October 11, 2023
SOME U.S. HOUSE SPEAKERS WERE POWERFUL, BUT MANY WERE NOT
At the risk of infuriating my readers on the Left, Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich was indisputably the most influential U.S. House speaker of modern times. That was because he changed the culture of the institution, not because he changed policy.
The House has been an arena of gladiators, ideological warriors who detest and revile their adversaries, even those within their own parties, since 1994. That explains the fate of ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and John Boehner (R-OH), who resigned in 2015 when his Right flank rebelled against his insufficiently belligerent anti-Obama stance.
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) kept her majority in line from 2019-2022 by focusing on the evils of MAGA Republicans and Trump. The House leadership’s job now is to gladiate, not legislate, and to raise the money to re-elect their members.
The Founding Fathers in the late 1700s created a bicameral legislature with the House intended to be the more fractious and the Senate to be the more deliberative – a “check” on the people’s House. In fact, early House speakers were intended to be parliamentarians, to keep the chamber under control, and not be policymakers. That was the domain of the president. The speaker’s tactical task was to enact (or thwart) the president’s agenda.
There have been 55 speakers since America’s inception and only one (James K. Polk in 1844) became president and the two who became vice-president (Schuyler Colfax in 1868 and John Nance Garner in 1932) never moved up. But every speaker had some ambition to aggregate his/her power and/or to get to the White House.
The major impediment to longevity as speaker was political fluidity. House majorities in the post-Reconstruction 19th Century were tied to economic prosperity. Democrats had a speaker (Samuel Randall) 1876-81 and (John Carlisle) 1883-89; Republicans were dominant the remainder, especially after 1895. But the Republican/Progressive split prior to 1910 gave Champ Clark (D-MO) the speakership through 1919, which was essential to enacting Woodrow Wilson’s liberal agenda.
The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 gave Democrats the House and Texan Garner the speakership, auguring in a 64-year span of Democratic control, with Republican interludes during 1947-48 and 1953-54. Democratic presidents Roosevelt (New Deal), Truman (Fair Deal), Kennedy (New Frontier) and Johnson (Great Society) set the national agenda and Democratic speakers passed it. The reason was the Solid South.
The 11 states of the Confederacy sent all-Democratic delegations to the House well into the 1950s, when a few Republicans won in urban areas (St. Petersburg, Charlotte, Dallas, suburban D.C.). For almost 100 years the South elected and re-elected Democratic congressmen who accumulated seniority and rose to chairmanships. The trade-off was that the committees would pass out liberal, pro-labor bills in exchange for national Democrats’ complicity in preserving segregation and suppressing Black voting. During the 1940s and 1950s a Republican/Southern Democrat “Conservative Coalition” ran the House.
LBJ’s 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) changed everything. There began a mass influx of Blacks into Democratic primaries coupled with a mass exodus of White conservatives to the Republicans. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” hastened the process. The 1994 election culminated it, virtually wiping-out southern “Blue Dog” (conservative) Democrats in suburban and rural districts. The House was now a 50/50 proposition, as it was during the late 1800s.
In fact, in the almost 30 years since 1994, when the Republicans gained 63 House seats, the Republicans have had a majority for 22 of those years. Democrats have won a majority of the nationwide presidential vote in 7 of the 8 elections since 1992, the exception being 2004, but Democrats have over-sized majorities in fewer districts.
NEWT GINGRICH (R-GA): He was transformative. He nationalized congressional races, unveiling his Contract with America in 1994. Instead of voting for a nice incumbent who brought home pork like a new post office, voters began voting their ideology. Gingrich was speaker 1995-99, but resigned in 1999 after his 1998 prediction of a Republican House sweep failed to materialize. The failed Clinton impeachment was also a factor.
That killed Gingrich’s game plan to run for president in 2000. He ran in 2012 and got no traction.
HENRY CLAY (Whig-KY): Dubbed the “Great Compromiser” for his role as senator in the Missouri Compromise in 1820, which averted secession, and again in 1850, which introduced the concept that states could vote to approve slavery, Clay spent his entire political life pursuing the presidency, failing in 1824, 1832 and 1844. He was really the “Great Opportunist.” Clay was elected to the House in 1810 from east Kentucky and elected speaker in 1811, at age 34. There was only a single political party at the time – the Jeffersonian Democrats. So the speakership was a popularity contest and Clay a social animal. Clay held the job through 1820, and then again 1823-24.
Clay ran for president in 1824 and faced Andrew Jackson (TN), John Quincy Adams (MA) and William Crawford (GA). The Constitution mandates that if no candidate gets a majority of the Electoral Vote then the House, with each state casting a single vote, picks the president among the top three. Clay’s strategy was to finish third and have his House elect him. Instead, he was fourth.
Not wanting another westerner, General Jackson, as president for 8 years, Clay swung the House to Adams. Unwisely, Clay then accepted Adams’s offer to be Secretary of State (1825-29), prompting “corrupt bargain” howls from Jacksonians. Jackson ran in 1828 and crushed Adams, and Clay ran in 1832 as an anti-Jackson Whig and got crushed.
In 1844, at age 67, the ever-straddling Clay knew this was his last chance. He made a deal with ex-president Martin Van Buren (D), of New York, his party’s presumptive nominee, to both oppose the admission of Texas as a state. It would be a non-issue. Northerners, especially New England abolitionists, didn’t want another slave state. In an upset the pro-expansion, pro-Texas Polk, an ex-speaker, won the Dem nomination and then narrowly beat Clay.
JAMES G BLAINE (R-Maine): Blaine, the “Plumed Knight” from Maine, was elected to the House in 1862, was never a Civil War soldier, and was speaker 1869-75, when Republicans lost their majority amid Grant Administration scandals and the “Panic of 1873.” He won a senate seat in 1876.
The federal granting of right-of-ways westward was the 1870-80s money-making equivalent of today’s Green Energy. Blaine became wealthy, but no corruption charges stuck. He sought the Republican nomination for president in 1876 and 1880 and got it in 1884, losing narrowly to Grover Cleveland (D) because he lost New York. He was later Secretary of State.
THOMAS REED (R-Maine): Reed took office in 1889 when the House was at its dysfunctional worst. A majority quorum was needed to conduct business and groups of Members routinely paralyzed the chamber, even if present, by not answering the quorum. Reed changed the rules. No more quorums. The speaker called the bills and his Republican majority passed them.
JOE CANNON (R-IL): “Uncle Joe,” from Downstate Danville, was no “progressive.” He was elected in 1872 and speaker 1903-11, and built on Reed’s autocracy. He made himself Rules committee chairman and stymied Teddy Roosevelt’s agenda by not calling bills. He lost his majority in 1910.
SAM RAYBURN (D-TX): “Mr. Sam” won his east Texas seat in 1902, got into leadership, and fate was kind. Three speakers (D) in the 1930s – Henry Rainey (IL), Joe Byrns (TN) and William Bankhead (AL) -- all died. Rayburn succeeded to speaker in 1940. He was a national Democrat, pro-civil rights, and reigned until his 1961 death.
TOM FOLEY (D-WA): Only 2 speakers have ever been defeated in their district. Foley, from Spokane, was ousted in 1994 after 30 years; he was elected speaker in 1989. The other was Galusha Grow (R-IL) in 1862.
NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): She won her vacant San Francisco seat in 1987 and became minority leader (D) in 2002. Pelosi was a prodigious fundraiser for other members. Democrats won a majority in 2006, lost it in 2010, won it in 2018, lost it in 2022. Pelosi was the first woman speaker, serving 8 years.
KEVIN MCCARTHY (D-CA): Speaker from January to October of 2023.
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