TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/042489/04248900.050

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 9.0 KB | 179 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 16

Wright Fights Back


The sleaze label attaches to a Democrat for a change, but the
House leader decides to tough it out

By Margaret Carlson


    The ritual is eerily familiar. A public figure under fire
for wrongdoing rises to defend himself, proclaiming his
honesty, years of service and adherence to the rules. Last
Thursday it was Jim Wright's turn before the TV cameras. The
House Speaker's passionate statement was reminiscent of other
notable political apologias: Richard Nixon's I-am-not-a-crook,
Ed Meese's They-did-not-indict-me and, most recently, John
Tower's I-am-a-man-of-some-discipline. Like the others,
Wright's performance only emphasized how much trouble he was in.

    Vowing to "fight to the last ounce of conviction and
energy," Wright offered a point-by-point rebuttal of the three
main charges against him. What made the nightly news, however,
was his tearful defense of his wife Betty, whose salary from a
Fort Worth developer is alleged to have been a way of funneling
cash to the Speaker. Chin trembling, he declared, "I will damn
well fight to protect her honor and integrity from any
challenge, from any source, whatever the cost."

    With that statement, Wright raised the stakes of this
in-House scandal for the Democrats assembled around him. It is
said that Dwight Eisenhower snapped a pencil in half when his
embattled vice-presidential nominee, the younger Richard Nixon,
came to the part of his Checkers speech about Pat and the cloth
coat. Eisenhower knew then that Nixon was not going to go away
but would fight to the death to hold on to his nomination. No
one heard any No. 2 lead pencils breaking when Wright said,
"There are some things worth fighting for." But it is far from
clear that his colleagues were prepared to battle to the last
with him.

    Wright's dramatic statement came as the House Ethics
Committee was preparing to vote on whether there is "reason to
believe" the Speaker has violated congressional rules. After
the vote, the committee will publish a report of some 500 pages
detailing the alleged violations. The committee will release
raw data compiled by counsel Richard Phelan -- the kind of
unsubstantiated innuendos that Republicans succeeded in keeping
out of the public domain during the Tower investigation. Wright
will have 21 days in which to respond in writing. The committee
will then decide if the case requires any action. If it
recommends a fine, reprimand, censure or expulsion, the full
House will vote.

    By the time Wright took to the podium, he knew that the vote
of the committee, evenly divided between Democrats and
Republicans, was likely to be 8 to 4 in favor of finding some
violations. The defection of two Democrats is not a mortal
wound, but if the same percentage abandons Wright when the
entire House votes, his hold on the speakership would be in
peril. Democrats had been urging Wright to launch a pre-emptive
defense. Says a House leadership aide: "We were being
procedural nerds with our pants drawn up to the armpits saying,
`We have to wait for the report, we have to wait for the
report.' Meanwhile the leaks were hurting. We needed something
to rally around." History is on Wright's side: Congressmen have
been reprimanded and censured before and several Speakers
mildly investigated, but no Speaker has ever been ousted.

    Already the Republicans, who resent Wright's high-handed
manner, have achieved a major goal with the ten-month
investigation: removing the scarlet S of sleaze from their
coattails and pinning it, for the moment at least, on Wright.
Democrats must now decide whether to stick with the Speaker and
risk being tainted or dump him in hopes that a show of rectitude
will improve their image.

    A dump-the-Speaker move could be dangerous: the political
life expectancy of a member who wounds but does not fell the
leader will be very short. Wright rules the House with an iron
hand, and has a hair-trigger temper and a long memory. He holds
power over committee assignments, the legislation that makes it
to the floor, and funds from his own copious campaign chest.

