What’s in it for me? The life and times of a Washington maverick.
The best thing about getting an office of his own, John Boehner recalls, was that he finally had somewhere to smoke his Camel cigarettes.
In fact, Washington legend has it that when Boehner’s successor, Paul Ryan, moved in, it took months to get the smell of tobacco out of the curtains and carpet.
Washington has an odd relationship with smoking.
You’re more likely to receive a warm welcome if you sell cigarettes than if you smoke the things yourself.
The people who make cigarettes also seem to dislike them.
When Boehner worked in the tobacco industry, the CEO of his company spotted him on a smoke break.
“You should quit that,” he said.
“They’re terrible for your health.
” They are, of course, and Boehner knows it’s a bad habit.
But, in his view, there are worse vices than smoking – vices like hypocrisy.
Lots of people dislike Boehner.
He’s been ruffling feathers ever since he went up to Washington in the early ’90s.
A crusader against cronyism and corruption, he soon got used to people in Congress giving him the evil eye.
But even his worst enemies have to give it to him: a few, rare lapses aside, John Boehner doesn’t do double standards.
In these blinks, you’ll learn how the son of a Democrat-voting bar owner became a Reagan Republican; why Republicans came close to tanking the global economy; and how John McCain’s grandstanding cost him an election.
An early lesson in service
Our story begins on a cold Saturday morning in 1958.
It’s 5:00 a.
m.
in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Boehner household is stirring.
They have a modest, two-bedroom home.
Twelve kids share the rooms – girls in one, boys in the other.
Mom and Dad sleep on a fold-out sofa bed in the sitting room.
Earl, John Boehner’s father, gets up first, taking care not to disturb his sleeping wife.
He climbs the stairs, and wakes eight-year-old John and his older brother, Bob.
The boys rub the sleep from their eyes and get dressed in the dark before quietly closing the front door and joining Earl in his truck.
Fifteen minutes later, they pull up outside a small bar in the blue-collar neighborhood of Carthage.
It’s 5:30 a.
m.
, but there’s already a line of regulars outside.
Some have just finished shifts in nearby factories; others are about to start.
They’re hungry and thirsty.
Andy’s Café always opens on time.
Earl unlocks the doors and service starts.
Plates loaded with sausages, bacon, eggs, and toast fly out of the kitchen.
John and Bob help pour light, frothy pilsner into iced mugs – a favorite tipple in this historically German part of town, whatever the time of day.
Customers in need of something stiffer down schnapps and bourbon.
Andy’s has been the Boehner family business since 1947, the year John’s grandfather, Andrew, decided to quit his job as a pipe welder and fulfill a dream he’d had since the booze-free years of Prohibition.
But it’s more than a watering hole.
Both Andrew and Earl served their country – Andrew in the First World War, Earl in the Second.
The bar lets them serve their community.
It’s been the beating heart of Carthage ever since it opened, regulating the neighborhood’s overlapping cycles of work and rest.
Everyone comes to Andy’s – line workers, clerks, managers, truck drivers, and shopkeepers.
It’s like a family.
It’s also the center of John’s world.
It’s here that he learns the value of hard work.
Between the ages of 8 and 18, he spends his weekends and evenings at Andy’s.
He busses plates, takes orders, pours beer, and cleans bathrooms.
At first, he earns $2 a shift.
Later, that’s bumped up to $5.
It’s enough for his first major purchase – a brand new six-speed Raleigh bike to replace the hand-me-downs he’s used to sharing with his siblings.
But the lesson that really sticks goes deeper.
It’s about respect and building relationships.
It doesn’t matter what you look like, what you’re wearing, how much you drink, or how much money you’re spending – everyone is welcome at Andy’s.
Boehner realizes that this family-owned bar is a microcosm of America: democratic, open, hardworking, and community-minded.
It is these values that will shape his politics.
Although that will come later.
Life comes into focus
It’s now 1968.
John Boehner, aged 19, looks in the mirror.
He doesn’t like what he sees.
He’s 273 pounds and dangerously close to needing size 40 pants.
He decides he’s not going to let that happen and starts smoking a cigarette every time he craves a snack between meals.
It works – kind of.
He sheds 85 pounds, but picks up a bad habit he’ll never manage to shake.
Against doctors’ and friends’ advice, he still smokes two packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day.
But it’s his future, not his smoking, that’s worrying him in ’68.
He’s done OK in high school, but not well enough to land an academic scholarship for college.
If he wants to study, he’s going to have to pay his own way.
By this time, Boehner’s swapped his Raleigh for a motorbike, and he rides around Cincinnati looking for odd jobs.
He finds work in construction, but the pay’s lousy.
He joins the navy.
That doesn’t stick, either.
A problem with his spine lands him back on dry land with two months’ pay and a medical discharge in his pocket.
Eventually, he manages to scrimp and save enough cash to enroll at Xavier University, a Jesuit-run private school.
He studies during the day and works night shifts.
He’s too busy to get a proper night’s sleep, but he feels like he’s drifting.
What’s his ambition?
What does he want to achieve?
He can’t answer these questions, and that bugs him.
Things start to look up in the summer of 1972.
Boehner’s a handy softball player, so when a couple of people who know him from around town need to fill a spot on their company’s team, they look him up.
Since you can’t play softball if you don’t work for the firm, they pull some strings.
Boehner joins Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals as a night janitor.
Then, out of nowhere, things get a lot better.
Boehner starts his shift at 11:00 p.
m.
and clocks off at 7:00 a.
m.
, which is when Merrell Dow’s offices open.
One morning, a young clerical worker called Deb decides to come in early.
Instead of arriving at 7:00 a.
m.
