of the House--all were seen as liberating, creative adjustments by progressives at the time. But they helped bring on the end of the Democratic era. The shattering of the seniority system, the successful attack upon the old, southern chairmen, the advent of television and its effect on the House all helped Republican as well as Democratic young turks: Republican names familiar to us now--Jack Kemp, Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich. The Democratic reformers had shown the way and left it open for a group of real revolutionaries, the young Republican entrepreneurs who finally triumphed in 1995 and took back control of the House. But that's a story for the rest of the day. I'm here to talk about Tip O'Neill and to sum up by quoting from Rev. J. Donald Monan's eulogy at Tip's funeral. ``Those of us who have lived through the decades since the 1930s of dramatic change in the moral dilemmas that modernity brings, in the crisis of wars and the threats of war . . . realize that Speaker O'Neill's legendary sense of loyalty, either to old friends or to God, was no dull or wooden conformity. It [was] a creative fidelity to values pledged in his youth that he kept relevant to a world of constant change.'' And that, in my opinion, was his greatest genius. Mr. HYMEL. Congressman Rostenkowski. Mr. ROSTENKOWSKI. I guess what you expect from me today is a personal view and, also, a legislative view of Tip O'Neill. I think Tip and I had a great deal in common. We both came from an urban area. We saw poverty first hand. But, you can't look at Tip O'Neill's speakership without first looking at what a really unique challenge had been created for him by having Ronald Reagan in the White House. Reagan was a wonderful public speaker; a classic ``outside'' politician who had good sound bites but not creative legislative ideas or interest in legislative detail. Tip O'Neill was a classic ``inside'' guy. He looked like an old- fashioned politician. Some people liked that image, some didn't. But, there was no avoiding his physical structure. When Tip became the de facto Democratic spokesman, it was not an uneven contest. He had a very delicate balancing act. President Reagan was tremendously popular and the question became how to moderate what he and the Congress were trying to do without confronting the President head on. In the first context, with the 1981 tax cuts, Democrats foolishly got into a bidding war that made things worse than they otherwise would have been. A lot of ``blow-dried'' Democrats elected post-Watergate thought that O'Neill was the wrong face for the party at that time and that it was their turn to govern. So, even while Tip tried to present a united Democratic front, he was challenged by plotting from within his own party. The fact that there never was a public explosion is certainly to Speaker O'Neill's credit. Unlike today's situation, the committee chairmen in the House, people like myself, had a lot of independence. The Speaker couldn't order them to do anything because they wouldn't automatically all obey. When Newt became Speaker, he centralized power, and was able to do things, especially involving the scheduling of legislation in the House of Representatives that Tip could never have accomplished. Tip just didn't have the powers conferred on Newt. I should know. I was appointed chief deputy majority whip by Jim Wright. As a matter of fact, Tip didn't like the idea that I was going to be the deputy whip, but Jim Wright insisted because of the fact that we had had a hell of a fight for majority leader. Leo Diehl, a top O'Neill aide, who was orchestrating it with the help of Jimmy Howard from New Jersey and Danny Rostenkowski, had worked like the Devil along with people like Tony Coelho to get Jim Wright elected majority leader. We had been the ones who had talked Jim Wright into running for majority leader. Jim was very comfortable on the Public Works Committee and, believe me, made more friends in the Congress than anyone. But after the election and Tip's ascension to the speakership it was kind of an intimate legislative process. Tip couldn't command Members to do things the way the Republicans have done since. Instead, he had to convince them. Tip would put his arm around you and give you one of these, ``Gosh darn, you gotta help me on this.'' And, in most instances, Members of Congress would bend to the wishes of Tip O'Neill. Tip O'Neill had a great deal of faith in the system and he had tremendous respect for the individual legislator's ability to govern. It was in those days when committee chairmen were very powerful that Speaker O'Neill recognized that he came from within that group of representatives who wanted their voices to be heard. In contrast to the present day leadership authority, O'Neill would wait for the legislative process to work and come to the Speaker's office. What he did draw out of you was a compelling competition to do the job. If you failed, it'd be at dinner that night that he'd say, ``Jesus, you know Rosty, you're not doing so well over there.'' And, it would really boil me just like it would boil John Dingell or it would boil Jack Brooks. Tip O'Neill had the ability to convince a legislator because he was what was termed ``a legislator's legislator'' himself. He had come up through the ranks and been in the trenches and that, I believe, was