    Wright's thin veneer of good-ole-boy conviviality and
attention to detail won him the majority leader position in a
three-man race in 1976, paving the way for his unanimous
election to succeed Tip O'Neill as Speaker in 1987, but it has
never been enough to inspire deep loyalty. Wright has done well
procedurally, pushing a raft of legislation through Congress
last session. But he has also blundered, most recently in
January, when he enraged his colleagues by recommending a pay
increase of 30%, not 51%, and then called for a public vote
after promising he would take the heat alone. Despite some
improvement, this pre-television-age politician still comes off
more like Joe Isuzu than Jimmy Stewart.

    Although Wright's Thursday speech was marked by his usual
stilted delivery and forced smiles at inappropriate places, it
helped rally some Democrats to the Speaker's side. Wright argued
that his former partner, Fort Worth businessman George Mallick,
had no direct interest in the savings and loan bailout being
pushed by Wright and many other Congressmen. Mallick had bank
debts and Mallick's two sons held a $2.2 million loan that had
been foreclosed by a troubled Texas thrift, Wright acknowledged,
but plenty of other Texans were in similar straits. Therefore,
the Speaker argued, the thousands of dollars that found their
way from Mallick to the Wrights were not impermissible gifts,
since they were disclosed.

    Wright also said that the reason for peddling his book,
Reflections of a Public Man, to trade associations, universities
and the Teamsters was an excess of pride of authorship, not a
way to get around limits on honorariums. Wright complained he
was being held to revisionist interpretations of the rules
governing Congress, so that what was undertaken in good faith
is now distorted in a "rearview mirror."

    Wright's emotional defense of his wife's right to work may
garner him strong support from congressional wives who are
quietly shunted to a "spousal track" in Washington. The wives
who can find jobs when they arrive in town often have a
conflict: even work outside the Federal Government in some way
lives off it.

    Many observers trace Wright's messy financial dealings to
his divorce from his wife of 30 years, Mary, and his marriage to
his former aide in 1972. Wright, who calls his stylish wife a
"financial whiz" and is like a schoolboy when he has her on his
arm, was broke in the 1960s. But in the '70s he began to care
about appearances: he built a wing onto his house in McLean,
Va., for entertaining; he donned aviator glasses and better-cut
suits; he stopped tinting his hair. In 1981 the Wrights came up
with $58,000 in stock to go into business with the Mallicks;
Betty kept the job with Mallick she had started in 1979, which
came with an apartment and a Cadillac. In 1984 Wright spliced
together his collection of speeches, which has earned him about
$55,000 in royalties so far.

    The window that the Wright investigation opens on the way
members of Congress operate may in the end hurt all of them,
throwing more light on the fact that gifts -- cash, cars,
apartments -- are not automatically illegal, that paid vacations
from lobbyists are allowed if the trip is in connection with
giving a speech for which the member is also paid an honorarium,
and that outside income, with a few exceptions, is allowed. It
wasn't until members offered to give up honorariums as
ill-disguised bribes in exchange for a pay raise in January that
the public became widely aware of their existence.

    The public knows enough to want some changes, and the
President, who pledged himself to clean up the ethical mess in
Washington, unveiled proposals last week that would reform
campaign-finance laws, require greater financial disclosures and
restrict lobbying by former Government employees. But for the
most part he gave Congress a break, passing up the opportunity
to ban honorariums or extend conflict-of-interest laws to them.

    That standards are relatively low for everyone is not a
persuasive defense for Wright. Indeed, enforcement may be on the
increase: Wright's main tormentor, minority whip Newt Gingrich,
is about to be investigated for a suspicious book deal, and
majority whip Tony Coelho was embarrassed by the disclosure of
a $100,000 investment in Drexel Burnham Lambert junk bonds.

    Congress is often compared to a small town, but it actually
operates much more like a small high school, with its cliques,
customs, rivalries and need at times to please the teacher. Like
the class that squeals on one student who copied his homework
to show it can be trusted, Congress may have to sacrifice one
of its own to establish that it does have standards. The
question many members of Congress may be asking now is whether
they really want to be held to those higher standards
themselves.


-- Hays Gorey/Washington