Speaking of Speakers (July/August 1995 | Volume: 46, Issue: 4)

Speaking of Speakers

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Authors: Bernard A. Weisberger

Historic Era: Era 10: Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

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July/August 1995 | Volume 46, Issue 4

It is not easy to be non-partisan about a confrontational politician like Newt Gingrich, but I think it’s reasonably objective to say that he has elevated the job of Speaker of the House to a level of visibility that is rare in its two centuries of existence. That he was given free television time for a speech at the end of the first hundred days of the 104th Congress—as if he were the president—is itself remarkable. But it was only the climax of a post-election period during which the media seemed to reduce every day’s Washington news to no more than a new round in a slugfest between Gingrich and Clinton.

Heaven knows Gingrich has justified the attention. He positioned himself as leader of the opposition, and what is more, he kept a remarkably tight rein on his Republican House team, successfully driving it through votes on every point of his “contract with America” within his promised time limit. Such a combination of control and visibility is rare in Speakers of the House, thanks to the nature of the office. In each Congress, the majority party chooses the Speaker, which usually means awarding the job to a veteran insider, skilled at engineering cloakroom compromises—some of them bipartisan—and most willing to leave speechmaking to others. A quintessential recent example was Tip O’Neill of the 95th through the 99th Congress (1977–87), a man hard to dislike and hard to remember as being identified with any specific cause.

It is exactly that required absence of loud self-righteousness that has kept the fifty-odd Speakers fairly deep in history’s shadows. Here’s a quick quiz: How many Speakers have gone on to become president of the United States? One and only one: James K. Polk, Speaker from 1835 to 1839, named as a dark horse in 1844 and serving for a single term.

 
 
 
 
 

Other Speakers have yearned for but failed to achieve elevation to the White House, most notoriously Henry Clay, who presided brilliantly over the House in the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 18th Congresses (between 1811 and 1825), and James G. Blaine, who led the 41st through the 43d (1869–75). A couple of Speakers have become Vice Presidents (Schuyler Colfax under Grant and John N. Garner, FDR’s first Vice President), but that was back in the days when anonymity was considered an asset for the number two position. On the whole, the pattern was set by the very first Speaker, Frederick A. Muhlenberg. He was a Pennsylvania clergyman, educated in Germany, a worthy citizen of his state, and one who left a light imprint on the national record.

Yet the Speaker’s job, if not always the Speaker himself, is important. Under current law, he is third in line to succeed the President, and he can make the difference between stalled or productive lawmaking machinery. And there have been great Speakers