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Washington's Classic Exit: A Defiant Spin Out the Door
Tom DeLay, leaving Congress after becoming embroiled in a corruption scandal, says he wouldn't do a thing differently. Not pictured: Sailboat, sunset.
(By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)
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Registering defeat without seeming defeated -- with varying degrees of combativeness, ranging from outrage to quiet pride -- is an important skill for any politician. (It's certainly preferable to the Jim Traficant option -- refusing to resign after being convicted of bribery and other corruption charges, and instead being forced out by fellow lawmakers.)
In 1958, President Eisenhower's powerful chief of staff, Sherman Adams, resigned after accepting gifts. He blamed a "campaign of vilification." In 1989, House Speaker Jim Wright resigned after an ethics scandal. The Texas Democrat urged the House to end "this period of mindless cannibalism."
The day that President Bill Clinton was impeached, Vice President Al Gore proclaimed that Clinton would "be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest presidents." Democrats assembled at the White House applauded. This is the Democratic version of a grinning mug shot.
"It's from the animal kingdom," says pundit Marshall Wittmann of the Democratic Leadership Council. "Animals cannot show their fear or their dismay in defeat, and he" -- that's DeLay -- "is the ultimate bantam rooster."
Rooster or no, Republican strategists praised DeLay's approach to resignation, which included the taped video and a Q&A with Time. In that interview, DeLay continued to paint himself as a crusader, an underdog under-appreciated by the media, which didn't write enough about one of his charities because -- as his wife put it -- "they're scared to death it might make that Tom DeLay look like he could be part human." Asked what he wished he'd done differently, DeLay said, "Nothing."
DeLay said he would continue to spend time in the Washington area and "keep fighting for the things I believe in, outside of Congress."
"He's kind of like a boxer," says Democratic strategist James Carville. "He's ready to get back in the ring."
As for yesterday's video: Better than a "sweaty press conference," says Rogers.
Ron Bonjean, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, puts it this way: Rather than DeLay standing before cameras with "15 mikes on a podium" and "bright shining lights" and the possibility of becoming emotional or displaying "a sense of being hunted," DeLay "controlled the environment."
Bonjean, by the way, doesn't see any comparison to Nixon. DeLay didn't appear bitter in his announcement, he says. "He remained a team player," Bonjean says, and "at the same time, still blamed the Democrats."
