Connie Morella: “in an era of the antipolitician, Thomas P. ``Tip'' O'Neill was a politician, and he was proud of it. During his more…”

“in an era of the antipolitician, Thomas P. ``Tip'' O'Neill was a politician, and he was proud of it. During his more than three decades in the House, and especially during his 10 years as Speaker, Tip loved to press the flesh with his 434 colleagues here, but he enjoyed even more the interaction with the little people back home in the polyglot Eighth District of Massachusetts. Tip believed that Government had an important role to play in helping those little people--the dispossessed, the unlucky, those with few advantages in life. Tip put this philosophy into practice on a personal level by lending a helping hand to the needy back in Boston. Legislatively, even in the eighties, when it was sometimes not popular to support expansive social programs, Tip persisted. For a time, he paid a price, becoming the target of national television ads portraying him as a bloated political relic. But long before he retired in 1987, he had won over even his ideological opponents who, if they did not agree with him, at least admired him for his honesty in sticking to his guns. Tip was well known for his motto, ``all politics is local,'' and he was a master of grassroots politics. But he never shied away from domestic and international issues, from Vietnam to Watergate to Central America. He was a driving force behind congressional reform legislation in the 1980's.”