[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 13 (Thursday, February 10, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               SPEAKER TIP O'NEILL--A GIANT OF THE HOUSE

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the death of our friend Speaker Tip 
O'Neill last month has deprived the Nation of one of its most beloved 
leaders. Tip was a giant in every way--a giant of a man, a giant of a 
Speaker, a giant of a friend. He never lost the common touch. 
Massachusetts has lost one of the greatest public servants it ever had, 
and all of us whose lives he touched have lost a wonderful friend.
  By his side, through all those great years, was another great 
O'Neill, the woman who means so much to all of us and who meant the 
world to Tip, the woman he always called the biggest contributor to all 
his campaigns--Millie O'Neill. They had five extraordinary children who 
share so many of the finest qualities of their parents--Tommy and Kip 
and Michael and Susan and Rosemary.
  I think Tip finally got tired of waiting for the Red Sox to win the 
pennant.
  Tip liked to call his friends ``old pal''--or call us ``beautiful.'' 
But in truth he was the best old pal and the most beautiful one of all.
  What extraordinary memories he leaves, especially the laughter from 
his endless supply of stories, and the sheer joy we had in listening as 
he told them.
  There was the time, shortly after the Supreme Court's decision in Roe 
versus Wade in 1973, when Cardinal Medeiros called Tip and asked to see 
him on a matter of great urgency. With some trepidation about the 
purpose of the visit, Tip agreed to see him right away.
  As it turned out, Cardinal Medeiros was extremely concerned about a 
powerful hurricane that had just devastated the Cape Verde Islands. He 
had a specific request for Tip--to see if $8 million in emergency 
relief could be included in the foreign aid appropriations bill. Tip, 
with that irrepressible twinkle in his eye, replied, ``Your Eminence, 
I'll put $16 million in, if you won't mention Roe versus Wade.''
  One of Tip's most famous stories concerned the gift by Henry Ford of 
$5,000 toward a new hospital in Ireland. Unfortunately, the local 
newspaper the next day reported that the gift was $50,000. The editor 
apologized profusely for the mistake, and said he'd run a correction 
right away, explaining that the gift was only $5,000. It took Henry 
Ford about 10 seconds to realize what was happening, and he said, ``No, 
don't do that. I'll give you the $50,000, but on one condition--that 
you put a plaque over the entrance to the hospital with this 
inscription--``I came unto you, and you took me in.''
  There's also the story he said he told at a hundred bankers' 
conventions, and they loved it every time. An Irishman was applying for 
a loan, and the banker said, ``You can have it on one condition. I have 
a glass eye and a real eye, and if you can tell them apart, you've got 
the loan.''
  The Irishman studies each of the banker's eyes, and finally said, 
``The glass eye is the left eye.''
  ``Correct,'' said the banker. ``But how could you tell?''
  ``It was easy,'' said the Irishman. ``The left eye has the warmth in 
it.''
  And of course, all of us in Congress quickly learned to host 
fundraisers the way Tip O'Neill did it--a thousand dollars if you came, 
and two thousand dollars if you didn't.
  Tip was scrupulously neutral in the 1980 Democratic primaries between 
President Carter and myself. But he told me that every night, before he 
went to sleep, he was secretly getting down on his knees and praying 
that we would have another Irish President of the United States. The 
prayer was a little ambiguous--but Tip's friend Ronald Reagan was very 
grateful.
  There was never any secret about the genius of Tip O'Neill. In his 
years as Speaker of the House, the entire Nation came to know him and 
love him as we did in Massachusetts. He was a Speaker who was never 
afraid to speak out for the average man and woman--the worker trying to 
keep a job, the child going hungry in the night, the family struggling 
to make ends meet, the senior citizen trying to live in dignity in 
retirement.
  All of those Americans are better off today because of Tip O'Neill. 
When his political opponents tried to make him a symbol of the past, 
they succeeded only in turning him into an even greater national hero 
than before. He was the glue that held the Democratic Party together in 
the Reagan years, and no one could have done it better.
  He was also the only man we knew in Washington who was bigger than 
the budget deficit. One thing for sure about Tip O'Neill--when you saw 
him, no one ever said, ``Where's the beef.'' And no one ever said that 
about his bedrock beliefs either.
