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Date: 4/12/2022
SOUTH HADLEY – The first woman Majority Leader of the Massachusetts Senate, Linda Melconian, will be at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley on April 19 at 7 p.m. to discuss her book “Lay it on the Table: A Change Agent in Action,” about her time as the late former Congressman and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s legislative assistant.
The event is co-sponsored by The Weissman Center for Leadership at Mount Holyoke College.
The majority of the book chronicles the story of Tip O’Neill’s initiative and decisive leadership – at great risk to his advancement in the House Leadership – to give the House a unique opportunity to have its voice heard on ending U.S. military involvement in Vietnam’s unwinnable and unpopular civil war.
It examines House majority party caucus, committee and Floor action as the House wrestled with the question that still echoes decades later: If Congress has the constitutional power to declare war, can’t it also declare to end war?
“The book is a historic non-fiction, popular genre written as a story. It reflects a moment in time in our nation’s history. I wrote it for two reasons, one, I had always wanted to write a book about Tip O’Neill leading the House during the Vietnam war when he was majority whip. When he was first in House leadership was where he honed the impressive skills and tools that made him such a legislative titan as Speaker,” Melconian said. “The second reason was, I was so frustrated and disgusted with Washington’s political culture today. The dysfunction, the paralysis, the inability to get things done, so I wanted the book to showcase a point in time when Congress worked, when members of the House found common ground, Democrats and Republicans, for America’s best interests. It is a point in time when Congress really worked. Compromise was not a dirty word.”
Melconian also stressed that the book is written to make it readable for the average person who may not know the intricate details of the legislative process.
“I think it details a picture of the House and the legislative process, starting with the caucus resolution, the foreign affairs committee, the deliberation and the ultimate House floor action. At that particular time, Democratic and Republican caucuses as well as executive session of the foreign affairs committee and all committees were not open to the public.”
Also expanded upon in the book is the risk to O’Neill’s political future as he pushed forward on his caucus resolution in 1972.
“It was risky in terms of his advancement in the House leadership. In terms of his ability to get support from the Mass delegation, from the democratic study group which was the liberal caucus of the time – they would be progressives today – he was the leader of the House doves in that time. In 1972, the Vietnam war was waging and a battle was mounting between the war hawks – those who supported the war and the peace doves in the House. Nixon had ramped up the air war, and House members and their constituents had grown weary of all this bloodshed. Tip O’Neill in 1972, was the Majority Whip and was a leader of the House doves in his own right, and he saw an opportunity in this unrest in the House to lead the Democrats in support of his caucus resolution.
“It wasn’t as hard to get support from the Democratic caucus, by that the majority of the Democratic caucus was very supportive of ending the war,” Melconian continued. “The problem was the fact that the leadership, Speakers from Sam Rayburn, John McCormack from Massachusetts, Speaker Carl Albert, and Hale Boggs was the majority leader at the time, all supported the presidents in foreign policy. Partisan politics stopped at the water’s edge. The President had the say in foreign policy and ending the war. They believed it was the President’s prerogative and Tip O’Neill changed that. That was part of what this story is all about,” Melconian said.
Melconian went on to summarize what readers will discover in her book.
“There are three things in the book, the Vietnam war front and center, but what is little known about Tip O’Neill, he advanced the opportunities for women in the House, in terms of getting women into leadership. The last thing is decorum, the lack of decorum today. That is a thing I carry out through the book. Tip was known as the best-liked man in the House. That likability stemmed from a sense of reliability, dependability and trust. He built a reputation among Republicans and Democrats for fairness, for approachability and trust. Integrity mattered; trust mattered. I think his House leadership, the O’Neill era served as a lesson as how we can work for the good of the country,” Melconian said.
Prior to serving in the Massachusetts Senate, Melconian was Assistant Counsel to the late U. S. House of Representative Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr. Among the first women staff professionals to merit standing U. S. House floor privileges in all three majority leadership offices, she also held positions of chief legislative assistant, and speechwriter, House Floor Member assistant, domestic and foreign policy advisor. She was honored by the Armenian community for her staff role in creating April 24 as a national commemoration of the Armenian genocide.
Currently, she teaches public policy, nonprofit and business law courses at Suffolk University.
A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Melconian earned a master’s degree from the School of Public and International Affairs at George Washington University and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from George Mason University.