 Hello there, thanks for tuning into town meeting TV. My name is Bobby Luciae today on the program We are talking about the position of Speaker of the House in US Congress and the status of that post is Sort of in tumult right now after the Republicans won back the house in the 2022 midterms It took 15 votes to finally swear in Kevin McCarthy as speaker in January And he lasted less than a year before his colleagues in the party Ousted him as speaker vacated the seat and it took another three weeks or so before the party was able to Find a new speaker and that speaker has now been sworn in that's Mike Johnson, but the the position is in a In an era of uncertainty that we haven't seen before so how did we get here to understand the speakership crisis? We're in we're looking back today at a similar situation that happened in the 20th century in the house in in We're joined by the perhaps the most whoops Perhaps the most qualified scholar to be Unpacking the subject with us Professor Garrison Nelson So Garrison Nelson has taught courses in American government political leadership and political parties at the University of Vermont He's the author of more than 200 articles and professional papers on national politics focusing on the US Congress and elections in Vermont And he's a regular media commentator on c-span and meet the press. He's also the author of the I think the is it the only biography about So you know quite a bit about speaker John McCormick who can you tell us a little bit about his Speakership and what the position was like McCormick Was it very influential as it you know Served in the house representatives over 40 years and he was he served longest in leadership posts than anybody in the history of the Congress He had a deep dark dirty secret which I discovered and much to the displeasure of the McCormick family John McCormick's father was a Canadian Scott Hence a none not really Irish even though he was grew up in the Irish ghetto of South Boston and His family went ballistic when this this news about him was public that I wrote about was published in the Boston Globe But McCormick as they say we're McCormick was please that's an important role was with his ally Sam Rayburn who was the longest-serving speaker in the history of the house representatives and Rayburn was from Texas and Morning born in Tennessee, but he was a you know is elected from Texas and McCormick and Rayburn joined up in 1940 and They did so really at the secret really urging of Franklin Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt's majority had been decimated in the 38 midterms as a as a much more conservative group of members joined the house and and to sort of Save the New Deal basically this alliance put together of Southerners and and urban Catholics and so Rayburn and McCormick began serving together in 1940 and served together until 1961 and Rayburn died and McCormick stayed off for another year 39 years then he stepped down in the 19 Well, 1972 so it was a remarkably long alliance these two guys and that they were joined later by Kyle Albert from Oklahoma whose district of Butter, Texas and then Tip O'Neill Who was from Cambridge across the river from McCormick? and and then lastly by Jim Wright of Fort Worth Who was basically pushed out of the house by scandal? And driven out of the house by New Gingrich and so these are all Democrats You're all Democrats and it's New Gingrich who basically transformed the contestor speaker and transformed the way in which members dealt with one another and But we'll get on start with McCormick and I'll forget it to get a Gingrich who really say he had an unfortunate role So McCormick They say was a born and so was born in South Boston this Irish ghetto His mother was Irish his father was a Canadian Scott from Prince Edward Island and Given the fact that this is the Irish of Patrick Lenio. I you know Lenny drives from the father This meant McCormick wasn't Irish and this is a fact that he concealed and I have an interview with his Last chief of staff Joe Feeney who said John said nothing is to be written about me There will be no biography Now this is remarkable most politicians and I've been the papers of multiple politicians You know and lots of things they never said they let's say elementary school, you know Report cards, I mean even anything about them they would store but McCormick basically His papers were sanitized by his nephew Eddie McCormick and by his chief of staff Then Marty Schweig who actually went to jail for imitating McCormick's voice and peddling influence So it was a so so this book was very hard to put together but I Interviewed him 1968. I just started at the UVM. I was in you know first year first year instructor And I went to the Capitol. This is a Meeting in the Miracle Book of Science Association in Washington. So I went to the Capitol and it was Labor Day weekend It was virtually deserted and I went to McCormick's office and I said look I'm I'm a graduate student University of Iowa just been hybrid by the University of Vermont and I'm writing about the speakership. Is there anybody I could talk to about about John McCormick and The chief of staff said do you want to talk to John McCormick? So we I was escorted to the office huge office a giant chandelier and John and I the two of us sitting down and he You know I said I have one question for you miss speaker How did you get on the Ways and Means Committee in