  We loved to compare our diets and joke about them. People often tell 
me that I have to lose more weight if I want to stay in public life. It 
seems that they don't care about my vision of the country, as long as I 
can see my toes. I told that to Tip once, and he said ``What are 
toes?''
  And of course, when Tip told the story, my toes were in the punch 
line.
  He was also Irish to the core, with the map of Ireland on his face, 
and the warmest Irish heart and personality I have ever met--
overflowing with compassion and concern for all those who need our help 
the most.
  In the days after his death, in looking through some of his speeches, 
I came across the remarks he made to the Massachusetts State Democratic 
Convention in 1981, and they captured his philosophy of public life. He 
said:

       For over 50 years with brief exceptions, the Democratic 
     Party has been the first choice of the American people to be 
     the principal governing party of this Nation. When in the 
     past we have lost, it was not because our supporters joined 
     the opposition. It was because our supporters believed we had 
     lost touch with their concerns. The reason we were the first 
     choice of the American people in the national elections for 
     the past 50 years was that FDR made the Federal Government 
     responsible for guaranteeing a decent standard of living for 
     every American--not only enough to live by, but something to 
     live for.

  Those words were his enduring ideal--the essence of Tip O'Neill. He 
never mortgaged his beliefs to the passing fashions of the time. He 
walked with Presidents and Kings, but his favorite stroll was always 
down the street in Cambridge to Barry's Corner. He became one of the 
most powerful men in the world--but he never forgot the worker in 
Somerville, the senior citizens in East Boston, the barker in North 
Cambridge, the young family starting out whose grandparents he knew. 
His Irish smile could light up a living room, the whole chamber of the 
House of Representatives, and the entire State of Massachusetts.
  The congressional district he served had also been President 
Kennedy's district when my brother was in the House--and my grandfather 
Honey Fitz' before that.
  President Kennedy thought the world of Tip. There were few whose 
company he would rather share. They had started out on opposite sides 
in the famous primary of 1946, Jack's first race for the House. Tip 
backed his friend Mike Neville. One afternoon late in the campaign, Tip 
called Neville and said, ``I'm taking a cold shower, and you better 
take one too.'' ``Why?'' said Neville. ``Well,'' said Tip, ``I've been 
going door to door for two days, and all I hear is Kennedy, Kennedy, 
Kennedy, Kennedy.'' Tip and Jack were never on opposite sides again.
  After my brother's reelection to the Senate in 1958, he called Tip 
and asked him about the results in Cambridge. Tip said that my brother 
had done well. To test him, Jack asked, ``How'd I do in Ward 1, 
Precinct 1? And Tip said, you won by 1003 votes to 12. I won by 999 to 
16.'' Jack asked, ``What happened, Tip?'' And Tip said, ``It was the 
Lefebvre family--they're off on me for some reason.''
  Well, at the Inauguration in 1961, Jack saw Tip and they talked about 
the 1960 results in Cambridge. Tip said, ``A thousand more people voted 
this time. You won by 2003 to 12, and I won by 1999 to 16.'' And Jack 
said, ``Well I see the Lefbvres are still off on you, Tip.'' Tip could 
tell that whole story from memory--and the numbers always added up.
  There was no better way to spend an evening than to hear my brother 
swapping Irish stories with Tip. Jack loved him, and so did all the 
Kennedys. I'm sure that in heaven now, Tip is leading them all in a 
glorious round of ``I'll Be With You in Apple Blosson Time.'' It may be 
apple blossom time up there, but here on earth, a beautiful blossom is 
gone.
  Still, the Speaker will always be with us in our mind's eye, in the 
hearts of thousands of his friends, and the tens of millions more who 
never met him, but whose lives are better today and whose hopes are 
brighter because he was a Speaker who spoke so powerfully for them.
  In an era so much pretension and superficiality and polldriven 
decisions in public life, Tip O'Neill was the real thing, and we were 
fortunate to have him as our leader.
  Near the end of the Pilgrim's Progress, there is a passage that tells 
of the death of Valiant:

       Then, he said, I am going to my Father's. And though with 
     great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not regret me 
     of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My 
     sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, 
     and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and 
     scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me, that I have 
     fought his battle who now will be my rewarder.
       When the day that he must go hence was come, many 
     accompanied him to the riverside, into which, as he went, he 
     said, ``Death, where is thy sting?'' And as he went down 
     deeper, he said, ``Grave, where is thy victory?'' So he 
     passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the 
     other side.

