Wright Fights Back

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Already the Republicans, who resent Wright's high-handed manner, have achieved a major goal with the ten-month investigation: removing the scarlet S of sleaze from their coattails and pinning it, for the moment at least, on Wright. Democrats must now decide whether to stick with the Speaker and risk being tainted or dump him in hopes that a show of rectitude will improve their image.

A dump-the-Speaker move could be dangerous: the political life expectancy of a member who wounds but does not fell the leader will be very short. Wright rules the House with an iron hand, and has a hair-trigger temper and a long memory. He holds power over committee assignments, the legislation that makes it to the floor, and funds from his own copious campaign chest.

Wright's thin veneer of good-ole-boy conviviality and attention to detail won him the majority leader position in a three-man race in 1976, paving the way for his unanimous election to succeed Tip O'Neill as Speaker in 1987, but it has never been enough to inspire deep loyalty. Wright has done well procedurally, pushing a raft of legislation through Congress last session. But he has also blundered, most recently in January, when he enraged his colleagues by recommending a pay increase of 30%, not 51%, and then called for a public vote after promising he would take the heat alone. Despite some improvement, this pre-television-age politician still comes off more like Joe Isuzu than Jimmy Stewart.

Although Wright's Thursday speech was marked by his usual stilted delivery and forced smiles at inappropriate places, it helped rally some Democrats to the Speaker's side. Wright argued that his former partner, Fort Worth businessman George Mallick, had no direct interest in the savings and loan bailout being pushed by Wright and many other Congressmen. Mallick had bank debts and Mallick's two sons held a $2.2 million loan that had been foreclosed by a troubled Texas thrift, Wright acknowledged, but plenty of other Texans were in similar straits. Therefore, the Speaker argued, the thousands of dollars that found their way from Mallick to the Wrights were not impermissible gifts, since they were disclosed.

Wright also said that the reason for peddling his book, Reflections of a Public Man, to trade associations, universities and the Teamsters was an excess of pride of authorship, not a way to get around limits on honorariums. Wright complained he was being held to revisionist interpretations of the rules governing Congress, so that what was undertaken in good faith is now distorted in a "rearview mirror."

Wright's emotional defense of his wife's right to work may garner him strong support from congressional wives who are quietly shunted to a "spousal track" in Washington. The wives who can find jobs when they arrive in town often have a conflict: even work outside the Federal Government in some way lives off it.