A Question of Humbler than Thou

It was much ado about having had nothing, a matter of pride about starting off humble. Appearing on ABC's Issues and Answers, House Speaker Tip O'Neill got personal in his criticism of President Reagan's tax program. Charged the Speaker: "He has no concern for the little man of America; he never meets those people." The President, O'Neill continued, "doesn't understand the working class. He has very, very selfish people around him, people only of the upper echelon ... who have forgotten where they've come from."

Ronald Reagan was stung. Asked about O'Neill's remarks as he was leaving his press conference, the President accused the Speaker of "sheer demagoguery." Reagan recalled the modest frame house his family rented in Dixon, Ill., where he lived from age eight to 13. "We didn't live on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, but we lived so close to them we could hear the whistle real loud. I know very much about the working group. I grew up in poverty."

The President's situation has improved somewhat since then, and an insulted O'Neill drew a comparison: "I still live in the same neighborhood I did as a young boy," said the Massachusetts Congressman, who lives just around the corner from his childhood home, a two-family frame house in blue-collar North Cambridge. He huffed that he would never call a President a demagogue, adding, "I assume in the future he will have the same respect for the speakership." Maybe so. Reagan called his fellow fighting Irishman the next day and smoothed things over, one poor boy to another.

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