The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

House Speaker Jim Wright has the haunted and strained look of a lonely and failing man even in the midst of his righteous anger. In his Thursday statement to the nation, his smile was just a bit too forced, his somber- visaged Democratic congressional colleagues in dark formation behind him just a bit too straight-backed and eager to applaud. Something was slipping away.

In the warrens of the Capitol, when the press conferences and the hubbub subside, he suddenly appears out of the shadows alone, moving off to some other meeting or distant rendezvous, silent, beset. The inner agony is no longer shielded from his circle of friends. "It's hell, it's just hell," he says.

Wright on most counts is basically honest and decent. He has the right to shout into the rising storm that is battering him that he should not be judged guilty until he is tried. It is logical for him to mount a tactical defense detailing dates, times, dollars, his service to the House for 34 years. These are the tidy rituals of comradeship and parliamentary procedure that are so dear and so binding to those denizens of the Capitol. Wright is correct that the media convulsion about human rectitude or the lack of it is unrealistic, often unfair and to some degree perversely inspired by Republicans and other enemies. He is no doubt sincere in his belief that what he did was not knowingly wrong, certainly not evil.

But then former Attorney General Ed Meese said all the same things about many of the same accusations and doubts raised against him. Meese resigned. So should Wright, not from the Congress but as Speaker. By his own testimony he has bent if not broken his high trust and now burdens his nation.

The Meese record is an eerie echo from a year ago. No laws were violated. Special prosecutors could not recommend indictment. There was no hard evidence of greed or doling out special favors to get wealthy. Meese was seen to be too hurried, a bad judge of people, unaware of the court of public opinion that calls for elevated ethical standards. He was blind to the special symbolism of an Attorney General. It was a list of acceptable human weaknesses for other public jobs. Not his.

And so it is with Wright. Let him be the Congressman from Fort Worth's 12th District, a place filled with the Texas legends of cattlemen and oilmen and other buccaneers who tamed a wild land. He can still be a hero there if his people choose. But Wright became Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. "In power and prestige, the Speaker can be compared only with the President and the Chief Justice of the United States," wrote Neil MacNeil in his book on the House, Forge of Democracy. "He has been the elect of the elect." That is the way Sam Rayburn, John McCormack, Carl Albert and Tip O'Neill thought and acted.

There is one more haunting Meese comparison. Both Meese and Wright came to Washington with little money, devoted to public service. Both found themselves thrust into a life of $300,000 houses, Cadillacs, parties, travel, pressures and enticements to live the power game, indeed, almost the necessity of spending beyond their means. Neither went for big bucks; they just maneuvered at the margins and were exposed. Unfair? Then hear again the voice of Richard Scammon, who has analyzed politics for 35 years. "Part of the responsibility of a political man is to take his lumps whether he deserves them or not. He may be as pure as the driven snow and his enemies totally unfair. But who ever said that fairness was a part of this game?"

If Wright loves the House as he said last week, if he cares even more for his nation as he has claimed, then he should step down. That is hard, but then who said being a public man was easy?