  We loved you Tip, and we always will.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an article from Yankee 
Magazine in July 1978 may be printed in the Record. Its title is 
``Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr.: The Man from Barry's Corner.'' I can hear Tip 
speaking now.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 [From the Yankee Magazine, July 1978]

          Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr.: The Man From Barry's Corner

                          (By Richard Meryman)

       Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr., the Speaker of the House of 
     Representatives, is six feet, three inches tall, admits to 
     260 pounds--``I've lost hundreds of pounds in my lifetime''--
     and describes himself as a man with ``a bulbous nose, 
     cauliflower ears, and a shock of white hair.'' This memorable 
     figure moves through the neoclassic corridors of Congress 
     like a particularly large, affectionate teddy bear. 
     Figuratively--and often physically--he puts his arm around 
     stranger and colleague alike. When Hubert Humphrey, dying of 
     cancer, returned to the Capitol, Tip O'Neill kissed him, 
     enfolding Humphrey in such a bear hug that onlookers feared 
     he would snap the frail figure in two.
       This same man is considered by many to be, after Jimmy 
     Carter, the second most powerful man in Washington. It is a 
     remarkable achievement because, to say the least, O'Neill's 
     is a House divided. No longer does a coterie of shrewd, 
     senior congressmen dominate the House of Representatives, 
     treating freshman congressmen like so many Rosencranzes and 
     Guildensterns. Rule changes have given myriad congressmen a 
     piece of the power. And a multitude of independence power 
     blocks exert their special pressures. There is a new-members 
     caucus, a steel caucus, a black caucus, a rural caucus, a 
     suburban caucus, a blue-collar caucus, a women's caucus--and 
     so on. Tip O'Neill has been amazingly successful at 
     assembling this babel behind Party and Presidential policies. 
     He is also one of the big changes in the House. Unlike his 
     predecessors--Sam Rayburn, John McCormack, Carl Albert--Tip 
     O'Neill is accessible and approachable. Said one congressman 
     recently, ``Tip makes it easy for you to complain to him.''
       O'Neill's knack is making men feel valuable--while exciting 
     their sympathy and loyalty. His arm-around-the-shoulder 
     quality, an attribute enlarged into a spontaneous art, was 
     bred into Tip O'Neill during his youth in North Cambridge, 
     Massachusetts. To an extraordinary degree, the man is an 
     extension of the boy.
       He was indelibly influenced by his father, an admired local 
     politician, and by the intense sense of community in Irish 
     North Cambridge, symbolized by a street corner--Barry's 
     Corner--the center of his orbit. As the Speaker of the House 
     answered Yankee's questions, it became clear that he has 
     managed to transplant the comradeship of Barry's Corner to 
     the United States Congress.
       My father, Thomas O'Neill, taught me, number one, loyalty; 
     number two, to live a good, ethical, honest life; number 
     three, that I truly am my brother's keeper; number four, 
     always remember from whence you come. When he was a kid he 
     had it tough; the day I was born, while my mother was 
     delivering me, he was a union bricklayer carrying a strike 
     sign against Harvard University which was using non-union 
     bricklayers.
       I am from the working class. Those are the people who sent 
     me to Congress. I've never tried to leave them. I truly 
     believe in what I call a family-saving wage--that every 
     American is entitled to a vacation with his family, working 
     hours that permit him to be with his wife and family, enough 
     money for education and medical needs. Now there are those 
     that come down here to Washington--I've seen it happen many 
     times--and they get away from their people. They get 
     affluent; move into the country club style of life, and they 
     don't think the way they used to. They get more conservative. 
     I don't think I've changed.
       My grandfather and his three brothers were brought over 
     from Ireland around 1845 by the New England Brick Company. I 
     have a deed for a plot in the Cambridge cemetery dated 1845; 
     people had seen so much death in Ireland during the potato 
     famine that the first thing they did here when they had a few 
     dollars was buy a plot to be buried in--just in case. My 
     father was born in 1874 in North Cambridge, the section they 
     called Old Dublin. When I was a kid there Gaelic was still a 
     language spoken fluently in many homes. Everybody earned his 
     livelihood working for the brick company or Hugh's Pottery. 
