O'Neill, Thomas P. (1912–1994)

TIP O'NEILL served as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives for 10 years and was the leading Democrat in Washington, D.C., for the first six years of the presidency of Ronald Reagan, a time when the Senate was controlled by Republicans. Thomas Philip O'Neill, Jr., was born on in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Thomas P. and Rose Ann (Tolan) O'Neill. His father ran the water department and had served on the city council. Tip's nickname derived from James O'Neill, a player with the St. Louis Browns baseball team who was reputed for his foul “tips.” O'Neill's first foray into politics was in 1928, when at age 13, he campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate Alfred E. Smith.

O'Neill graduated from Boston College in 1936. While still a senior there, he ran for Cambridge city council and lost. This would be his only electoral defeat. The next year, 1936, he ran for and was elected to the lower house of the Massachusetts legislature. O'Neill married Mildred Anne Miller on June 17, 1941. To this marriage were born five children: Rosemary, Thomas III (who also served in the Massachusetts legislature and went on to be lieutenant-governor of the state), Susan, Christopher, and Michael O'Neill.

Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill provided a liberal counterweight to President Ronald Reagan's conservatism.

O'Neill served eight terms in the legislature, becoming minority leader in 1947 and speaker following the Democratic victory the next year. He was the youngest speaker of the house in state history to that time. When U.S. Representative John F. Kennedy chose to run for the U.S. Senate in 1952, O'Neill ran for his house seat, which he won and held for 17 Congresses. O'Neill benefitted both from being a former state legislative speaker and from the tutelage of the Congressman from the neighboring district, John W. McCormick, who [Page 334]would also go on to be speaker. O'Neill was one of the few members of Congress who did not move his spouse and family to Washington, D.C., a practice that did not change until O'Neill became speaker 20 years later.

O'Neill was a loyal foot-soldier to the Democratic leadership and presidents Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. His first major break with the leadership came over the Vietnam War. Owing in part to urging from his children (and in no small part to the liberal academic communities in his district, which included Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), O'Neill concluded that the Vietnam War was really a civil war, and that American interests were ill-served by American military participation. He supported Eugene J. McCarthy, the anti-war presidential candidate, in 1968.

O'Neill's rise to leadership began with his support of Hale Boggs of Louisiana for majority leader in 1971. Boggs appointed O'Neill majority whip. Boggs died in a plane crash the next year, and O'Neill was elected majority leader. When Speaker Carl Albert retired after the 1976 election, O'Neill was elected speaker without opposition. Jimmy Carter had become president by running as an outsider, against the Washington, D.C., establishment. O'Neill found the new president often unwilling to defer to O'Neill's advice about winning in the federal legislative process. When Carter and the Democratic Senate were defeated in 1980, O'Neill blamed Carter's ineptitude.

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