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W hen Tip O’Neill was elected Speaker in January 1977, he became the third Speaker of the House from Massachusetts in thirty years. In addition to John McCormack —O’Neill’s principal mentor in the House—who served from Sam Rayburn’s death in 1961 until retirement in 1971, Speaker Joe Martin, the Republican from the Attleboro suburbs south of Boston, had been Speaker during the two post–New Deal Congresses in which the Republicans had wrested majority control of the House from the Democrats. To many, O’Neill exemplified the old-style Boston “pol.” Even the most casual observer of U.S. politics is familiar with O’Neill’s aphorism that “all politics is local.” A large, gregarious, backslapping backroom operator, O’Neill cultivated a reputation as an astute—even ruthless—practitioner of pork barrel politics. For example, even as he sought to cut weapons systems and the Defense Department budget as Speaker during the 1980s, he pushed for additional funds for weapons systems that brought jobs to Massachusetts. Like many urban politicians, O’Neill continually came under the scrutiny of reporters and political enemies who assumed that O’Neill’s gladhanding manner was a thin veil for a politician “on the take.” After several news organizations, most notably the Boston Herald, investigated O’Neill’s financial dealings, and a particularly close call with the influence-peddling “Koreagate” scandal of the mid 1970s, O’Neill emerged largely unscathed but nevertheless determined to avoid such improper appearances in the future. Still, if O’Neill himself was not comfortable with the shadier side of machine politics, he was certainly forgiving and defending of friends and colleagues who had been caught practicing influence-peddling and questionable fundraising techniques. From the scandal in John McCormack’s office to John McFall to Frank Thompson to Dan Rostenkowski, many O’Neill contemporaries and close friends would at one point or another succumb to ethical lapses that ended their political careers. ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ CHAPTER 7 BACK TO BOSTON TIP O’NEILL B A C K T O B O S T O N 189 Of course, being an old-style pol was not inconsistent with O’Neill’s position as a self-proclaimed keeper of the New Deal faith. And, to O’Neill, it was an article of faith that the national government could play a role in making the lives of U.S. citizens better. Although its critics would contend that the New Deal was little more than an electoral scheme that used the public coffers to protect Democratic incumbents, disparate elements of the Democratic Party, including O’Neill, believed in a beneficial role for government. Indeed, what united (to varying degrees) O’Neill to Sam Rayburn, Phil Burton, Richard Bolling, and Jim Wright was the belief that government could be used to redress inequities in society. As a member of Congress, a partisan Democrat, and eventually the Speaker, O’Neill kept this faith throughout his three decades–long House career. If the Austin-Boston alliance was the New Deal coalition’s primary manifestation in the House, O’Neill is probably its most appropriate and obvious personal beneficiary. A sometime guest at Rayburn’s Board of Education in the late 1950s, his role in leadership circles increased after McCormack became Speaker. O’Neill was appointed, often at McCormack’s suggestion, to increasingly important positions of party responsibility from the 1950s through the 1970s. From his extraordinary appointment to the Rules Committee in only his second term in the House to his lastminute appointment as co-chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 1970, McCormack’s preferment of his protégé put O’Neill on a path toward higher positions of leadership that culminated in his decade-long Speakership. Not only did O’Neill benefit from the Austin-Boston connection, but he also protected and perpetuated the alliance, promoting the careers of members of both the Texas and Massachusetts delegations throughout the 1970s and 1980s and protecting the means by which the alliance was perpetuated: the leadership’s ability to appoint allies and associates to high-level positions, most notably the majority whip post. Along with Speaker Albert, in 1973 O’Neill had appointed Texan Jim Wright to the “leadership ladder” by making him one of three deputy whips. And, in 1976, O’Neill’s friendship may have served to encourage Wright to run for majority leader and key colleagues to support Wright’s candidacy. In all, O...

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