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Apache/2.4.16 Server at www.michiganpowmia.org Port 80The Prisoner of Capitol Hill - Glenn Thrush - POLITICO Magazine
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The Prisoner of Capitol Hill
Lead image by Piotr Lesniak.
The longest hour of John Boehner&s career began just after noon on January 3, 2013. Boehner, perpetually besieged by his party&s right wing, was waiting to find out if he would win reelection as speaker of the House, and he was facing an unexpectedly tough fight from Tea Party upstarts trying to eject him from a job so thankless it was hard to see why anyone would want it.
Boehner smokes more or less constantly when he&s out of the public eye, and the elegant marbled corridor outside his office on the second floor of the Capitol invariably smells like a bowling alley from the 1970s. But on that chilly midwinter day, Boehner was chain-smoking his filtered Camel 99s at a particularly hell-fire pace. Inside his office, the speaker hunched nervously over his small desk with its expansive view of the frozen National Mall, waiting by himself, staring at a plaque of the Breton Fisherman&s Prayer, a replica of one that sat on President John F. Kennedy&s desk. &O, God,& it reads, &Thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.& &I don&t know, I must have read that thing 500 times over that hour, hour and a half,& Boehner told me in early December. While we talked, a vote was taking place on the House floor on a symbolic
denouncing President Barack Obama&s executive order on immigration, its preordained outcome reflecting, for once, an unusually united House Republican Conference. But Boehner was already deep in negotiations to avert a second government shutdown in as many years, which would nearly fail a few days later during what should have been a perfunctory procedural vote after a handful of conservatives bucked him. With conservative media hammering him as a sellout (Fox&s Sean Hannity is already
him &cowardly& for not using the vote to extract concessions from Obama) and Tea Party members straining at the leash again, our conversation turned to his political near-death experience nearly two years earlier.
&I was in my chair the whole time sitting all by myself, right there on my rear,& he remembered, sinking into an oxblood leather wingback chair, in crisp white shirtsleeves, cigarette smoldering in hand as he talked. &It was, uhhh, trying ...& *** Boehner&s dinghy made it through the storm that day&just barely, by six votes&and he is expected to have it easier (despite a last-minute
by conservatives) when the 114th Congress convenes on January 6, 2015, to reelect him as its speaker. This should be his moment, after all. Republicans in the House of Representatives just picked up 13 seats in the midterm elections, giving the party its largest majority in the chamber since 1928. At least some credit goes to Boehner&s tireless fundraising&he claims he raised &and victory would seem to offer Boehner more job security and a cushion against future rebellions in his own party. But the 65-year-old bartender&s son knows how quickly fortunes can turn, and his friends say the 2013 vote&and subsequent embarrassment of being forced to go along with a government shutdown he tried to stop his own members from supporting&left him with a seasick feeling, a sense of being perpetually buffeted by forces greater than himself. &He&s the same happy-go-lucky guy, but there&s a little more anger there, a little more explosiveness& since that vote, says one former member who remains close to Boehner.
The Many Faces of John Boehner | Getty I Associated P Corbis Images
His first four years in the office are more notable for survival than accomplishment. Liberals call Boehner the weakest speaker ever to hold the office, or, as author Michael Tomasky , &easily the worst House speaker in modern history.& Some conservatives, especially those in talk radio, agree, blaming him for not standing up sufficiently to the liberal Democratic president they loathe. &This guy&s a joke,&
syndicated host Mark Levin, who has long agitated for Boehner&s ouster. And the public, disgusted by the gridlock, has given Congress the lowest approval ratings ever recorded, bottom-dwelling . When all was said and done, the 113th Congress enacted , the second least of any Congress in the past half-century. Through it all, Boehner has been in charge, but never entirely in control, and he muddled along with a depressing cycle of legislative crises and shoestring salvations. A bargainer by nature saddled with members who didn&t want to bargain, he would negotiate and negotiate&only to have a big bloc of his conference emphatically reject almost any deal. Each time, Boehner would end up being bailed out by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell or House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, who would cobble together enough votes to salvage a deal with Obama. Still, Boehner survived, battered but intact. And today there is no other political leader in the country who owes so much of his success to sheer resilience and the capacity to endure repeated public humiliation with a shrug. That Boehner shrug&that &I&m just playing the cards I&ve been dealt,& nicotine-induced zen&drives his bargaining partners crazy, but it might have finally set him up to do bigger things, if he&s willing to take the risk. &He held things together, and now they are in a much stronger position,& says former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who ushered Boehner into the leadership two decades ago.
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OPTICS: Hold On. John Boehner Has Something in His Eye. | AP Photo (Click to view gallery.)
&I don&t do anger,& Boehner told me with a straight face. And there&s some truth to it: His wife, Debbie, I was told, was incensed enough for both Boehners&and begged him to use the powers of the speakership to punish the defectors who had nearly cost him his career in 2013. Boehner refused. Now, of course, Boehner actually has a chance to get something done. If he can keep his fractious Republicans together&and not get blindsided by his own team on the other side of the Capitol. If he can deal with a White House that, sources told me, has all but given up on the idea that Boehner can actually deliver. Because, for all that&s changed in the wake of the midterm elections, one thing remains the same: John Boehner is still the uncertain fulcrum of the United States government, and his grip on an expanded House Republican majority remains surprisingly slippery. Can he transform his chamber from a legislative basket case into a place where, as he puts it, &the institution works&?
&He has no more places to hide,& says former Obama White House chief of staff Bill Daley, in a comment that reflects Obama&s personal view, according to several senior administration officials. &This is a Congress that he helped build. & The &Oh, I can&t control my people& routine is wearing thin.& Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who served with Boehner in the 1990s, admires Boehner&s patience but says the time has come to risk everything to pass big bipartisan bills. &You need to say, &I&m the speaker, and while I am the speaker, I set the terms. If you don&t want me to be the speaker, then vote against me the next time. In the meantime, you have given me the responsibility, and I am going to make the decisions.&&
Glenn Thrush is senior staff writer at Politico Magazine.
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Lead image by Piotr Lesniak.
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