Boehner’s Burden
Doomed by a divided GOP
JOHN Boehner won’t be remembered as one of the great House speakers, but it’s hardly his fault. His tenure was buffeted by forces well beyond his control. It’s easy to be critical of him, but that misses the bigger picture of American politics in this moment.
Being speaker of the House has always been a tough job. We may forget that when we think of titans like Sam Rayburn or Tip O’Neill, but the truth is that over the course of American history, the average speaker has served about three or four years. Boehner served almost five.
Unlike the president, the speaker occupies a leadership position not chosen by the voters. To win the job, he has to secure the votes of a majority of the House of Representatives.
But nobody in the opposition will ever vote for him, so he has to win a supermajority of his own caucus.
When his party’s divided, his political life gets difficult.
And the GOP of 2015 is quite divided, for reasons that are hardly of Boehner’s doing. After all, the Tea Party waves that brought congressional Republicans to a majority in 2010, and expanded it in 2014, were directed at least in part against the GOP itself.
Most of the ire has been directed against President Obama, but the Tea Partiers are also frustrated with goalongtogetalong Republicans in Congress. Our twoparty system didn’t give them a realistic third choice to vent their frustrations. So, they elected insurgent, reformminded Republicans to the House.
These new members have made the difference between a Republican minority and a GOP majority — but they’re not a majority in Congress.
Not only did Boehner have to deal with these members, who are to his right, he also had to deal with Barack Obama, who’s substantially to his left.
The last Republican speaker to face a president nearly so liberal was Joseph Martin, who served from 1947 to 1949. But Martin could often count on an alliance with the nowextinct faction of conservative Southern Democrats. Boehner had no such bipartisan opportunities, so he could get precious little accomplished with Obama in the Oval Office. That’s a tough squeeze. With Obama unwilling to give an inch on most issues, and no Democratic support to override his veto, Boehner was often left with one of two choices: accede to the insurgents and force a government shutdown, or deny the insurgents and keep the government running.
Boehner tried both tactics over the course of his tumultuous speakership, neither to great effect. Unsurprisingly, it left him without good relations with either the West Wing or the Tea Partiers in the House.
Could Boehner have done a better job?
Sure, but hindsight is always 2020. The truth is that he was in a bind from the moment Nancy Pelosi handed the gavel to him back in 2011.
With Obama to his left, and Tea Partiers to his right, there was precious little he could do.
His presumptive successor, Kevin McCarthy, should fare better — at least in the short term. He has better relations with the conservative wing of the GOP caucus than Boehner ever did.
And he does not (yet) suffer from the illwill that usually accrues over time to leaders who must govern in difficult circumstances.
In the long run, though, McCarthy will succeed only if a Republican wins the White House next year.
Maybe he can keep the conservatives happy for the next 12 months, but without a GOP presidential victory, it will eventually be for naught.
No speaker can balance such a conservative caucus against a liberal Democrat in the White House, at least not forever.
Republicans would thus do well to use Boehner’s resignation as an opportunity to look more closely at the crop of presidential nominees, and commit themselves to picking a winner.
Jay Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and author of “A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption.”