the secret of the successes we had. Certainly O'Neill competed with Ronald Reagan. You've got to remember that Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, was probably one of the most popular individuals who ever came to Washington. He broke all precedents. He came to Capitol Hill as President-elect, visiting the Speaker in the ceremonial office--never been done before. Came to the House of Representatives for the State of the Union Message and violated House rules by introducing people in the gallery--never done before. It was this ``so-called'' warmth that Reagan expressed and brought through to television. To his credit, and I just did a C-SPAN show this morning about the creation of C-SPAN, during the time of this creation, no one was more influential in having C-SPAN in the House of Representatives than Tip O'Neill. Tip worked with C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb as hard as I've ever seen anyone ever work to accomplish this. I've got to admit that I was on the other side of the argument with respect to C-SPAN. But, the day that we initiated C-SPAN, you couldn't buy a blue shirt in Washington. Tip, in my opinion, depended a great deal on staff, depended a great deal on information that came through the legislative process, and tried to make judgments based on the coalitions which he could put together. He was good at it. I'll never forget the first day as leadership when Tip; Jim Wright, the majority leader; John Brademas, the majority whip; and Danny Rostenkowski, chief deputy whip, went to the White House for an 8 a.m. Tuesday morning meeting. We were ushered into a small dining room off the East Room where then-President Jimmy Carter was hosting a ``breakfast'' for the leadership. There were little fingertip sandwiches and small biscuits and Tip O'Neill looked at Jimmy Carter and said, ``Jesus, Mr. President, I thought we won the election for crying out loud!'' The next Tuesday, and we were there every other Tuesday, you'd have thought we were all ``Paul Bunyons'' at breakfast. O'Neill, to his credit, came to the speakership at a time when I think somebody up there liked us because it was very tough competing with Ronald Reagan. I can say this personally. Ronald Reagan as President made my job at the Committee on Ways and Means very easy because all I had to do was try to bring Ronald Reagan to the middle and he'd bring along the Republican votes that were necessary. That, coupled with Tip O'Neill's coalitions, made it possible to pass legislation. I've so many pleasant personal memories over the years with Tip and Millie, with Silvio Conte, with Bob Michel. In summation, just let me say this. Last night, I had dinner with Guy Vander Jagt, Bob Michel, Leon Panetta, and Marty Russo. I wonder if in 10 years or 8 years, after their service, the present majority and minority leaders will get together for dinner. It's a sad commentary. Mr. HYMEL. Thank you, Congressman. Congressman Edwards. Mr. EDWARDS. Well, first of all, I want to say that I probably feel more comfortable in this room than some of the other people here, like Jim Wright, Tom Foley, and Danny Rostenkowski, because we Republicans always had to have our conferences in this room because the Democrats were meeting on the House floor, so we couldn't use it. So I've spent a lot of time in here. I can't tell the personal stories about Tip because I wasn't involved in the same way that the members of the Democratic Party were, but I do have some reflections I'd like to share. I had great respect for and friendship with the men who followed Tip as Speakers--men like Jim Wright and Tom Foley--but when I came to the House they were just ``Mr. Chairman'' and every Democrat was Mr. Chairman of something. But Tip was ``Mr. Speaker'' and he remained that. It was not only his presence and the fact that he was the Speaker when I came to the House and the man who swore me in, but he looked, he sounded, he acted the way you would expect a leader of the Nation to look and sound and act. He was that imposing and that impressive. When I teach my classes at the Kennedy School, one of the things I emphasize in the very first class period is the word ``passion.'' That politics is about passion. Passion is what drives you to get up and do the things you have to do to get elected and to go through the very tiresome job of actually being a day-to-day legislator. You really have to be driven by your beliefs. All politics is passion just like all politics is local. And Tip was a very passionate person as those who knew him realized. But he was a different kind of politician when he first came to the Congress. He was, in fact, the quintessence of a local pol. He was passionate about issues, but he was passionate about issues that mattered to the people in Cambridge and South Boston and the areas that he knew. He was not a Massachusetts politician. He was strictly a Boston politician, which is a lot different from Brookline or Wellesley or Newton. It was inner city. It was neighbors. It was knowing the people in the barbershop and the deli and the dry cleaners, and it was a very personalized, localized, kind of bring-home-the-bacon politics. So he was connected to the local highways and the local hospitals. What he did when he came to Congress was to be the voice, the spokesman, for the people of his area. Now