The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

There is nothing wrong with House Speaker Jim Wright that being President of the United States would not cure.

He has an understandable power itch, which provoked him to jump into the Nicaraguan peace negotiations, where he should not have been. Then last week he stepped out in front of his own colleagues a bit in his eagerness to announce that Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev would appear before a joint session of Congress in December. A Communist leader, by pedigree a determined foe of democracy, has never appeared in the sacred well of the House, and a goodly number of members from both parties have doubts about Gorbachev, glasnost or not.

What drives Wright, just as it drove his notable mentor, Lyndon Johnson, is the natural desire to be the most powerful Democrat in the capital. Since his party controls the Congress, he can, with adroit maneuvering, often play President, and then, who knows? As it did for L.B.J., history might propel him toward the Oval Office, a development that Wright would at least view with interest.

But for the moment, Wright's position in Washington is saturated with acid. Since he became Speaker a year ago, he has unwisely poured out his contempt for Ronald Reagan in dozens of not-so-private gatherings around town. Wright has called the President a "liar" and worse. White House aides, no strangers to bile, whispered again last week, "Jim Wright is a mean-spirited snake-oil salesman, and nobody wants to deal with him." On the Nicaraguan flap, Wright and Secretary of State George Shultz grandly staged their own truce negotiations, but that hardly dispels what one Congressman calls a "reservoir of bitterness" against the Speaker. Some of that is normal in the election season, but it seemed to go beyond all bounds last week when Georgia's Newt Gingrich stormed through Florida calling Wright a "genuinely corrupt man" and comparing him to Mussolini. Even given Gingrich's right-wing fervor, that is startling stuff.

It is not startling that Wright has developed disdain for Reagan. Most congressional leaders in the opposition party, so immersed in the mechanics of legislation and so convinced of their own virtue, find Presidents, who sit at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, to be woefully ignorant and out of touch. A little contact always seems to prove the point. Three decades ago, when Dwight Eisenhower was ending his two terms, Johnson, the Senate's majority leader, flared up just like Wright after visits to the White House, though Johnson was far more cautious about who heard him. "That man does not deserve to be President," L.B.J. roared one night back in his Capitol office, even after Ike had poured him a generous portion of Scotch and soda. Poor old Ike, Johnson recounted, did not know where legislative bills were in Congress or even what was in them.

Wright has legitimately been provoked by White House confusion and reluctance to consult with Congress. But the Speaker's reclusive nature and / mercurial personality have alarmed even some in his own party. There is coolness between him and the powerful Ways and Means chairman, Danny Rostenkowski. Wright's pressure on younger Democrats to change votes on partisan maneuvers has left them muttering. It may be that Reagan's Nicaraguan policy is all wrong, but Wright should not be dealing with foreign powers or giving the perception that he is. His job is to run the House, which is not going so well right now.

No power in Washington is absolute. Not so many years ago, when House Republican Leader Charlie Halleck, known as the "gut fighter," became an embarrassment, some young bucks got together and tossed him out. Jerry Ford took his job.