TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/042489/04248900.048

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 3.9 KB | 79 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 18

The Presidency

The Speaker Should Step Down


By Hugh Sidey


    House Speaker Jim Wright has the haunted and strained look
of a lonely and failing man even in the midst of his righteous
anger. In his Thursday statement to the nation, his smile was
just a bit too forced, his somber-visaged Democratic
congressional colleagues in dark formation behind him just a
bit too straight-backed and eager to applaud. Something was
slipping away. In the warrens of the Capitol, when the press
conferences and the hubbub subside, he suddenly appears out of
the shadows alone, moving off to some other meeting or distant
rendezvous, silent, beset. The inner agony is no longer shielded
from his circle of friends. "It's hell, it's just hell," he
says.

    Wright on most counts is basically honest and decent. He has
the right to shout into the rising storm that is battering him
that he should not be judged guilty until he is tried. It is
logical for him to mount a tactical defense detailing dates,
times, dollars, his service to the House for 34 years. These
are the tidy rituals of comradeship and parliamentary procedure
that are so dear and so binding to those denizens of the
Capitol. Wright is correct that the media convulsion about
human- rectitude or the lack of it is unrealistic, often unfair
and to some degree perversely inspired by Republicans and other
enemies. He is no doubt sincere in his belief that what he did
was not knowingly wrong, certainly not evil.

    But then former Attorney General Ed Meese said all the same
things about many of the same accusations and doubts raised
against him. Meese resigned. So should Wright, not from the
Congress but as Speaker. By his own testimony he has bent if
not broken his high trust and now burdens his nation.

    The Meese record is an eerie echo from a year ago. No laws
were violated. Special prosecutors could not recommend
indictment. There was no hard evidence of greed or doling out
special favors to get wealthy. Meese was seen to be too
hurried, a bad judge of people, unaware of the court of public
opinion that calls for elevated ethical standards. He was blind
to the special symbolism of an Attorney General. It was a list
of acceptable human weaknesses for other public jobs. Not his.

    And so it is with Wright. Let him be the Congressman from
Fort Worth's 12th District, a place filled with the Texas
legends of cattlemen and oilmen and other buccaneers who tamed a
wild land. He can still be a hero there if his people choose.
But Wright became Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
"In power and prestige, the Speaker can be compared only with
the President and the Chief Justice of the United States,"
wrote Neil MacNeil in his book on the House, Forge of Democracy.
"He has been the elect of the elect." That is the way Sam
Rayburn, John McCormack, Carl Albert and Tip O'Neill thought and
acted.

    There is one more haunting Meese comparison. Both Meese and
Wright came to Washington with little money, devoted to public
service. Both found themselves thrust into a life of $300,000
houses, Cadillacs, parties, travel, pressures and enticements to
live the power game, indeed, almost the necessity of spending
beyond their means. Neither went for big bucks; they just
maneuvered at the margins and were exposed. Unfair? Then hear
again the voice of Richard Scammon, who has analyzed politics
for 35 years. "Part of the responsibility of a political man is
to take his lumps whether he deserves them or not. He may be as
pure as the driven snow and his enemies totally unfair. But who
ever said that fairness was a part of this game?"

    If Wright loves the House as he said last week, if he cares
even more for his nation as he has claimed, then he should step
down. That is hard, but then who said being a public man was
easy?