I didn't realize until I started teaching at Harvard that political scientists like to refer to what they call a choice between being a ``delegate'' or a ``trustee.'' I had never heard those terms before. But in the sense of being a ``delegate,'' somebody who really represented the home people, that's what Tip O'Neill's politics was about. I am reminded of a story about one of my colleagues from Oklahoma, Mike Synar, a really fine young man who died all too soon. Mike was once interviewed by the New York Times and there was a little flap that occurred as to whether Mike was an Oklahoma Congressman or a U.S. Congressman from Oklahoma. He, of course, argued that he was a U.S. Congressman from Oklahoma, which made people in Oklahoma very unhappy because they wanted him to be an Oklahoma Congressman. Well, when he got here Tip was a Boston Congressman. He was not a national Congressman in that sense. He was very much a local kind of person. And then something happened. I've got a photograph that I hope is going to be passed out to the tables, something I found as I was going through my files. Something happened to Tip that changed his life, that changed his speakership, and to a large extent changed the country. When Ronald Reagan was elected President, all of a sudden Tip became not just the master of the institution which, as Danny said, he ran very well by allowing various committee chairs to be powerful in their own right. Suddenly, Tip O'Neill became the champion of progressive politics. He became the national voice--the passion of the progressive politics that had begun with FDR and had continued since and that Ronald Reagan threatened. What Reagan brought was not only a new vision, but if you were on the other side of the aisle, an attempt to really undo a lot of what had been done over the previous decade. So Tip O'Neill had thrust upon him something he had really not prepared for. He had thrust upon him the job of being the last bulwark of liberalism--becoming the champion of the forces opposing the Reagan and Bush foreign policy proposals, preserving domestic social programs. All of a sudden it was Tip not just being in the Speaker's office, but taking the floor, taking the microphone, and becoming the voice to challenge Ronald Reagan. Tip became the Democratic Party, and what happened as a result of this was that we had these geniuses over at the National Republican Congressional Committee who decided that the way for Republicans to take control was to run against Tip, to demonize Tip O'Neill. That's where those television spots came from that showed this actor playing Tip and characterizing him, and, through him, the Democratic Congress as big, fat, and out of control. It turned out that the voters really thought he looked a lot more like Santa Claus. The public did not share the antipathy toward Tip O'Neill that the Republican Congressional Committee had anticipated, and the ad campaign didn't work. There was also something else about Tip. I remember Tip, of course, as an adversary, as the advocate of what we were trying to change. But Tip's word was good. On the one hand, there was the public Republican attempt to gain control, and so, those television spots attacking Tip O'Neill. But in Republican leadership meetings, we all knew that Tip's word was good. He was tough. He was a hard fighter, but he was fair. Let me tell a little story. Actually Jim, the story is about you, but also there is a lesson here about Tip O'Neill. I got an e-mail recently from a political science professor on the West Coast. He said he was watching a video of a debate on the House floor and since I was very involved in that debate, he wanted my input about what had happened. Jim Wright, who was then the Speaker, announced at the end of the vote--Republicans, of course, were winning the vote--that he was going to keep the vote open so people who had not yet voted could cast their votes or people who wanted to change their votes could change their votes. As it happened, of course, Jim Wright and his team being very good at this, before time had run out, the Democrats were in the lead on the vote. Then the gavel came down and the Democrats had won. The political scientist wrote to me and said, ``I don't understand what happened. The Speaker announced that he was going to keep the vote open for anybody who wanted to change their votes, so why didn't you Republicans do the same thing and say you wanted to continue this a little longer while you tried to change people's minds.'' So I wrote him back and said, ``I don't think you understood. Jim Wright was the Speaker. He had the gavel. He could determine when the vote was over.'' The political scientist wrote back to me again and said, ``Oh, I understand now. You didn't trust Jim Wright.'' And I wrote back and said, ``No, you don't understand. We trusted Jim Wright. He is a very honest, decent man, who believed passionately that what he was doing was good for the country and that what we were doing was bad for the country. And he would do everything that he could within the rules, within the proper procedures of the House, to prevail on a cause he thought was important.'' That, I think, is not only what Jim did, but it's also what Tip did. What you always knew was that Tip O'Neill could be a tough adversary. When we wanted to give Special Orders and make the