Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked

by Chris Matthews

  Three months earlier, in March, back in Washington, Irish prime minister Garret FitzGerald—his own family home was, as it turns out, less than seven miles from Ballyporeen—had traveled to America and lunched at the White House. Naturally, also on hand for the event was Tip O’Neill—giving Reagan the chance to quip during his welcoming toast, “In fact, the secret wish disclosed the other day by my friend, Tip O’Neill, is an indication of the hold that Ireland has on all of us here in the States. This is a nation where the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives aspires someday to be Ambassador to Ireland. ‘Tip, what about day after tomorrow?’ ”

  Now, in Ireland and standing before its parliament, President Reagan referred back to that earlier event. “When he was in America in March,” he said, “your Prime Minister courageously denounced the support that a tiny number of misguided Americans give to these terrorist groups. I joined him in that denunciation, as did the vast majority of Irish-Americans.”

  Tip and others committed to changing the situation in Northern Ireland recognized the necessity of shifting the American approach to Great Britain. They saw that the elusive key to peace in Northern Ireland was to be found only in London. However, in October 1984, that vital piece of the puzzle became more elusive still, as Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister, only narrowly escaped harm when the IRA bombed a Conservative Party conference. Even before, her Tory loyalties had allied her to Protestant Unionists. In the aftermath she was even more hardened, opposing the very notion of a Catholic and Protestant power-sharing in Northern Ireland.

  In November 1984, of course, President Reagan was reelected. The following month, just before Christmas, Prime Minister Thatcher crossed the Atlantic to attend a roughly three-hour meeting at Camp David with the president and his senior advisors. The primary reason for the trip was to discuss with Reagan her own recent session with Mikhail Gorbachev. But other subjects were covered, including the current situation in Ireland.

  Anticipating American interest, Mrs. Thatcher herself raised the matter. She emphasized that, with regard to Ireland, despite reports to the contrary, she and Garret FitzGerald were on good terms and . . . making progress on the difficult question. In reply, President Reagan told her that in Washington there was great congressional interest in the issue, adding that he’d had a personal letter from Tip O’Neill asking him to appeal to Mrs. Thatcher to be reasonable and forthcoming. The president followed through, writing Tip later to assure him that he’d done as he asked.

  On November 15, 1985, Thatcher and FitzGerald signed the historic Anglo-Irish Agreement, which established two critical principles for future talks. The first was that their two countries now agreed on their equal interest in Northern Ireland. Second, both London and Dublin also accepted the fact that any change in Northern Ireland’s status would have to be made by the popular vote of its citizens, Protestant and Catholic alike. The agreement ushered in an era of genuine negotiation between Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland, but even beyond that, it made it possible for John Hume, the visionary nationalist from Derry, to help bring the IRA openly to the bargaining table. It was the beginning of the end to the Troubles. Both Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan had played roles they could take pride in.

  The episode warmed the Speaker’s heart toward Reagan as never before. “His feelings changed to one of appreciation and respect for Reagan when he let the Four Horsemen and him personally change the public posture of the United States from viewing Northern Ireland through the prism of Great Britain,” his son Tom would say with his own warm recollection. “He knew it put the president and Thatcher in an awkward position. They were close, the two of them. But Reagan never resented it and she did.”

  • • •

  President Reagan’s State of the Union address for 1986 was scheduled for January 28. However, at 11:39 that morning, the Challenger exploded less than two minutes after takeoff. Six astronauts were killed, along with thirty-seven-year-old Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire high school teacher chosen from more than eleven thousand applicants for the coveted primary slot in NASA’s Teacher in Space Project.

  The State of the Union address was postponed, the first and only time to date that that has happened. Instead, at five o’clock, sitting in the Oval Office, the president went on television—with far different matters on his mind and in his heart. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I’d planned to speak to you tonight to report on the State of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering.”

  He was plainspoken, and all the more eloquent for it. “We’ve grown used to wonders in this century. It’s hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We’ve grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we’ve only just begun. We’re still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.”

  Millions of young schoolchildren, he told his country, had been watching with special interest, excited that a teacher, just like the ones they saw every day, would be riding into space with astronauts. “I know it is hard to understand,” he said, addressing them specifically, “but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them.”

  His conclusion, for me, was the most memorable, quoting as he did the haunting phrases of the heroic poet-aviator John Gillespie Magee, Jr., who died in a Spitfire over England in 1941. “The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’ ”

  I watched the president’s speech, sitting next to the Speaker. He was as moved as anyone could have been, and I think the tragedy was particularly hard for those whose lives, as Tip’s was, had been for so long inextricably linked to serving their country. I think what probably added a dimension, too, was his awareness that Christa McAuliffe was a New Englander born in Boston. “As I listened to him,” Tip would later write, “I had a tear in my eye and a lump in my throat. It was a trying day for all Americans, and Ronald Reagan spoke to our highest ideals.”