     My father worked in the brickyard--rough, tough work digging 
     with a pick and an ax down in those clay pits, loading the 
     clay on the tram, with a horse pulling it up the slope from 
     the pit. Nothing mechanized. They were tough workers and they 
     worked from sunrise practically until sunset--a six-day week.
       The Irish didn't want their kids in the clay pits, and in 
     1900 or so the French Canadians migrated to North Cambridge, 
     by 1920 it was the Italians working in the pits--each 
     generation moving their own out, getting them educated--
     clergymen, lawyers, doctors. The fields of insurance and 
     banking were not open to them. The old aristocracy--the 
     Brahmins, the Yanks--held that for themselves.
       It's interesting that the Irish who immigrated to 
     Charleston, South Carolina, about 1797, after one of many 
     Irish revolutions, became the cream of society. They moved 
     into an area where somebody had lived, and built the whole 
     establishment themselves. They collected $25,000 to help 
     bring over the Irish Catholic people who arrived in Nova 
     Scotia, New Brunswick, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. 
     When the Irish came to Boston, the British had been here 
     since 1620. A lot of poor English saw the Irish as an 
     economic challenge--like the Negro today. The Irish had to 
     fight for their rights and that drove them into politics. A 
     politician was valuable to them.
       My father became a successful bricklayer--he had a small 
     contracting firm in the neighborhood. In 1900 he was elected 
     a city councillor in North Cambridge, and became 
     superintendent of sewers. With an elementary school education 
     he passed the Civil Service exam in competition with fellows 
     from M.I.T. In the winter, when men couldn't work on the 
     streets and sewers because of the frost, he could put a 
     fellow to work shoveling snow. He could help his people.
       Even in my days when I was Speaker of the Massachusetts 
     Legislature. I remember meeting a fellow coming out of a bank 
     and he said, ``You know, I didn't get the job because I was a 
     Catholic.'' I said, ``I don't believe that. I'm going in and 
     see the president of the bank.'' I told the president, ``I 
     want you to know that $33,000 of our St. Vincent DePaul money 
     is in this bank. Ever since I was a kid the school children 
     in our parochial schools have put money in your banks. I'd 
     say that 85 percent of your funding is out of the area in 
     which we live, which is Catholic, Irish, French Canadian. 
     I'll tell you something, I could walk from here to Fresh Pond 
     Parkway, telling them you're a bigoted son of a B and you 
     won't hire Catholics. I could have a run on your bank in 24 
     hours.'' Within a week they three Catholics working there.
       My mother died of tuberculosis when I was nine months old. 
     One of the nuns came and took care of me so my father could 
     go to the funeral. In the early part of my life, going to 
     school, they knew I didn't have a mother and they watched 
     over me. Some of those nuns--Sister Agatha; Sister Cloretta--
     still play a part in my life.
       You know there's a terrible feeling among people, truly, 
     that Irish politicians aren't of the cleanest of honesty. 
     That isn't true of the ones that I have been with, the Eddie 
     Bolands, the Jimmy Burkes. We had parochial school 
     educations, the teaching of nuns. We are church people. We 
     live our lives in an open bowl. We're human; we err on 
     occasion. But we do not have any elasticity of conscience.
       When I grew up, life was in the community, the local 
     organizations and the affairs they ran--the North Cambridge 
     Knights of Columbus, the baseball team, the annual dances and 
     picnics, field days, parish parties, the weekly dance at the 
     high school.
       I used to be able to walk from the high school to my house, 
     which was half a mile, and I knew every person in every 
     house--start at Barry's Corner and go down the line: Eddie 
     Jones, Wee Wee Burns, Skinny McDonald, Fat McDonald, the 
     Moose, Big Red. I was, in a sense, brought up on a street 
     corner--Barry's Corner--and my father when he was a boy, he 
     hung on Barry's Corner. Every baseball team emanated from 
     Barry's Corner and the ice hockey team, the basketball team. 
     Before you went on a date, you went to Barry's Corner; there 
     was a clubhouse there. And what respect we had for the law! 
     And what respect for womanhood! Those fellows . . . there was 
     never any loose talk about women or anything like that. Not 
     that we were prudish but we just . . . we had tremendous 
     respect.
       There was real comradeship in the Barry's Corner crowd. 
     Loyalty--that was inherent. It stemmed from the persecution 
     of the Irish in the old country. Even when they moved to this 
     country, woe be to the informer. I've had loyalty ingrained 
     in me all my life in politics.