whole world think we were speaking to the entire Congress, he would order the TV cameras to pan the Congress and show that we were giving these great orations to nobody in particular except a couple of our Members and our staff. So Tip was a very tough fighter, but he was always fair. He was always decent. He was dignified and people on the Republican side liked him a lot--we opposed him, but liked him a lot. When he died, people said, ``Well, he was one of a kind. There will never be another like Tip O'Neill.'' And I wrote a newspaper column in which I said, I hoped that was not true. It would be a terrible loss to America if there was never another like Tip O'Neill. Mr. HYMEL. Thank you, Congressman. Before we take questions I'd like to summarize by saying again that Tip ruled by anecdote and humor, but there are four things he should be remembered for and only one has been mentioned. First, Tip brought television to the House. A lot of discussion had gone on before, and there was a lot of running up and down hills by Members and staff. When he became Speaker he said, ``Turn on the TV cameras.'' It was that simple and, of course, we wouldn't have C-SPAN today if it wasn't for that decision which he made by himself. Tip also destroyed the seniority system. One time in the Democratic Caucus at the beginning of a Congress, we were doing reforms and Tip offered an amendment that you could get a vote on a committee chairman if one-fifth of the caucus wanted it. Before that, it was automatic that the most senior person on the committee became the chairman--no exceptions. Well, Tip's motion passed because you could always get one- fifth of the Members. Two years later, three chairmen were thrown out. Now, the committee leadership always had to run in the whole caucus. Seniority didn't mean as much anymore. So Tip was responsible for destroying the seniority system. A third thing he did was eliminate the unrecorded teller vote. Some of the oldtimers might remember that. Just like in the British Parliament today, there was a procedure where Members walked through lines and were counted and then the majority decided whether an amendment wins or loses. Well, Tip and Charlie Gubser, a Republican from California, had an amendment that abolished that procedure. The other thing was a code of ethics. Tip established a commission to write a code of ethics and Representative Dave Obey told me when Members came to Tip and said, ``Tip, we have two versions--kind of a soft one and a tough one. What do we go with?'' Tip said, ``The tough one.'' Tip was linking that with a pay raise. By the way, the ethics code did go through and it still exists today. So with that, I'd like to ask the first question, if you don't mind, of Congressman Rostenkowski. Please embroider a little bit on why would a Member of Congress, who has a constituency and his own mind made up, and Tip would come over and put that big arm around him and say, ``Can't you help us like a good fella?'' And that's all he would say. Why would you then vote with Tip O'Neill? Mr. ROSTENKOWSKI. Well, we have to set the stage for that. We did have a cushion. We had a lot more Democrats for a period of time, certainly with Lyndon Johnson. President Johnson could really work the room when it came to a whip count. I think Tip credited Tom Foley and Danny Rostenkowski as probably his best whip counters. Once you found out that a certain Member had a problem with a particular vote, then you tried to figure out why. Was it because he wanted something for his district, say a bridge? Was it because he was mistreated by a chairman? Tip would do the groundwork and then walk over the rail on the House floor and whisper in that particular Member's ear, ``We're going to solve your problem. Now come on, you've got to help us here. I mean, this is a Democratic vote. It would be embarrassing for us not to pass it.'' And, with this big arm around you, you'd cave. He had a natural, warm ability. There are so many stories I could tell you about Tip as a person. Tip O'Neill would enter a room with his ``God love you, darlin','' all of a sudden, he'd take over the party. He was an empowering figure with tremendous warmth. Every Democratic congressional campaign dinner, it was Tip O'Neill's party, and you'd never leave that dinner without the room joining him in singing the tune, ``Apple Blossom Time'' to his lovely wife Millie. It was just a warm personality. Mr. HYMEL. Thank you. Do we have any questions from the audience? Mr. ROSTENKOWSKI. If I may I'd like to say one thing in response to what my colleague has just pointed out. Over the years, Tip O'Neill formed lasting friendships. One way he did this was that he honestly believed that Members of Congress should visit overseas and that we should have a legislative exchange with other countries. The most outstanding congressional delegation trip that Tip O'Neill organized and took was the one to Russia. We were the first to be exposed to Gorbachev. Silvio Conte, myself, Bob Michel, and Tip O'Neill sat with Mikhail Gorbachev. At that meeting Mikhail Gorbachev suggested that we do this more often. You ought to come here and visit us; we ought to come and visit you. We reported this to President Reagan upon our return, and we told him we felt if there was anybody in the leadership of the Soviet Union who was looking for