Foley: Have More Faith In Government Former House Speaker Reflects On 30-Year Career In Congress

After 30 years in Congress, five as speaker of the House, Tom Foley would change only a few things about the nation.

The most important may be the people’s lack of confidence in their leaders.

The loss of that confidence, Foley said Thursday night, is the biggest change between the time he entered Congress and the time he left.

“This is, after all, our government,” Foley told a crowd at Gonzaga University’s Charlotte Martin Centre. “I wish the nation would go into the 21st century with more self-confidence in its own institutions.”

The 15-term representative from Spokane, retired by voters in the 1994 election, said he believed people were overly cynical about their politicians. Cynicism has increased as conservatives argue the federal government is the problem, not the solution, and many workers see their wages frozen.

Politicians share some of the blame, he told GU students, faculty and members of the legal profession attending the annual Luvera Lecture.

“There is a tendency for the political system to promise too much,” Foley said. “Then, when the government doesn’t succeed, there’s discontent and disappointment.”

The Democrats may have promised too much in 1992, then paid the price in 1994 when such changes as health care reform and campaign finance reform didn’t happen, he said.

Maybe the election that placed Republicans in control of Congress after 40 years was an aberration; maybe it was a true realignment, Foley said. Next year’s election will tell.

For much of his 90-minute speech, Foley reflected on the presidents who ran the country while he was in Congress.

Lyndon Johnson was a “hands-on” president who frequently lobbied Congress. He once invited the Washington state delegation to the White House after winning a close vote on a pet bill.

“You’d have to be a damn fool to vote against a bill like that,” Johnson said, looking straight at Foley.

Foley wondered if he should tell LBJ he had voted against it, then realized he was getting “the Johnson treatment.”

He recalled standing with other Democrats in the House when Republican Gerald Ford was sworn in after Richard Nixon’s resignation. Ford asked the nation to pray for him. “From the back of the room came a voice, ‘We will, Jerry. God bless you.”’

As former speaker, Foley is allowed to keep an office open in Spokane for five years. Earlier this month, Rep. Linda Smith, R-Wash., proposed closing the office to save taxpayers $200,000 a year.

Foley said after the speech he thought the office was valuable to the public, which still calls or writes him with questions about Congress or legislation.