House of Representatives (where he ended his career with ten years of service as Speaker).įarrell invested five years researching his subject’s life and his knowledge of O’Neill often seems encyclopedic. During O’Neill’s five-decade political career, he served in the Massachusetts House as well as the U.S. Tip O’Neill (1912-1994) is a colorful, larger-than-life political figure and anyone interested in his brash, back room style of politics will find much to enjoy in this biography. I thought you would have grown in the five years you've been in office, but you're still repeating those same simplistic explanations. Those stories may work on your rich friends, but they don't work on the rest of us. ''The guy in Youngstown, Ohio, who's been laid off at the steel mill and has to make his mortgage payments- don't tell me he doesn't want to work. ''Don't give me that crap,'' an angry O'Neill responded. On January 28, 1986, Reagan spoke up at a briefing and complained about able-bodied welfare recipients. His final budget battle did not go by without one last confrontation between the Speaker and the President. ''O'Neill's Democrats were united again when work on the budget began the following spring.
The best part of the biography for me was the chapters relating his battles against Reagan: Farrell does a great job at analyzing his New Deal philosophy coupled with his Boston smoked filled back room dealing style in the 40's up to the 80's. Tip O'Neill had a fascinating yet complicated life. I found the narrative well balanced and also very enlightening when it comes to the relationship between lawmakers in the House among themselves and with the executive branch. I read this book because I really enjoyed Farrell's biography of Nixon (2017) and I admire his craft.
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