       Jack Barry was a sportswriter for the Boston Globe and one 
     of his jobs was compiling all the averages of the baseball 
     players. There wasn't a kid on the corner who wouldn't sit in 
     the back room with Jack dividing the times at bat into how 
     many hits. Everybody was a walking encyclopedia of 
     statistics, especially for the North Cambridge baseball team, 
     which in the early 1920s was New England champion. If they 
     played in Gardner, Massachusetts, the whole town would go to 
     see them play. There was loyalty.
       It was amazing that all those great ballplayers would be 
     born in the same locale--Jay O'Connor, Gaspipe Sullivan. They 
     could have been big leaguers, but they made more money 
     playing semi-pro ball on Sundays. The big leagues didn't play 
     them because you weren't allowed to charge admission to a 
     game on Sunday. What the semi-pros did was--at one o'clock 
     there would be a band concert and it cost 50 cents to get in. 
     There were 12,000 seats there, and the game started at two 
     o'clock. If you didn't pay to hear the concert, you didn't 
     get a seat at the ball game.
       My father established the North Cambridge team. In the 
     community he was the sort . . . well, he was ever mindful of 
     the needs of others. I'll tell you, in our house, we never 
     threw anything away. There was always a family in the 
     neighborhood far needier than ours. He made $35 a week, good 
     money in those days. When I got into public office, we had an 
     O'Neill Club, and in those days you had Christmas baskets and 
     Thanksgiving and Easter baskets for the needy. You really 
     didn't do them for political purposes. You went in the dark 
     of night and left them at the person's home because of the 
     pride of the person. They didn't want to accept welfare; you 
     were sending them a gift.
       When a snowstorm came . . . like my father before me, I 
     would have maybe 50 snow buttons from the city of Cambridge, 
     50 from the Boston Elevated Railway, 50 from the 
     Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, for men who wanted a job 
     shoveling snow. The men wanted to work for the city because 
     it paid $4 a day, and everybody else paid $3. Those were the 
     days of the WPA and you put an awful lot of people to work. 
     There was a time when a postal employee in our district 
     couldn't get a Christmas job unless he applied through his 
     congressional office. I delighted in public service. There 
     wouldn't be a night when my wife Milly and I were first 
     married that I wouldn't have a dozen people come to my home. 
     That stayed with me through the years. I prided myself on the 
     fact that a call to the people's congressman was only ten 
     cents when they called the house on a Sunday afternoon.
       But to be perfectly truthful . . . well, I married Mildred 
     Miller thinking I'd like to be mayor of Cambridge and be a 
     businessman and a home person and all that. She's a very 
     strong woman--German and French aristocracy that goes back to 
     the revolutionary days--and she brought up the family while I 
     spent my life down here in Washington and commuted and spent 
     a great deal of my time at home with the people of the 
     district, campaigning, going to affairs, and being in my 
     office--doing the duties of a political person and for a long 
     time an unknown political person. I didn't grow up with my 
     family.
       I tell the young fellows who come down here now, ``Bring 
     your wife down immediately and bring your family down because 
     you don't appreciate the things that you miss.'' You're down 
     here evenings, and most of my life was spent with men down 
     here--playing cards, going to restaurants, being over at the 
     Democratic Club. There's a tremendous sense of loneliness 
     when you go back to an apartment at night, and the colleague 
     that you're living with may be there or may not be there. 
     There's nothing like going home to a family. A fellow misses 
     that through the years. There's a lot of heartbreak and 
     sorrow that goes with being in public life.
       You get seasoned to the attacks in the press. But it hurts 
     your family, and because it hurts your family it hurts you, 
     especially when you feel you've led an honorable, ethical 
     life and you've devoted yourself to the good of the community 
     and the good of the nation. You have to take into 
     consideration that since Watergate there's been a change in 
     the press of America. I think that ever since Bernstein and 
     Woodward, there are thousands of reporters around the country 
     who want to emulate them. They're highly imaginative; they 
     take out of perspective the things that happen, and they 
     sensationalize them.
       But if I didn't love it here, I'd get our. I love the 
     political life. I love the art of campaigning. I'm gregarious 
     and open. I love to be with people. I love the crowds, the 
     atmosphere, being active in the local community.