your third year? The ways it means is a committee in charge of taxation That's the most important committee in the House of Representatives So how did it happen? He said it was a racket. I said I know it's a racket How he said well, I went to see speaker Ghani and John is gone I was the speaker of the house then he was from Texas. He was Sam Rayburn's mentor and he Will later because they say we're later become Royce. I was first VP, but never the Ghana Center McCormick John where you been? Stunned he said how do you think he knew my name? He said we want you to chair the caucus. That's very important We couldn't understand it. He said you weren't here. So we gave it to Bill Idle How'd you like to be on the Ways and Means Committee? How'd you like to be on the seat on the most important committee in the house? You know John was going to flappy guys He said look I'll get the Texan stuff for you and you get Billy Connery to Endure she basically he said blow his nose at you Billy Connery is a congressman for my home down in Lin Mass And I said I know who Billy Connery was. We got a school name for him. We've got a Legion Rose name for Billy Connery And McCormick at this point reaches into his desk for and pulls out a cigar and hands it to me So there I am you know 26 year old You know first year instructor at UVM smoking cigars with the speaker of the house and Just remarkable and so he started telling me stories about Will Bankhead It was the father of Tolula Bankhead and the speaker Jack Conner, you know all inside Open up just told me this one story after another and there I am just I had no I wasn't taping it And I may have lost some of it when I was trying to remember it, but nevertheless, it was just remarkable Why did you go into his office that day? You were looking to do some research on on him? Yeah, and I wanted to talk to somebody who knew him. I didn't expect it to be in the office with him And that's what was remarkable. So I had it and we had this but I I Dragged start of my career at UVM and which I you know is involved for 50 years and Then I taught other schools, but most of my career was at UVM. So then I was got an invitation to go to Harvard to speak at the Kennedy School and So we talked about drama Cormac and I said, okay, so I called him up again And we talked again and he told me all the same stories. They told me back in 1968 But nevertheless, so he gave that talk at the Kennedy School and at the Kennedy School I was talking about this the Austin Boston connection and how these two states, you know, these urban Catholics and southern southern martyrs not southern conservatives southern martyrs work together to basically keep the Democratic coalition together for a half a century and to basically protect the New Deal and which is what they did and So that was so that was the talk I gave at the Kennedy School now Now it went back to One of the big projects I was doing was compiling committee assignments And I've compiled every single committee assignment from 1789 the first guy was up to 2010 Seven volumes each a thousand pages each Publishing congressional quarterly. I mean, this is this is sort of this is obsessive compulsive behavior Which I did but I did it in the seven volumes each around a thousand pages long and it looks like it looks very impressive And I say this is you looking just for the assignments themselves or were you trying to find the Stories behind, you know, what's it was the assignments themselves and the reason I looked for the assignments is that because that defines a member's career It's just specially it's what your expertise becomes and it's when and the ways and means committee not only was controlled in taxation The Democratic members of ways and means had the power to name all the other members of committees So being on ways of means allowed you to make a lot of friends And so as a consequence more speakers Come out of the ways of means committee than any other committee in the house is a consequent so John was given the keys to the kingdom and and was he to say what she loved and He played a very important role. He he basically engineered the naming of the first black chair of a committee and this was a and he knew this was historic and Made a point of announcing it as historic and over the objection of obviously southern members of the house and and Never members of the other committee that he engineered this this selection I think 1949 49 the first black chair was Yeah, and this took a little you know took a while He was he was he was in line to become chair of that committee and He stepped aside so this black who was number two in the committee could become a chair So so that's how I mentioned he engineered this right John also Made sure that the house barber shop cut the hair of black Staffers they weren't cutting blacks were doing in the proper shop But weren't cutting the hair of fellow blacks until McCormick basically and declared that that would that Practice would end. He also was very He also was the first congressman to denounce Adolf Hitler on the floor of the Senate Excuse me on the floor of the house in 1933 He had in his district very large number of of Synagogues and a large Jewish population so his congregants in You know South Boston Jewish Total most happening in Europe, you know the persecution had begun by Hitler and McCormick, you know denounced Hitler on the floor that the yeah, you know of the house