The House Will Come to Order: How the Speaker Became a Power in State and National Politics (review)

According to authors Patrick L. Cox and Michael Phillips, "institutional changes in the Texas House and larger social changes in the state since World War II transformed the speakership from a rotating, largely honorary position charged mainly with presiding over House debates to an office in which individual Speakers have wielded tremendous power and even control over state policy" (2). Drawn from an impressive collection of oral histories, most of which were conducted by the authors themselves, Cox and Phillips attempt to trace the evolution of power emanating from the office of Texas Speaker of the House. In so doing, they have made a valuable contribution to the study of Texas politics. At the same time, however, flaws in the contextual framework and overarching structure, as well as consistently fragmented chapter outlines, distract from that contribution. What readers are left with is insight on how the Texas legislature works, how it has changed, and how variant the personalities, motivations, and temperaments of the men occupying the Speaker's office have been.

The book's scope is broad and ambitious. Cox and Phillips effectively trace the origins of the office of Speaker, recalling the tumultuous power plays that shaped Texas during the years of Reconstruction, Redemption, and the writing of the sadly flawed state Constitution of 1876, out of which future visionaries constructed power in the absence of prescribed limitations. Readers are subsequently treated to solid, though perhaps not new, overviews of Texas political culture, including Progressive Era reforms which, the authors argue only somewhat convincingly, reflected the most influential political movement in state history. From there, Cox and Phillips provide a narrative of twentieth-century Texas legislative history that blends biographical and anecdotal histories of each Speaker with accessible, if sometimes simplistic, overviews of the policy debates that emerged during each Speakers' tenure and how those debates shaped each Speakers' legacy.

Solid research and skillful writing save a book that otherwise might have been undone by flawed organization and argumentation. Rather than focus their analytical energies on the evolution of Speaker power, as the book ostensibly aims to do, the authors' arguments to that end are distracted by the insistence on presenting biographical overviews for each Speaker. While nice, these background checks are too long and distracting and contribute little to the overall argument. The analytical momentum of each chapter is further (and unnecessarily) interrupted by discussions designed to ground and contextualize the narrative within the broader framework of American and Texas social, cultural, and economic history. Particularly disappointing was a late chapter couched as a study of gender and women in Texas politics. Most of the chapter deals with the seemingly unrelated history of remodeling the Speaker's apartment within the Capitol building. Following that is a bifurcated discussion of how Speaker families have coped with living in the Capitol and a much more salient assessment of women in Texas legislative history, though even that important discussion fails to connect with the evolution of Speaker power.

Ultimately, the book offers an informative and accessible overview of the individuals holding the office of Speaker, as well as the legislative body over which those individuals presided. However, as an analysis of the Speaker's office, and specifically the evolution of that office into one of national power, the book's argument is unconvincing and ambiguous. In fact, what one might take from this book is that the Speaker's office has been relatively powerless and lacking influence until very recently. One wishes, then, for a tighter analytical focus on the past three to four decades and a greatly condensed overview of the office as it evolved until well after World War II. Still, as a collection of miniature political biographies and a broad overview of Texas legislative history, the book succeeds nicely. [End Page 351...