`Tip' O'neill, 81, Dies -- Former Speaker Of The House Believed `All Politics Is Local'

Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr., a Massachusetts Democrat who during his 10 years as speaker of the House of Representatives became one of the nation's best-liked and most widely known and influential leaders, died last night in Boston. He was 81.

He died at 9:43 p.m. at Brigham and Women's Hospital of cardiac arrest, his family said.

O'Neill was the quintessential urban ethnic politician. He held elective office for 50 years, including 16 years in the Massachusetts Legislature and 34 years in the U.S. House. He based his career on the maxim, "all politics is local," and his rise to power rested primarily on personal relationships, party loyalty and favors that he did for constituents and colleagues.

When he retired as speaker in 1986, he had held that office for a longer continuous period than any other speaker.

"Mr. O'Neill was a great American who served his country with distinction for many decades. He leaves behind a grand legacy of public service," the White House said in a statement last night.

O'Neill was "a giant of a man, a giant of a speaker and a giant of a friend," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. "Massachusetts has lost a great statesman and the Kennedy family has lost a great friend."

O'Neill, with his shock of white hair, his rumpled shirt, bulbous nose and generous waistline, was a familiar figure to millions of Americans.

He had a warm personality and was a superb story-teller who loved to sit in the back of his office and spin yarns. In the early 1980s, the Republicans tried to make him the butt of a series of television advertisements featuring an actor look-alike, but the strategy backfired, and he became a symbol of national affection.

It was once said that he "wears the speakership like a glove." His reputation was that of a brilliant and cunning political strategist with an uncanny sense of timing who always seemed to know when to compromise and when to hold out for more.

He was perhaps the most dominant figure in the House since the death of former Speaker Sam Rayburn, D-Tex., in 1961, but because of changes in House rules, he was unable to exercise the kind of absolute power that Rayburn did.

Nevertheless, under O'Neill's leadership, the House passed landmark legislation such as a wide-ranging ethics code governing the behavior of its members, President Reagan's comprehensive tax-reform package that lowered taxes for the poor and middle class and eliminated loopholes for the rich, and President Carter's energy bill.

It restored proposed cuts in Social Security benefits and passed other social programs, and it voted to terminate covert aid to rebel forces in Nicaragua.

Some in the House criticized O'Neill for being often unfamiliar with the details of legislation, but no one ever suggested he was less than a master of legislative mechanics.

House Republicans had this quickly demonstrated in January 1977, during the first hour of his speakership. In less than 60 minutes, O'Neill pushed through more than two dozen rules changes aimed at weakening the 143-member Republican minority.

Those changes restricted the use of quorum calls and other delaying tactics that historically have been the minority's primary legislative weapons.

O'Neill believed deeply that it was the government's responsibility to improve life for ordinary people, and he kept a framed copy in his office of the Hubert Humphrey quotation, "The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped."

As a staunch party loyalist, he generally voted with the Democratic leadership but on occasion did break rank. He came out against Lyndon Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War in 1967, one of the first of the Establishment Democrats to do so.

In 1970, he became chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which raises and distributes campaign funds for House Democrats. He became Democratic Party Whip in 1971 and majority leader in 1973. O'Neill was elected speaker after Carl Albert, D-Okla., retired in 1976.

His first years as speaker coincided with the presidency of Jimmy Carter. But Carter's staff, in O'Neill's view, gave short shrift to its relations with Congress. O'Neill regularly referred to Carter's chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, as "Hannibal Jerkin."

The nadir of his speakership came during the first year of the Reagan presidency, when the White House pushed through some of the largest increases in defense spending in the nation's history, while sharply cutting domestic programs, all over O'Neill's opposition.

"For a while, I was a solitary voice crying in the wilderness," O'Neill recalled in his autobiography.

During the remaining years of his speakership, O'Neill clashed repeatedly with Reagan, referring to his presidency as being "of the rich, by the rich and for the rich." But the two men remained on good terms personally.

"As Tip once said during one of our fierce political battles: Don't worry, when five o'clock rolls around, we'll put business aside and just be friends," Reagan said in a statement.

On June 17, 1941, O'Neill married Mildred Ann Miller. They had five children, Thomas P. III, Christopher, Michael Tolan, Susan and Rosemary.

Information from the Associated Press is included in this report.