A Pol For All Seasons
In one of her Political Points commentaries, CBS News Senior Political Editor Dotty Lynch shared her memories of former House Speaker Tip O'Neill, then the subject of an important new biography.
Let me be clear from the start: I am totally unobjective about Tip O'Neill. He was a hero, a rabbi, a role model. He was born in 1912, a year after my dad, but always seemed more a grandfather than father. He helped me in business and he listened to my ideas. He called me darlin' and asked me to come brief the Democratic leadership in the House. His kids are my friends and his staff were my buddies.
Despite our happy-go-lucky image, the Irish are great worriers and always see danger lurking. When the word got out that Jack Farrell, the Boston Globe reporter, had decided to write a biography of O'Neill, there was immediate suspicion. Farrell was not a crony, his politics were not particularly New Deal and who knew what axes there might be to grind. O'Neill had written two books retelling his best yarns and those, plus Jimmy Breslin's book on Watergate, How the Good Guys Finally Won, had put the legacy in place.
But Farrell pressed on and kept digging and digging. Family and friends eventually caved and cooperated but the network buzzed for years about what Farrell might be snooping into next.
What Farrell has come up with is a serious book about a great historical figure. He has done for the O'Neill legacy what no crony could — he looked at the man, his family, his work, his play, warts and all, and pronounced them good. Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century is 700 pages of American political history viewed through the life of a big man who made his world a lot better.
Mario Cuomo's review for The New York Times (which chose to feature the stereotypical caricature of O'Neill on the Book Review cover, the complete antithesis of the man presented in the book) focused on O'Neill's commitment to the New Deal and how he almost single-handedly kept it alive for 20 years. But it is the section on Vietnam and how O'Neill came to be against the war that I found most revealing and which exemplifies the complexity of the man, his pragmatism, his courage and his capacity for openness and change.
During the late '60s, O'Neill was working his way up the congressional leadership ladder and was known to be a staunch Democratic loyalist. His district included the working class families of Cambridge and the North End of Boston, whose kids were being drafted and killed, as well as the intellectuals of Harvard Square and MIT. He was hearing loudly from the lefties (including some on his staff) about the immorality of the war, but he was reluctant to break with a Democratic president.
O'Neill then received a back-channel communication from a CIA analyst, John Walker, who was a friend of his aughter Rosemary. In April 1967, Walker convened a meeting with O'Neill and a half dozen intelligence operatives who convinced the congressman of the folly of the war and hoped he could pass this view on to President Johnson.
He took this message back to House Speaker John McCormick, who was uninterested and began sending not-so-veiled messages to the White House that the tide was turning. When O'Neill finally went public with his opposition (telling his son that he feared he had signed his death warrant), Johnson went ballistic, summoned him to the White House and accused him of siding with the students in Harvard Square.
O'Neill told the president that he hated to part with him but thought he was wrong and urged him to withdraw from Vietnam or else pull out all the stops. Johnson finally tried to cut his losses and asked O'Neill not to play a leadership role in stopping the war. O'Neill agreed, but the mere fact of his opposition sent a powerful signal. His quiet role angered the liberals, while his break with the president infuriated the loyalists. O'Neill continued to be tortured by the war, but stuck to his commitment to himself written by hand on Rules Committee stationary: "to thine own self be true."
O'Neill's keen intellect, his kindness, his political smarts and his humor are chronicled in detail in Farrell's book. My favorites are how he flummoxed the arrogant like Reagan aide Elliot Abrams, who claimed he couldn't have a substantive argument with O'Neill about Nicaragua because all his information came from Maryknoll nuns; or how the good old boys couldn't get this man's man to roll back Title IX.
This is important book about an important man. For those who want some nostalgia and fun, Tip's two books, Man of the House and All Politics Is Local are wonderful St. Patrick's Day reading. But for those who want him to live forever, as the pol for all seasons, Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century sets the record straight. 
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