democracy, it might well be Mikhail Gorbachev. It was after that congressional trip, which Tip O'Neill chaired, that we started to see a so-called melting of the Iron Curtain. You can describe congressional delegation visits however you want, but they are a very important instrument in our democracy and friendship with other nations. Thank you. Mr. HYMEL. Anyone? Yes? Question. Is there anyone in the House today like Speaker O'Neill? Mr. ROSTENKOWSKI. The changing of the House of Representatives has come so swiftly since I left it. I'm really not as close to the membership as I'd like to be. I just don't know of anyone who has the chemistry that Tip O'Neill had. Tip O'Neill, even as a liberal, had the unique capacity to get votes from the southern Members of the Congress. That's why he was able to work so well with people with very different backgrounds, like Jim Wright. With respect to electing Jim Wright the majority leader, Tip O'Neill stayed as far away from that election as he possibly could because we had Majority Whip John McFall, we had Representative Dick Bolling, we had Representative Phil Burton in the race. Our plan was to get all the McFall votes for Jim Wright on the second count. Tip would stay away from that and, I think to his credit, when Jim Wright was elected the majority leader, he was relieved that he had as stable an individual as Jim Wright for the position. I don't know of anyone like Tip today, and I don't know that the times are the same now as they were then. There's a lot of hate in the air in the House of Representatives and that's a sad thing. Mr. HYMEL. Congressman Edwards. Mr. EDWARDS. I was going to make the same point that Danny did at the very end. I don't know the Democratic Members as well as I should and I'm not sure that the times have changed for the better, but I think it would be very hard for somebody with Tip's approach to bringing people together and to lining up votes to succeed today. The balance between the two parties is very close. Since 1980, there has been more and more of a sharp divide between what the Democrats want to achieve and what the Republicans want to achieve, so I'm not sure that's exactly what's called for at this time. But if I can tell a little story here. I went by to see David Obey, who was chairman of the subcommittee of which I was the ranking member-- the Foreign Operations Subcommittee on Appropriations. I've always liked Dave, and we were sitting and talking and he said to me, ``Mickey, it's not the same anymore. They don't talk to us. They don't let us in. They don't let us in on the decisions. It's all very partisan.'' And I said, ``No, Dave it's not different. You just weren't in the minority then.'' Mr. HYMEL. Jack, you want to respond? Mr. FARRELL. I asked that question of Mike McCurry, who was then the press secretary for President Clinton. Mike's theory at that time was it would not happen again until conditions were such that ``all politics is local'' was again important. You need politicians coming to Washington whose basic connection with the voters was on the level of providing a winter coat, or that had a gut feeling for what people were thinking. And Mike said the Democratic Party is never going to be that Democratic Party again until the day that we actually get together and meet at bars, or we go out and we do car washes to raise money, like the Kiwanis Club, or you bring it down once again to the party of $50 contributions. So I would never say that Howard Dean has any kind of personality like Tip O'Neill's. I don't know what it is that Howard Dean has tapped out there in the country with his Internet fundraising, with the ``Move On'' phenomenon, but it's interesting to me that what Mike forecast has evolved from out of nowhere. Progressives on that side of the Democratic Party are getting together and actually finding that it reinforces their values, and they feel that they have a voice by doing this kind of small-dollar fundraising that is coming back. And for Democrats, it may be interesting to know that any Republican fundraiser will tell you that they've had just huge success with small donors and with making average people feel part of the cause. Whether or not that would ever produce somebody of the kind of charismatic personality of Tip would just be a roll of the dice. Mr. HYMEL. Thank you Jack. One more thing from Congressman Rostenkowski. That will wrap it up. Mr. ROSTENKOWSKI. I don't mean to say to you that I believe Tip O'Neill was totally unique. It was the time and I think also that Tip was blessed with the fact that he had a Bob Michel as minority leader. Because, from the day that we opened the session, we were legislators and it was not a sin to compromise. If you compromised and you weren't satisfied with all you got in the bill, you were coming back next year. You were going to get a little more next year. Those of us who had programs, and Tip O'Neill had programs, were patient. We knew eventually that the social change would come. I believe that had Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton listened the first year that they initiated comprehensive health reform and done it incrementally, we would today have had all we need as opposed to the dissent that's taking place today in both the energy and the health bills. Mr. HYMEL. Thank you very much for your attention.