  The next morning, still extremely affected by what he’d heard, the Speaker quietly put in a call to the White House to learn who’d written the address for the president. He then called Peggy Noonan to thank her on behalf of the country for her achievement. In O’Neill’s opinion, Ronald Reagan, with a prepared text, was simply the best public speaker he’d ever known, and that included FDR and Jack Kennedy. It was a seasoned man’s assessment. In the case of the Challenger speech, he’d found himself personally moved and personally grateful, and, for Tip O’Neill, that meant a lot.

  Tip would call the tax reform bill of 1986 a prime example of what can be accomplished when the two political sides work together. Along with saving Social Security, it was their finest achievement in domestic policy. Reagan “brought down the house” at Tip’s good-bye party that March.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  COMMON GROUND

  “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

  —A SIGN ON PRESIDENT REAGAN’S DESK

  Tip O’Neill made no secret of his worry that the revelation, made two years earlier in that conversation with Martin Tolchin, that he wouldn’t be running for reelection in 1986 had been a mistake of timing. The cat—or, in this case, you might say the lion—was out of the bag, and nothing could be the same as the clock began to tick away his remaining hours and days up on Capitol Hill. “Still, after half a century in politics,” he later admitted, “I should have done a better job at stage-
managing my own retirement.” No politician enjoys being a lame duck, and, after sixteen terms in the House of Representatives, Tip—who’d first sought elective office back in 1935, running for Cambridge City Council, the only contest he ever lost—was no different.

  But this time, his impulse to candor worked to his advantage. His declaration of his plans to finish out his career at the end of 1986 created just the right tone for his last term in office. Doors opened that would have remained otherwise shut.

  His retirement season climaxed, appropriately, on the evening of March 17, when the O’Neill family staged a grand dinner at the Washington Hilton to honor him, the proceeds of which would benefit Tip’s alma mater, Boston College. Among the 2,200 gathered to celebrate the Speaker and his accomplishments were former president Gerald Ford, Irish prime minister Garret FitzGerald, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and legendary entertainer Bob Hope. Yet, in the words of Thomas P. O’Neill III, Tip’s oldest son, the occasion’s “centerpiece” was President Ronald Reagan. It escaped no one that evening that they were listening to an admiring and affectionate tribute by an old pro at the top of his game. There he stood in the ballroom of the very hotel where five years earlier he’d been shot.

  “But to be honest, I’ve always known that Tip was behind me,” he joked, “even if it was only at the State of the Union Address.” It was an opener the crowd loved, hearing Reagan turn the seating arrangement for his annual speech, traditionally delivered in the House of Representatives, into such a sharp gag. “As I made each proposal,” Reagan went on, still summoning up that familiar yearly scene, “I could hear Tip whispering to George Bush, ‘Forget it. No way. Fat chance.’ ”

  Over the preceding five years, the two men had alternated between cooperation and consternation. It had not been easy, and both knew it. Their exchanges had often been harsh. But they had also frequently shared celebrations. This moment was the valedictory culmination of the good times. “And Mr. Speaker,” Reagan now went on, “I’m grateful you have permitted me in the past, and I hope in the future, that singular honor, the honor of calling you my friend. I think the fact of our friendship is testimony to the political system that we’re part of and the country we live in, a country which permits two not-so-shy and not-so-retiring Irishmen to have it out on the issues rather than on each other or their countrymen.”

  When it came Tip’s turn to respond, he was equally gracious, praising their across-the-aisle efforts by acknowledging how unusual they were. “I have traveled the nations of the world. You see on one side of the hall the leadership and on the other side the minority and they don’t talk.” His personal view of Reagan had always comprised a complicated mix of emotions. Less than two years apart in age, they had managed, over the course of the relationship thrust upon them, to find common ground. Even as each remained an exotic figure to the other, each managed to appreciate the other’s differences.

  “Mr. President,” he continued, “we have differing philosophies, but I want to tell you how much I admire your ability, your talent, the way you handle the American people, the love the American people have for you and your leadership—even though I’m opposed to it,” he said, to unrestrained laughter.

  “You’re a beautiful individual, Mr. President,” he said. “Thank you for being here. I think of your charm, your humor, your wit. You know, sometimes when I get up in the morning, I say, ‘Don’t let it get to you, old boy.’ ” Again, the room exploded. The contest had gone on for five crisis-packed years, and, in the end, both team captains had survived to score memorable home runs.

  • • •

  A few weeks later, on schedule, the Speaker left Washington for his regular Easter trip overseas, accompanied by the usual eager gang of legislators. The congressional delegation he led, ably cochaired by Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski, this time had an itinerary pointed southward, to Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina. After that, it was back up through the Dominican Republic.