       When I started politics I never had a thought that I would 
     be in it for a lifetime. My father was a leader in our area; 
     his support meant something and the mayor of the City of 
     Cambridge--Edward Quinn, respected, affable, a fine orator--
     was often in our house. The people in the Irish 
     neighborhoods, they looked at him with awe. So I had that 
     ambition that someday I'd like to be mayor.
       I loved politics, the local loyalty, the comradeship. Get 
     the most votes out for one of the boys from our part of town. 
     I worked for Charlie Cavanaugh, a state representative who 
     lived in the neighborhood, when I was 15 years old. I just 
     loved organization; I loved it when Red Fitzgerald and I in 
     precinct 2 in the Orchard Street block were getting out the 
     vote in the Al Smith campaign. We were about 14 years old. 
     There was an automobile and we'd ring Mrs. Murphy's doorbell, 
     and Mrs. Sweeney's, and have them out in the street so the 
     car could pick them up to vote, and by the time it came back, 
     we'd have the next person out in the street. We harassed 
     them, but we got them out--every person in the precinct 
     except four and they were out of town. The leading precinct 
     in the city. It was a challenge. Everybody said, 
     ``Remarkable, remarkable. A couple of young kids. Boys, this 
     is your line, all right!''
       Today anybody who doesn't run a campaign with a 
     professional is foolish. The basis is still the same--people 
     like to be asked for their vote. I've never forgotten that. 
     But now they use computers--how many medical men, how many 
     senior citizens in the district. Everything is packaged. Use 
     the media. When I was a kid, campaigning was getting a permit 
     and having a rally at the corner of Dudley Street with red 
     lights and automobile parades. It was a form of entertainment 
     and people would follow the rallies from street corner to 
     street corner. They loved the oratory; they loved the show of 
     the whole thing, the debating, the hecklers. And you would be 
     hoping that Curley would be a speaker because he would draw 
     4000 to 5000 people.
       I'll tell you a story about Curley. One evening when I was 
     Speaker of the House in Massachusetts I had to go to a 
     banquet and speak for a leader in another area, a man I'd 
     never met. I had to get up and gild the lily for him. I was 
     exhausted after a long legislative day; I had no enthusiasm. 
     I sat down and Curley said to me, ``You were awful. I want 
     you to come over to my house Friday morning.'' So I went over 
     and he said, ``I'm going to give you a little lesson in the 
     art of speaking so you'll never be stuck that way again. I 
     want you to memorize ten poems.'' Each one was for a 
     particular occasion, like a group of old friends:
       ``Around the corner I have a friend. In this great city 
     that has no end. The days go by and the weeks go on. And 
     before you know it a year is gone.'' And so on. Curley said, 
     ``You can weave into that.'' He gave me ``If'' by Kipling, 
     and Polonius' advice to Laertes--``Never a borrower or a 
     lender be''--Brutus' farewell address--``I met no man, but 
     he's been true to me.'' There was one for labor--``The 
     Deserted Village''--``The bold worker, his county's pride, 
     if once destroyed can never be revived.'' That was a good 
     lesson.
       When I ran for the state legislature right out of high 
     school, I was one of the first ones who ever went from house 
     to house, knocking at the door in the morning. ``Mrs. Murphy, 
     I'm Tom O'Neill. I'm a candidate for the state legislature.''
       ``Are you the Governor's son?'' they'd ask--that was my 
     father's nickname. ``Oh, my God, I've known your father for 
     so many years. He helped me with this; he helped my son with 
     that.'' He was a great asset to me.
       People came to my father with their problems, and I think I 
     grew up the same way. I was captain of the North Cambridge 
     football team. I was captain of the basketball team. I wasn't 
     a good athlete. But the other kids were coming to me with 
     problems--should the team play there? What should we do? I 
     had some kind of leadership abilities that . . . well, my 
     life has been one of leadership in the legislature all the 
     way along the line.
       I truly believe that one of the reasons I became leadership 
     material in the Congress was that for years when I was a 
     member of the Rules Committee--all important legislation goes 
     to the Rules Committee--I would have members of the House 
     calling me. They would say, ``Tip, that bill is going to be 
     up on Wednesday. How badly would it affect me at home if I 
     were to miss the vote?'' I could make a judgment and say, 
     ``There's nothing that affects the economy of your area.'' Or 
     I would say, ``That bill is going to be extremely 
     controversial. There's a couple of quirks along the line, and 
     when it comes to the floor, it's going to be very, very 
     argumentative and some amendments will be offered to try to 
     knock that out. You'd better be there. There will surely be 
     roll calls on it.'' How do you acquire knowledge of how 
     legislation is going to go? Is that inherent? I don't know. 
