Resident Scholar  Norman J. Ornstein

Norman J. Ornstein reviews No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight, by Tom DeLay.

Over more than 20 roller-coaster years in Congress, Tom DeLay reached the pinnacle of success and the depths of embarrassment and failure. He moved steadily up the Republican leadership ladder to become the most adept party whip in modern times, nearly lost his post in 1997 after an abortive coup against the speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, stayed in place through ethical improprieties, single-handedly engineered the impeachment of President Bill Clinton by the House when his colleagues favored a bipartisan censure and managed adroitly to move up to majority leader--under his protege Dennis Hastert--after the 2002 elections. He was unquestionably the most powerful member of the House from 1999 until 2005, when a series of new ethical missteps, combined with an indictment against him for election law violations in Texas, forced him out of the leadership and precipitated his resignation from Congress in 2006.

DeLay was always a fascinating character study for Congress-watchers. His nickname, the Hammer, suggested a leadership style composed of muscle, bluster and threat. But his success as whip came as much from his ability to empathize with and take care of his colleagues, protecting them--including the moderates--from stress and electoral adversity. His vicious rhetoric suggested an insensitivity and callousness, but he and his wife have been longtime champions of foster parenting, taking in several kids themselves.

If anyone thought that his ignominious resignation would end DeLay's stint in the public eye, or would at least chasten him, his new book puts the lie to both those expectations. DeLay had already shown that the half-life of purgatory for disgrace is astonishingly short; he is a fixture on cable news, doing political commentary, and he scored a coveted appearance on Meet the Press. No Retreat, No Surrender is the latest step in his comeback.

The book is a combination autobiography and manifesto, designed to settle political scores, justify and defend DeLay's behavior and explain away all the charges against him. Its goal is to rally conservatives behind him, to convince them that he is a victim of vicious liberal calumny and is a true and noble hero.

DeLay discusses his childhood, traces his background in pest control and his start in politics, offers a confessional about his years of carousing and adultery (which stopped when he found God), talks about how he rose up the political ladder (he later came to believe it was not his choice but a calling from God) and defends himself against his many enemies.

And oh, those enemies! The main theme of the book is introduced early on: "I have learned something about liberals. They are much like Communists. They believe they have to destroy you in order to win. . . . Liberals in Congress have no ideas that history hasn't disproved, and this leaves them pursuing only power. To get that power, they will destroy you--and if they can't destroy your message they will try to lock up the messenger. Congress today is plagued by the politics of personal destruction."

The enemies include Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel and Patrick Kennedy--along with Rachel Carson, whose pioneering environmentalist book, "Silent Spring," DeLay says, has cost "thousands if not millions of human lives." He also targets the Environmental Protection Agency, not to mention a few of his Republican rivals.

The Democrats in Congress, though, are the biggest villains. DeLay writes: "In 1996 ethics charges were lodged against me, but of course they were dismissed. The same thing happened again, in 1998. . . . The truth is that both these ethics charges and those to come, as well as a lawsuit I would face in 1998, were all part of a carefully executed strategy by the Democrats."

DeLay's capacity to excuse himself in every particular, and turn the blame onto his adversaries, is remarkable. In fact, he was chastised by the ethics panel in 1996 for raising money on the Capitol grounds and rebuked by the ethics committee in 1999 for threatening a trade association with mayhem if they persisted in their plan to hire a former Democratic congressman as their president (they did, and two treaties were held up for months in retaliation). In both ethics cases, the actions were bipartisan, as was the subsequent series of three rebukes on separate matters issued by the ethics panel in 2004. As for the lawsuit, it was initiated as a result of DeLay's dealings in his pest control business, Albo, which had been troubled for years with tax problems, and it was brought by his former partner, a lifelong Republican.

DeLay accepts none of the charges made against him, from his campaign finance violations to his relationship with his close and dear friend Jack Abramoff, including their trip to England and Scotland, with a stopover at the St. Andrews golf course, paid by Abramoff's lobbying funds laundered through a nonprofit association. He responds to his accusers on everything from the multiple indictments and convictions of his staff members to his support for sweatshops in the Marianas Islands--a place he calls "the GalApagos Islands of free enterprise." His comment on the admonishments and rebukes by the ethics committee? "Was Tom DeLay ever found guilty of ethics violations by the House Ethics Committee? No. Not once. Not ever."

He hits Emanuel and Pelosi with dubious ethics allegations and rips the hide off of Dick Armey, his former House leadership colleague, for betraying him. He viciously attacks Joel Hefley, the conservative Colorado Republican who led the ethics committee that rebuked him repeatedly three years ago. And he goes after Bill Clinton throughout, interspersing personal attacks with laments about how his own opponents have perfected the politics of personal destruction against him.

There is an occasional insight. DeLay describes the secret of his political success: "I have often acquired power simply by taking the time to learn a process thoroughly. This is a key to understanding who I am. Benjamin Disraeli once said, 'The secret of success is constancy of purpose.' My gift is this very constancy. Once I determine my goals, I orchestrate the hours of my day to achieve them. I spend my time getting better at whatever skill I need to achieve them. This requires the fine art of self-education. I take a long look at the mechanisms in place--in politics, pest control or life in general--and then I read and ask questions until I know the details of the process. . . . This is my brand of leadership, a brand not based on looks or charm or brilliance, but on hard work, mastery of the details and constancy of purpose."

This passage shows an admirable self-knowledge--something that is hard to find anywhere else in the book. But DeLay's hard-core partisans, who get their news from Rush Limbaugh (who wrote a gushing foreward) and Sean Hannity (who contributed a swooning preface), most likely won't notice or won't mind.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI.