Tip O’Neill was a Democratic congressman that held the longest continuous term as House Speaker. Dennis Hastert was the longest serving Republican House Speaker, and speaker during W Bush.
O’Neill was famous for:
- breaking with LBJ on Vietnam,
- leading the charge against Nixon (see Breslin’s “How the Good Guys Finally Won”)
- supporting universal healthcare and jobs programs
Hastert is famous for:
- the Hastert Rule, by which if a majority of the House wants to pass a bill, but only a minority of republicans do, the bill is not brought to the floor in the first place. ← still used by pugs
- being a pedophile that preyed on his male students as a high-school coach. As the judge in his case said, being a “serial child molester”.