Former House Speaker Jim Wright says he probably shouldn’t have retired
FORT WORTH — On May 31, 1989, after delivering a detailed and impassioned response to ethics allegations brought against him, Rep. Jim Wright of Fort Worth resigned as speaker of the House of Representatives.
“I’m going to make you a proposition,” Wright said that day, speaking extemporaneously before a national television audience and beneath the searing lights of the House chamber. “Let me give you back this job you gave to me, as a propitiation for all of this season of bad will that has grown up among us.”
Two months before, Senate Democrats had scuttled the nomination of Republican Sen. John Tower for defense secretary. Citing details of his personal finances, House Republicans had come after Wright, the prominent Democrat, who would always insist that he had not broken House rules.
But with his dramatic gesture, becoming the first House speaker in history to resign, Wright hoped to inspire an end to a time when “vilification becomes an accepted form of political debate, when negative campaigning becomes a full-time occupation, when members of both parties become self-appointed vigilantes carrying out personal vendettas against members of the other party,” he said in his resignation speech.
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