Charm, humor Tipped political scales

Boston Herald ^ | June 6, 2004 | Andrew Miga

[billorites]

WASHINGTON - A jaunty Ronald Reagan once offered a ribald champagne toast to his political nemesis, the late U.S. House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill, during a private White House party to celebrate O'Neill's 70th birthday.

     ``Tip, if I had a ticket to heaven and you didn't have one, too, I would give mine away and go to hell with you,'' deadpanned Reagan.
     Friends say O'Neill was moved to tears, but stepped outside the White House soon after the party ended and launched into a tirade against Reagan.
     The story from two decades ago is a cherished part of Bay State political lore - shedding light on Reagan's chummy political style as well as the mercurial love-hate relationship he forged with the Cambridge Democrat, who led his party's assault on the Reagan Revolution.
     Despite their polar-opposite politics, Reagan found a way to charm O'Neill - trading sharp punches in public, but sharing jocular toasts behind closed doors when the workday ended.
     ``(Reagan) lived by that noble ideal that at 5 p.m. we weren't Democrats or Republicans, we were Americans and friends,'' said Sen. John F. Kerry [related, bio] (D-Mass.), the presumed Democratic presidential nominee. ``President Reagan and Tip O'Neill fought hard and honorably on many issues, and sat down together to happily swap jokes and the stories of their lives.''
     They were two genial Irishmen with a passion for politics, and winning. They were the political odd couple of the early 1980s.
     ``Those two loved Ireland, they loved a good story and they loved a good time,'' recalled U.S. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Malden). ``They were each as Irish as each other, but they could never really understand each other's politics.
     ``Reagan symbolized conservatism. Tip embodied liberal Democrats. It was really always a great mystery to O'Neill how Reagan could be so conservative and so Irish.''
     Markey recalled O'Neill hosting a small St. Patrick's Day party on Capitol Hill in 1982 for Reagan and a few Irish-American politicians.
     The garrulous O'Neill, as usual, had the party in stitches with a stream of Irish jokes and yarns. But Reagan stole the spotlight with a long rambling joke about a rabbi, a priest and a minister.
     ``The punch line is long since lost to the mists or history,'' said Markey. ``But I just remember it as the funniest thing I had ever heard. Reagan had the gift for telling a good joke.''
     O'Neill, too, was no stranger to the warm glow of public adulation, but he had a grudging respect for his GOP nemesis, saying famously of Reagan once: ``There's just something about the guy that people like.''

[DJtex]

It's a great shame for the Democrats that the memory of Reagan will be broken, not by Kerry's resumption of campaigning (which as usual will hardly be a drop in the bucket) but by the totally self-centered antics of their criminal clown, Bill Clinton. Somehow the juxtaposition of our mourning the passing of a beloved giant with the many bad memories from the Clinton years will reflect quite negatively on Kerry and the current Democratic party.