TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/042489/04248900.050

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 9KB | 163 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