and He was as a consequence. He was referred to as rabbi John So he was curious. So he's like you say he was the Yankees favorite Catholic in Boston. He was the Sun this Favorite northern in the house and he was the Jews favorite Catholic so he John was remarkably free of Prejudice, but it was that would did get him into trouble with with the Liberals and He when he succeeded to the speakership in Sam River died 1961 and John was in line for the because of majority leader. He was in line to be speaker. There was a lot of romulings about opposition to him and there was a hope that they could get the President Kennedy to help them quash McCormick in 1962 McCormick's Nephew Eddie McCormick had no children. So Eddie was sort of a surrogate son Ran against Ted Kennedy Jack Kennedy's youngest brother. It was brutal battle the Teddy Eddie battle I was a student at Boston University at that time and I was doing interviews and boy, it was You know these two these two Irish clans going head-to-head and Teddy easily clobbered poor Eddie and But nevertheless, so you know having to speak on the speaker's nephew and the president's brother Run against one another. It was and that was a Massachusetts district in the state of Massachusetts was the US Senate So it's quite a quite a contest. I was doing research for Professor Murray Levin B. You at the time I Was interviewing Murray would assign us He would assign us in terms of what we look like because they have an Irish face my mother's Irish. I would be assigned to Irish Irish neighborhoods And actually did get stopped for being the Boston Strangler at one point So McCormick was did end up succeeding Rayburn. Is that correct as a speaker? Nine years, but then he so he was challenged a speaker at one point. Can you talk a little bit about? Yeah, later in as the civil rights issue became more and more to the forefront There was an effort to push the house know that the house in the Senate each had Loves it that could block legislation the house had the rules committee and the Senate had the filibuster And so the Southerners would use these well they got they got the they expanded the rules committee from 12 to 15 and now they had an eight to seven sort of pro liberal Advantage in not not a strong one, but but enough so but So the Liberals were pushing hard on the civil rights bill and the civil rights bill came up in after Jack Kennedy was murdered in 1963 1964 the civil rights bill comes up and there's enormous guilt in America and the off the the Congress and they passed the civil rights bill and The following year they passed the voting rights act which kind of you know, so enabled the civil rights bill to be implemented so as a John was presiding over the house during these times But the Liberals would he had this friendship with another Southerners He told me that in order to succeed you had to have the votes of 70 Southerners and Which he did and he encourages he engraciate himself in Southerners and they basically protect his candidacy against the Liberals against the strong Liberals and so in 1967 they the Liberals, you know, no God will vote all 50 someone votes against McCormick and John, you know He said I'm out of here and he you know, he finished up the term and left now But he was very close to Johnson John Johnson in the Johnson Library the correspondence between McCormick and Johnson is absolutely Filled with affection. Love was because they both love Sam Rayburn Johnson being the mentee of Rayburn McCormick with the ally and They would you know, they just sharing all the memories of Rayburn were very important So John basically did his nine years. It was the longest continuous service In the houses speaker until Tip O'Neill took over and tip was speaker for ten consecutive years so the Austin Boston, you know, they just ran the house for 50 years half a century and and then it ended and ended with a takeover the house in 1994 election 1995 that they took over by Newt Gingrich and Newt Gingrich changed the game by Implementing and had a set of These are the statements you ought to use when you run against the following people and it was it was like traitor crooked dishonest Trinit you know treacherous all these incredible hate words that Newt Gingrich urged Republicans to use when running against Democrats So heat so the the kind of camaraderie that existed in the house disappeared and It's Gingrich who was simply responsible for it and Julian Zell's got a book about all Gingrich's dead called burning down the house Which is really what he did and the antagonism that exists within the house Between the parties is a direct result of what Newt Gingrich did to this day to this day And was made even more to see is that they're now turning on one another with the same degree of vitriol and antagonism within the Republican Party So Gingrich really unleashed the demons that destroyed the camaraderie in the house and that was a Hard to forgive him for that. I did speak to him when he came to UVM came to UVM at the behest of the UVM Republicans and he basically took all the money in the treasury and left out Newt was not a not a noble soul by any means well When the See what else I wanted to get but no the but the White McCormick was able to succeed early on is he was a protege of a very famous mayor of Boston by the name of James Michael Curley who was four-time mayor of Boston four-time member of Congress one one that termed as