TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/042489/04248900.048

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 4KB | 70 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?