Dick Armey
You better not try to
stand in my way as I'm walkin' out the door Take this job and shove itI ain't
workin' here no more.--Johnny Paycheck
What
politician enjoyed the Fourth of July holiday more than Dick Armey? While his
colleagues were out hustling for campaign dollars and marching in sticky-hot
parades, the House's majority leader was casting for bass on an Army Corps of
Engineers lake just northwest of Dallas, humming a Hank Williams tune.
At least, that's what we've come to expect, given the
persona Armey has cultivated: a plain-speaking, country-music-loving guy who
would (to quote the bumper sticker) "rather be fishing" than putting up with
Washington's political BS. This "I-ain't-much-at-speechifyin' " image has
served Armey well in his surprising rise through the ranks of the House
Republican leadership, setting him apart from other politicians and making him
seem personable. But it has cost him respect.
Is Armey
just one step away from the speakership? Or is he the only thing keeping the
debilitated Newt Gingrich in power? The moderates in the GOP caucus (such as
they are) find Armey too conservative and outspoken to serve as speaker, while
the hard-liners say he's too ineffective a spokesman to replace Gingrich.
Having already paid too high a political price for Gingrich's failings,
Republican incumbents don't want another headache leading the party.
Hence GOP insiders are taking Armey down a few
pegs. Arianna Huffington, bicoastal proprietress of the Republican political
salon, took a break from her endless campaign against Gingrich to attack his
heir apparent in one of her recent op-eds. Calling Armey "Newt Gingrich's best
insurance policy," she accused him of duplicity in defending Gingrich when
simply everyone knows, dahling, that the GOP needs new leadership. "It is high
time," Huffington wrote, "for some young Turks to recognize that there are
moments when appeasement is more destructive than war--and to strike."
Armey has
been dismissed before--beginning with his first run for Congress in 1984. A
geeky economics professor with a Midwestern accent challenging an entrenched
Texas Democrat, Armey was given no chance of winning. Soon after capturing what
would become a safe seat, he fathered one of the unlikeliest pieces of
legislation to emerge from Congress: a bill creating an apolitical process for
closing obsolete military bases. In 1992, he surprised fellow Republicans by
challenging GOP Conference Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., a party insider and
known conciliator, and took his job from him. In 1993, asked whether he would
run for the minority whip post in the 104 th Congress, Armey told
everyone (including an incredulous Dick Gephardt, in a limousine ride back from
the White House) that he expected to be the next majority leader. He may have
been grinning, but he wasn't joking.
But Armey's refusal to play the Washington game--to dine
with media stars or golf with lobbyists--makes him an outsider. And he pays for
this lack of political refinement, as the political oddsmakers portray him as a
boorish ideologue and rhetorical bumbler prone to such "Armey Axioms" as "You
can't put your finger on a problem when you've got it to the wind."
Damaging
Armey further is his contemptuous relationship with the press. He rarely gives
direct answers to unfriendly questions, although he's always good for a few
bizarre Dan Rather Texasisms. Instead of giving artful non-answers to tough
questions--a prerequisite talent for politicians--Armey usually lets fly a
smart-aleck comment that gets him in trouble: Soon after becoming majority
leader, he referred to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., as "Barney Fag." But after a
shaky first few months in charge, Armey settled in as the House's relatively
effective chief operating officer.
In recent weeks, a series of Republican
legislative misplays has increased skepticism about whether Armey can be
speaker. Most of the fault lies with Gingrich: The speaker has been considered
politically dead for so long that most folks talk about him as a quaint memory.
But, as Huffington noted, Armey has not acquitted himself well with his effort
to keep up appearances.
Still, suppose Armey were
passed over for the job. Consider the rest of the Republican leadership:
Majority Whip Tom DeLay,
another Texan, is Armey's opposite--the Republican Jim Wright. Rank-and-file
Republicans fear DeLay and respect his political abilities, but they don't like
him or trust him as much as they do Armey.
John Boehner, a slick but
likable Ohioan who chairs the House Republican Conference, is as adept at
playing the Washington game as is DeLay--befriending reporters, making goo-goo
eyes at lobbyists, passing around campaign contributions on the House floor,
etc. But he's more comfortable behind the scenes; pencil him in as the next
whip.
Bill
Paxon, a Gingrich minion at the National Republican Congressional Committee,
the party's fund-raising and spending apparatus that helped win the House for
the GOP in 1994, is enthusiastic and smart but doesn't seem tough enough to be
speaker. The classic sidekick (even to his wife, Susan Molinari), Paxon is
being talked about as the next majority leader. Call him Armey's good-cop
counterpart.
Which leaves us with Armey. Knowing that he's close to
getting the job, he's started to cultivate a more conciliatory image. But a
softer Dick Armey is a tall order, and it's resulted in more verbal gaffes and
more unseemly backpedaling. On a recent Meet the Press , the New Dick
agonized over the question of human rights in China, but then reached the
conclusion that free trade is a basic human right, and voted as usual for MFN
status.
What to
expect from Speaker Armey? He doesn't waffle. Throughout his political career,
he has focused on free-market economic principles: unrestricted trade, low
taxes, less government regulation. Unlike Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, another
former economics professor, Armey has avoided budget hypocrisy by eschewing the
pork barrel--some of the military bases he closed were in his state. He took on
farm subsidies. He was pro-flat tax before flat tax was cool. And his advocacy
of the flat tax isn't just some Gingrichian intellectual dalliance, a
Gephardtian populist pose, or even a Forbesian attempt to pocket a few million
more bucks a year.
Holding fast to one's beliefs has never been a
desirable trait in congressional leaders. Yet it would be unwise to count Armey
out. Even Republican loyalists would agree that anybody is better than
Gingrich, whose image-softening efforts consist of photo ops with furry
animals. Armey prefers his wildlife flailing at the end of a baited hook. Those
who worry about how the ruffian image will play should Armey become speaker can
rest easy: As both angler and politician, one Armey admirer told me, "He's
catch-and-release."