governor and he was a He was a wonderful a little a lovable scoundrel as it was a bit of a crook and And Curley and McCormick was her poor boys, you know from you know ethnic neighborhoods and But Curley had served on the the Foreign Affairs Committee with Jack Garner And he is before the First World War. So When so that's why Garner knew whom McCormick was Was that he had his friendship with Jim Curley and Jim Curley? Treated McCormick as a mentee. So that was McCormick didn't understand why I don't want to put that together so Now so McCormick Here are some things McCormick's involvement Social security he was on a ways and means committee wrote Social Security He was in the office when FDR sent Venovar Bush General Leslie not not Groves was not there but Stimson the Secretary of War and Did discuss the atomic bomb and George Marshall had of the Joint Chiefs of Staff These three met with John McCormick and Sam Raveron to get more money for the bomb They'd run out of they're running out of money for the atomic bomb And McCormick said the three of them came in and they said they had their faces in their hands There was so You know trouble by what they were doing that they're going to build this bomb this great destructive bomb and But they found that they hid the money in various and some of the appropriations You know hundred thousand and four million and ultimately they got enough money to complete the the bomb finding of the bomb And so that was you know, he was there. He was in the room He Sam Raveron and Joe Martin who was the house minority leader from also from Massachusetts So those are two, you know, those are security in the atomic bomb he was I say and Denomination Harry Harry Troman as vice president in 1948 Excuse me 1944 well, they got they go rid of poor Henry Wallace because he was suspected of being a security risk and the the Considered them it's lined up to get rid of him and replace him with Harry Truman and of course Harry Truman succeeds Roosevelt when Roosevelt dies in 1945 and McCormick and Rayburn McCormick Rayburn Truman all very close they're all kind of you know from hard scrabble families and Rayburn did go to college, but neither McCormick nor Harry, you know went so they had that in common as well And so and I had lots of pictures of Harry Truman with Rayburn and McCormick. So the There's a challenge to the speakership in 67. What did that look like was that what was that because you mentioned it's It was it took place more in the in the caucus the caucus It was in the caucus and led by Richard bowling of Missouri and say who hated McCormick I interviewed him twice and and at one point he said why was it to tip O'Neill who got McCormick's blessing rather than Eddie Boland who was the tips roommate and who Obviously Boland you felt was a more appropriate choice but I said well because Eddie Boland had endorsed Eddie McCormick Do us Ted Kennedy over Eddie McCormick in the 1962 Senate race and Bowling Pounded he said the son of a bitch would never forgive him pound of the desk with both fists and it just go and jumped those are big thick desks and I said in the book and we Interviewed him twice and his hatred from McCormick was palpable but he was also very arrogant and he's and much and While the Dems may not have been happy with John McCormick, they just liked Dick bowling so he was never able to succeed in Overthrowing McCormick, but McCormick was just tired of fighting the battle and his wife was dying with whom he had dinner every night for the 50 plus years of their marriage and so he just just walked away just left the speakership and Cormick did yeah, you know just Soon as term was up. I never did not run for re-election and You went back, you know we actually went to the hospital where she was staying and Had a bed they had knocked out a while So that he could be in the same room with her And they had no children Normancy devoted to one another she was eight over eight years older than he was so it's kind of a unique marriage, but it was That's all I really matter to him at that point in the game and what do you see is the You know, do you see similarities differences between some Matt Gates kind of led the challenge against? Kevin McCarthy earlier this year and and that did lead to and that was McCarthy did put up a fight and tried to hold on to the speakership and then ultimately couldn't What do you see as it? There's a lot of similarity between Gates and bowling in terms of their hatred for the occupant of the speakership and he was very And so and it's a say bowling Bowling actually was lining up a candidate to run against McCormick in his district, but didn't want to run himself Well, because it's living in Missouri couldn't run against them Directly, but it was trying to find people to run Back home in Boston, so I talked to the fellow He wasn't gonna go very far for that way, but so now so now we have so so here We have the house really they that they hatred that that Engended by Gingrich is spilled over to the inside game The Democrats don't hate one another the Republicans do and they have pushed out They pushed out John Bainer From Ohio they who could call these guys legislative terrorists I pushed out Paul Ryan from Wisconsin and now they pushed out Kevin McCarthy This is all this all inside baseball. Yeah, that's what makes it so remarkable. All right, so now we have Mike Johnson What do you think is his relationship with these