Honor in the House: Speaker Tom Foley

by Biggs, Jeffrey R.; Foley, Thomas S.

• ISBN13: 9780874221732
• ISBN10: 0874221730
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-06-01
• Publisher: Washington State Univ Pr

Summary

One of the nation's most influential and respected members of Congress in the post-World War II period reflects on his 30 years in office, including five years as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Biggs and Foley have provided an unusual collaboration of reminiscences in a book that reveals how Congress and the nation's government really work.

Author Biography

Jeffrey R. Biggs grew up in Laramie, Wyoming, and was educated at Harvard (BA), Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand (MA) on a Fulbright, and George Washington University (PhD). His twenty-one years in the Foreign Service included assignments as a cultural center director in Brazil, press attache in Portugal, and deputy chief of mission in Bolivia. He also was an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. Biggs was press secretary/spokesman to Representative Thomas S. Foley from 1987-1994, a visiting fellow at the Freedom Forum, and served on the faculty of the Parliamentary Institute at the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. Currently he is director of the American Political Science Association's Congressional Fellowship Program. He and his wife Janet live in Bethesda, Maryland, and have two daughters, Jennifer and Jessica. Thomas S. Foley was born in Spokane where he attended Gonzaga High School. He graduated from the University of Washington and the University of Washington School of Law. Admitted to the bar in 1957, he practiced law in Spokane and was appointed deputy prosecuting attorney for Spokane County in 1958. He served as assistant attorney general for the State of Washington and assistant chief clerk and special counsel of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs of the United States Senate. Foley won election as a Democrat to the House of Representatives in 1964, and represented Washington's Fifth District for thirty years. In the House he served as chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, majority whip, majority leader, and Speaker. He currently is the United States Ambassador to Japan, where he lives with his wife Heather.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi
Mike Mansfield
Western Roots	1	(20)
Congress in the 1960s	21	(26)
The 1970s: Prelude to House Leadership	47	(18)
In the Leadership: The Reagan Years	65	(24)
Majority Leader	89	(16)
Into the Maelstrom: The Speakership	105	(28)
A New Democratic Speaker with an Established Republican President	133	(20)
War Without and War Within	153	(18)
Congress on the Defensive: The ``House Bank'' and Other ``Scandals''	171	(18)
The End of ``Gridlock''	189	(14)
Unified Government: Looking for a Majority	203	(18)
Legislating a Presidential Agenda	221	(22)
Unseating a Speaker: The 1994 Reelection Race	243	(18)
What Lies Ahead, What's Left Behind	261	(14)
Epilogue: Return to Public Service	275	(16)
Notes	291	(20)
Bibliography	311	(14)
Acknowledgments	325	(2)
About the Authors	327	(1)
Index	328