     To me two of the best readers on legislation in the House are 
     Tom Foley, he's an Irishman, and the other is Danny 
     Rostenkowski and he's Polish. He was part of the Chicago 
     operation, where they play the same hard politics they play 
     in the Boston area. If you're going to move, if you're going 
     to be a leader, you've got to know the rules of the ball 
     game.
       To be successful in political life you've got to be a 
     strong fellow. You can't equivocate and you can't waver. 
     You've got to do your homework. I may be talking in my office 
     with the largest industrialist in America who may have the 
     greatest and keenest mind in America. But I know when he sits 
     here in this room with me, that we are not equal. Because 
     he's come in to talk to me about government and politics, and 
     the Congress of the United States. And nobody knows more 
     about it than I do. They're talking in my field. They're 
     talking to a man who sets the schedule, who knows where the 
     legislation is, who knows the policy we're going to follow, 
     where the priorities are, what the Congress will do.
       In Congress I love the maneuverability. I love the basic 
     Democratic Party philosophy. I enjoy the whip organization, 
     the policy committee, the caucuses better than I enjoy the 
     actual legislation on the floor itself. It's being able to 
     set priorities and find a way out of a dilemma.
       You do have a lot of power in the House. You appoint ad hoc 
     and special committees. When two men stand on the floor, you 
     have the right to recognize the one you choose. That's a 
     tremendous power--but I try to be honorable and make my 
     decisions fairly. In the Democratic caucus, the leadership 
     meetings, the steering and policy committee, the whip 
     organization--I'm considered to be the leader of the party.
       But you know . . . well, what is power? Power is when 
     people assume you have power. That's when you have it. I've 
     never looked for power. We've got the trappings here, the big 
     office; no question I can get the President on the telephone 
     within a matter of minutes, or any corporation big wheel or a 
     governor of any state. Is that power? I don't know. If I make 
     a telephone call to an agency, I'll get more attention than a 
     freshman member of the congress. But I've never looked for 
     power. I've never tried to pull rank. That's not my style.
       For years on the wall of my office I had a sign that said, 
     ``It is better to be nice than important.'' You have to 
     remember that whoever comes into this office, comes in 
     because that's the most important thing in his life at that 
     particular time. To you it may be trivial; to him it's 
     crucial. I've talked with the mighty of the world, and I've 
     talked with the poor, indigent person who has come to my 
     house on a Sunday, seeking some assistance that I can give 
     him. I try to treat them exactly the same way.
       I suppose my heritage is Ireland. But what is actually my 
     heritage? When I was a kid I used to go up to a little 
     cottage near Jaffrey. New Hampshire, with no running water. I 
     can still reflect back on waiting for the dairy man or one of 
     the farmers to come by so I could go up to Jaffrey town. I 
     remember going out blueberrying; I remember the muskrats, the 
     deer. Millie and I bought the house later and fixed it up. 
     The delights I got climbing Mt. Monadnock. I tell people all 
     over the world, ``There's nothing like New England in 
     October; the blending of the foliage. I love Cape Cod, the 
     dunes, the quietness of it all; the blending of the people.''
       And the house I live in now on the corner of Orchard 
     Street--a skirmish happened in the orchard with the British 
     who were retreating from Lexington. As a kid, where some 
     played cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians, we played 
     colonists against the British. We knew the maps of where they 
     came from and where at the corner of Beach Street three 
     people had been killed. I love the Old North Church, the Old 
     South Meeting House, Paul Revere's home, the State House. I 
     love it all. My father loved it exactly the same way.
       The biggest kick I get out of anything--I don't know what 
     it proves--but over in Copley Square a statue of an 
     abolitionist sits so majestically there. And the inscription 
     says ``Born in Boston, lived in Boston, and died in Boston.'' 
     I always look at that sign and I think, ``Boy, you can't get 
     any more parochial than that.'' Then I think ``Now that's 
     good enough for me.'' My life is politics and all politics is 
     local.

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