hard-right Republicans? He's gonna have this, you know Give them whatever they want because they're the ones who put them in office and they're the ones going to keep them in office And they've got safe districts, so they're not going to lose elections right and you said in terms of the impact on the governance of You know the house and what do you foresee will be you know, we have an upcoming You know potential government shutdown. What do you foresee will happen with Mike Johnson in the speakership? Well, here's his here's the key thing We are right now in a period of divided government the house controlled by the Republicans the Senate and the presidency by the Democrats now This is now a common feature. I've got this sort of a Since the Reagan took office in 1980 then they we've had 22 Congresses 16 divided government 73% of the time divided government and this and divided government makes it difficult for anything to get accomplished and I think the divided government has Spread the malaise that has settled over the nation because very little seems to get done and we can certainly see this You know with the Senate controlled by the Democrats But even the Republicans there in the Senate can't control Tommy Tuberville one of their members who was withholding You know military promotions, so they So what we've seen so we've seen this spillover from Inter-party conflict to inter-party conflict and now the nation now the founding fathers created these three institutions Congress President and and the Supreme Court, so they'd be checks and balances one of those There was the intent to make sure it's a slow down So legislation is slow down You know public policy, but it's not such a common feature. Say 73% since Reagan on Congress has been divided government and rare Now part of that is due to the fact that people Straight-ticket voting is decline and so they get split ticket voting people voting for parts of different parts in Vermont You know, you're a frequent case of Governors and lieutenant governments being at different parties like right now with with the Phil Scott and Dave Duckerman So it's a so these are some of the changes that have taken place and the Congress Now back to the house the The Okay, I'll come a little cheat sheet here The speaker of the house by the way is named before the president in the Constitution The sentence that the house shall choose its speaker and this occurs in the seventh paragraph of article one The president is mentioned until the first paragraph of article two So when the reason for this is they understood Legislatures more than they understood executive of her at the authority because executive authority was exercised by royal governors Who the appointees of the crown? now the speakers where they were Elected by the members of the of the legislatures of the Colonial assemblies that they were called and and So the speakers were elected by the coroners the governance were named by the by the crown and so we've always had this tension between you know the executive and legislative authority and and you know staring us in the face once again and The last president to have a Democrat have both the House and Senate as Democrats was Jimmy Carter Yeah, and he was a relatively weak president ironically he had a better sort of Congressional circumstance than any of those every president since then has had at least one divided Government and so So Biden of course is delivered it as well, right? So I think we just have a maybe a minute or two left here professor Garcin Nelson. Do you anything else that you haven't mentioned about the speakership that that That's on your mind about this crisis that we're in right now not well the Speakership as I say has been an existence for you know Well, I mean Saturday night we're saying it's first year. It was like 1377 sort of 400 years before Nation was it began its break from England. So it's a it's a remarkable office and the Quota I'm gonna tell you one final story. I was working on a book on speakers and presidents which I had a heart attack and slowed me on it rather substantially, but Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan in 1981 Ronald Reagan is sworn in and shortly thereafter at the end of March. He's shot by John Hinckley in an effort to impress Jody Foster bizarre story in any case. He's in the hospital and Strom Thurman who was then the senior Republican decides to go visit him and he sort of breaks it Busted Reagan's Reagan's hospital room Nancy is infuriated Isn't she says she says No one is allowed to get in the room. No one except tip Wow except tip O'Neill the Democratic Speaker of the House so tip goes into the room and He sees Reagan and Reagan's in it all very compromised and what he does is he takes Reagan's hand And he goes and he kneels on the floor and he holds Reagan's hand And he says the Lord's prayer And then gets up kisses Reagan on the floor and leaves Can you imagine that yeah, can you imagine Mike Johnson or Kevin McCarthy doing that? It's just a wonderful story and apparently it was viewed by a couple of people who played the story and But that's that's how it once was in the good old days as opposed to what we have right now Well professor garrison elson. Thank you so much for coming in to talk with us about this today And thank you for tuning in to town meeting TV You can find this program and many more at CH 17 dot TV and on our YouTube channel for time TV