  But since Kirk O’Donnell, his accustomed foreign policy hand, couldn’t make the trip, I was asked to accompany the group as Tip’s chief traveling staffer. The assignment quickly turned into a two-week blur of meetings and lavish dinners, often hosted by American corporate lobbyists. There were definitely no K rations, as there’d been the last time I’d accompanied a group of congressmen to the region. Back then, I’d landed on the recently invaded island of Grenada, off the coast of Venezuela; now I found myself in roaring Rio de Janeiro. One morning we were awoken for a flight along the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana, and above Sugarloaf and the Christ statue. Through a friend of mine, Gabriel Guerra, I’d gotten use of the Governor of Rio’s helicopter. What a ride it was! That night I recall a line of tall, dark, spectacular-looking Brazilian women high-stepping onstage before us. Tip O’Neill leaned over and whispered: “See, I told you if you stuck with me you’d have a great time!”

  • • •

  But there were duties more critical than junketing to occupy the Speaker during his final months in office and to keep all of us busy as we wound down. The historic tax reform bill of 1986 was one such challenge on the near horizon, and its milestone success had much to do with Tip’s closeness to his traveling buddy from Chicago. Rosty, or “Danny,” as the Speaker inevitably referred to him, was not just his ally but also a real pal of many years’ standing, both men having entered the Congress back in the 1950s. And though I always suspected a bit of envy on the Chicagoan’s part due to his having narrowly missed election to the Speakership, that’s not how Tip saw it. Or else, he just had a different way of dealing with his friend’s possible sensitivity.

  A good example of that is how Tip insisted that fellow Democrat Rosty—and not the more obvious candidate, Republican leader Bob Michel—have the distinction of being listed as “cochairman” on all the protocol lists, each Easter, of that traveling congressional delegation, the one that caused such embarassment during the big Reagan fight in 1981. Their habitual giant duffel bags, too, were clearly labeled the “O’Neill-Rostenkowski” trip to wherever. Those trips were always bipartisan in makeup, yet the Speaker always made a point of honoring Rosty as his partner on the road. He loved the guy and never wanted to let him down, especially when he knew how much his old friend’s heart was in it.

  For his part, from early 1985 on, Dan Rostenkowski regarded the passage of an important tax reform bill as a way, truly, to make his mark as an historic Ways and Means chairman. The measure he advanced, with Reagan’s blessing, would end up reducing the number of brackets to two, 15 and 28 percent, allowing these lower rates by sharply cutting the number of deductions, limiting even those for business meals and entertainment. Most impressive, it raised the rate for capital gains to the same as ordinary income. Money made from money would now be taxed as high as money made from work.

  All in all, it created a more transparent tax system—one that both Reagan and O’Neill, each for his separate reasons, wanted passed. The president believed high marginal rates were a brake on enterprise and risk-taking, while the Speaker liked the progressive features of the bill. Reagan had himself campaigned on a promise to make “the whole system more fair and simple for everyone.” Neither of the two men, certainly, wished to be blamed for the defeat of a good bill.

  For several nervous days and nights in November 1985, it was touch-and-go, with the odds shifting briefly against success. A vote late in 1985 to bring the bill to the House floor was defeated when the bulk of the Republican caucus failed to back it. According to Tip O’Neill, the GOP congressmen had, disloyally, “voted to humiliate the man who had led them to victory.” The Speaker agreed to give it a second try only if the Republicans would now guarantee they’d be able to rally a minimum fifty GOP votes in favor. He knew well the truth in the adage of Louisiana’s Senator Russell Long, the veteran chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “Don’t tax you; don’t tax me; tax that fellow behind that tree.” He wanted the president’s party to suffer a few degrees of the heat the Democrats
would face from the wealthy and the corporate world.

  The night that the White House managed to come up with the required number of Republican ayes, the Speaker was having dinner at the Phoenix Park Hotel, a Capitol Hill spot he favored, enjoying its traditional Irish ambiance. As the agreed-upon deadline of 8 p.m. came and went, he still had not returned Reagan’s call. On tenterhooks because of Tip’s silence, James Baker, now treasury secretary—the former White House chief of staff had switched jobs the previous year with Reagan’s first-term secretary of the treasury, Donald Regan—would later recall his side’s uncertain wait. “Four frustrating hours passed before the men talked. Why so long? I suspect the Speaker just wanted to play us a bit before he closed the deal.”

  He was right. That’s precisely what my boss was doing, letting the Republicans dangle just enough to sweat. “Three times he called,” Tip would later confess, “and they tell me at the White House he was in a dither.” But then, when the time came for the vote itself, the Speaker came through with what Baker rated as “an excellent speech in support of the bill.” The much-anticipated tax reform bill passed with a strong Democratic vote that was joined by seventy Republicans. Tip O’Neill had helped Ronald Reagan achieve what would prove to be his major second-term triumph.

  Another bipartisan effort that fall dealt, if not as effectively, with immigration. The measure was two-pronged. It offered citizenship to those who had entered the country illegally in the past while punishing employers for hiring them in the present. The measure angered both those opposed to “amnesty” for illegal immigrants, and Hispanic organizations that argued the sanctions on employers would encourage discrimination. Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan both took considerable heat for endorsing the dual provisions. Though it took a balanced approach and provided citizenship to millions of immigrants, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 lacked the “teeth” to stop illegal hiring. The best that could be said is that the measure offered future reformers a road map on the kind of immigration law that was still needed.