Speakers who imposed their will on the House

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 27, 1996 | by Stephen Goode

Unlike the presidency, congressional leadership doesn't guarantee fame and glory. But a few occupants of the House dais have made long-lasting contributions to the American system if government.

It can be one of the most powerful jobs in Washington, but only a handful of the 50 men who have served as speaker of the House of Representatives have even come close to being household names. Henry Clay and Sam Rayburn are two. The current speaker, Newt Gingrich, is another.

Only one speaker -- James K. Polk of Tennessee -- went on to be president, a job many of them wanted and several made great effort to attain. Most speakers shared the fate of Galusha A. Grow, J. Warren Keifer and Frederick J. Gillett. They were quickly forgotten.

For ambitious men, that would rankle. Though in a powerful position, the speaker rarely cuts the same figure in Washington as the president. It is a difficult job without the perks of widespread and longtime prestige and glory, even if it is third in line to the presidency itself.

John Nance Garner of Texas, a homespun Southern populist known as "Cactus Jack," left the speaker's post in 1932 to run (with Franklin Delano Roosevelt) for vice president, a job Garner held -- and hated -- for two terms. The vice presidency, declared Cactus Jack, who had become nostalgic for the power he had wielded in the House and who realized he probably never would be president, "is not worth a pitcher of warm spit." Or so the remark is euphemized.

Being speaker is a job that causes one to lose friends. Colleagues in the House expect special appointments that speakers sometimes are loathe to make. In one famous instance, a Massachusetts congressman who thought he should be made chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee camped outside the door of Speaker James G. Blaine's office to demand appointment. But Blaine, warned that the man was waiting for him, used an open window to escape, made his way to the House floor and quickly saw to it that another lawmaker got the job.

There have been speakers who served with enormous distinction -- some of them, at times, rivaling and even eclipsing the power and fame of the president. Joe Cannon of Minois was one. Nicholas Longworth of Ohio another. Garner and Rayburn were others.

Standing out even in this crowd are two men among the most able to serve in any capacity in Washington: Henry Clay of Kentucky and Thomas Brackett Reed of Maine. Clay was a Whig -- the party that evolved into the Republicans. He is alone among speakers in having been chosen for the job by his colleagues on his first day as a member of the House. His reputation as an orator had preceded him. Clay served three interrupted terms as speaker between 1811 and 1825. He was the first speaker to mark the office indelibly with his own personality and interests. The man who holds the office, Clay said after years of experience, should remain cool and unshaken amidst all the storms of debate."

A contemporary noted that no one in American politics of the time had a greater gift for arousing intense political enthusiasm (or antipathy) than did Clay. Indeed, some historians say it is in the role of visionary that Clay closely resembles Gingrich.

Clay elaborated what he called the "American System." He didn't fill in the details, leaving that to such admirers as Hezekiah Niles, editor of the widely read Niles' Weekly Register. The American System resembles Gingrich's "Contract With America" as a plan intended to give direction to the nation, though details, of course, vary. Like Gingrich's contract, Clay's agenda looked forward to a prosperous America that would foster individual initiative and assure sufficient freedom to unleash the people's creativity.

In innumerable speeches to Congress and the American people, Clay argued in favor of a home market and better means of transportation for American farmers. That meant a federal government committed to internal improvements: building roads, canals, bridges and ferries. Clay saw America growing rapidly and he wanted "its parts to adhere more closely." He spoke often of the natural dynamism of its people that could be tapped given the proper economic climate and the right prodding.

In spirit, the American System sounds very much like the contract. There is a striking similarity between Clay's waxing poetic about what new bridges and highways might do for the nation and Gingrich's oft-cited dream of a laptop computer for every underprivileged child in America.

Clay also was for a national bank, a position that won him the wrath of such thorough-going populists as Andrew Jackson and which today reminds one of the Mexican banker bailout. No supporter of slavery, Clay won the enmity of John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and other powerful figures in Washington who deeply mistrusted Clay's advocacy of social and economic change through the encouragement of business and industry.

Five times Clay tried for the presidency but failed. Nonetheless, his ideas prevailed. In a famous 1850 speech he declared, "I would rather be right than president," and he was often right. It was his American System that emerged as the ruling passion of the Whig Party and later the GOP. Abraham Lincoln, for example, admired the Kentuckian enormously and made the American System an intimate part of his own politics.