Tommy Boggs: ‘Terrific Guy’ Beyond Politics

In Washington, a company town of a very special sort, lobbyists and lawyers have a very special place.

In the rest of the great wide country outside Washington, lobbyists and lawyers are the epitome of Washington insiders—the fixers and wheeler dealers who control policy and money.

Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr.—he was called “Tommy” in his youth, and the nickname survived into his adulthood—was the kind of man who carried the aura of an insider, while having an outsider’s outsized personality. He was a warm man who knew politics better than any politician, who came from a time-honored political family, a man of the South (Louisiana) who wore his Washington persona (Georgetown University graduate) like a really good suit that fit him well. He was a big supporter of the Georgetown Senior Center. Unpretentious, friendly, a talker, he headed the firm of Patton-Boggs, a legal firm which took its lobbying duties to high levels.

Boggs, who died unexpectedly at 73 this week, was the kind of man who could probably convince the anti-lobbying and lawyer-joke people in the world that he was an honorable man working in an honorable profession, because that’s exactly what he was and what he believed.

“Tommy was a terrific guy, a very smart guy and a quintessential Washington person in the best sense of the word,” said Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, who has been of counsel with Patton-Boggs for the past 13 years.

“He was always willing to help out.” Evans said. “He had the personal touch and this gift for bringing people who disagreed with each other together. He wasn’t an ideologue. He worked with Republicans and with Democrats, although he was a lifelong Democrat. He was a classy man, who gave lobbyists a good name by example.”

At the Palms, where Boggs frequently squired clients and friends—and those things seemed to follow one another, they set his table in black, out of courtesy and as a way of celebrating the man.

Given his family and background, it’s a wonder Boggs didn’t become an elected official, a senator or governor. His father, Hale Boggs, was the House Majority Leader, his mother Lindy was a nine-term congresswoman, and his sister Cokie Roberts was a national television journalist. The man he worked for on his first sojourn to Washington was none other than Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. Young Boggs worked the Speaker’s elevator.

Hale Boggs was killed in a plane crash in Alaska in 1972. His mother, in addition to winning a special election to succeed her husband in the House of Representatives, was named as President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the Vatican. She died last year at the age of 97.

While advancing and looking out for the interests of a varied group of clients, which included all manners of industries from oil, to drug and insurance companies, he managed always to be something more than K Street royalty. He was the kind of man who didn’t let politics per se get in the way of business or friendships maintained and new acquaintenances made and kept.

That kind of approach would be well suited today to the politics of the times, and it’s sadly lacking, a time where impasse and deadlock seem to prevail more often than not. Politicians are called by that name: because with politicians these days, it’s always about politics.

Boggs succeeded precisely because—although his stock and trade was to ease the path to the doorways of influence,which included knowing whom to call, have for lunch, and having his calls answered—he hardly ever let politics be the deciding factor of his life. Lobbyists, it seemed, on K Street were about knowing politicians, without necessarily embracing politics.