, she gets in at 6:45 a.
m.
Those 15 minutes change everything.
Boehner and Deb fall in love.
Within a year, they’re married.
They have $400, three rocking chairs, and a TV set to their name.
In other words, they’re broke.
It doesn’t matter.
Suddenly, life comes into focus.
In 1977 Boehner finishes his degree at Xavier and starts working at Nucite Sales – a local plastics and packaging producer.
He’s a natural salesman – after all, getting to know folks and finding out what they need runs in the family.
He stays at Nucite for just under 15 years, helping it expand, taking over as president when his boss dies, and finally running it until 1991.
And that’s the year a new chapter in his life, and in our story, begins.
An unlikely name causes a political upset
Boehner is originally a German name: “Boehner.
” In the old country, the “o” and “e” are squashed together to form a single vowel sound that can be tricky for native English speakers.
Over time, German-Americans settled on a sound that sits more comfortably on the Anglo tongue, and “Boehner” became “Bayner.
” If you only see the name on paper, though, you might think it’s pronounced the way John’s schoolmates used to say it: “Boner.
” That’s bad enough for a schoolkid, but what about a politician?
Fast forward to 1989.
Donald Lukens, the incumbent in Ohio’s Eighth District, is caught up in a sex scandal.
He refuses to resign, so the Republicans decide to run a new candidate against their old representative.
Party bosses quickly settle on a nominee, but Boehner also enters the contest.
Now, there are two names on the ballot: Tom Kindness and John Boner.
The bigwigs are delighted.
There’s no way someone named Boner beats a candidate named Kindness!
The odds are against Boehner.
It’s not just the name.
Unlike Kindness, he doesn’t have contacts or donors.
He empties the family bank account to fund his campaign.
Plenty think him foolhardy, but he’s sure he can win.
Both he and America have changed.
Both, he thinks, are ready for something new.
The Boehners have always been Democrats.
FDR, Stevenson, JFK, LBJ, Humphrey, Carter – whatever the name, the blue ticket gets the family’s vote.
But John’s been bucking this trend for a while, voting for Nixon in ’72 and Ford in ’76.
He’d started paying more attention to politics.
He noticed, for example, that 70 cents of every dollar Americans earn after $74,500 goes to the federal government.
That, he thought, was outrageous.
He wasn’t alone.
In 1980, former California governor Ronald Reagan swept to power promising to lower taxes, streamline government, and unleash the creative potential of the free market.
It was an appealing pitch to small business owners like Boehner.
He realized he wasn’t a Democrat at all – he was a Republican, and a Reagan Republican at that.
It’s Reagan’s vision of a new day in America that inspires Boehner in 1989.
He decides it’s time to bring the Reagan revolution to Ohio.
Amazingly, it works.
His radical rhetoric about cutting government spending and freeing entrepreneurs from excessive taxation strikes a chord.
Kindness is blindsided and Boehner wins both the Republican nomination and the subsequent election against Lukens.
In 1991, he takes his seat as a member of the US House of Representatives for Ohio's Eighth District.
He represents a new kind of Republican.
Ruffling feathers in Washington
Nineties Washington is still home to old-school “big-city politicians” – guys who came up in the ’50s and have ruled the roost in places like Chicago and New York ever since.
Over the years, they’ve made life comfortable for themselves.
Representatives are paid by check in the ’90s.
But these checks won’t clear if you deposit them with your own bank back home in Ohio, California, or Maine.
If you want cash, you have to use the House bank.
It’s an exclusive institution – only members of Congress can use it – and it offers generous terms.
Overdraw your regular bank account and you might get a loan, but you’ll be charged interest.
The House bank follows different rules.
Congressmen and -women can keep cutting checks and overdrawing their accounts for as long as they like.
It’s not interest-free – it’s free money, period.
In theory, you’re supposed to pay back what you owe, of course, but hardly anyone seems to get round to that.
The bank is a black hole sucking up taxpayer dollars.
It’s also close to broke.
It bounces over 8,000 of its own checks every year.
That’s why representatives have to use it – their paychecks are the float keeping it alive.
In short, it’s everything Reagan Republicans hate.
Boehner and six other Republican freshmen decide to expose the rot.
It’s not a popular decision.
They see it as a moral crusade against mismanagement and malfeasance.
Older members see it as an upstart campaign to take away their well-earned right to a free lunch.
Some in Congress promise not to misuse resources again; others beg Boehner and the so-called “Gang of Seven” to drop the matter, but they press ahead.
Within a year, the bank’s dealings are public knowledge and the scandal that follows forces it to shut for good.
Boehner is heralded as a rising star – the tip of the Reaganite spear in the House.
But the Gang’s work isn’t done.
Their next target?
The House Post Office.
Rumor has it members of Congress are buying huge numbers of stamps, charging them to their office accounts, and then trading them for cash in late-night poker games.
Worse, it’s said that members are buying cocaine from the Post Office itself.
And it’s not idle gossip.
The postmaster eventually pleads guilty to wrongdoing, two members and one staffer receive criminal charges, and one representative ends up in jail.
All this catches the eye of an influential Republican – Newt Gingrich, a party radical who’s about to retake the House of Representatives for the Republicans for the first time since 1954.
His strategy?
A moral offensive against government waste and the compromised Democratic majority that’s responsible for it.
Boehner fits right in.
In 1994, he gets the number-four spot in the House leadership hierarchy and becomes conference chairman.
Quote: “No wonder people were sick of Congress.
This place was being run like the side streets of Mexico City.
Boehner makes his mark
Politicians have long memories – and they hold grudges.
It’s now late 1998 and Boehner’s been conference chairman for four years.
Everything’s on track – until the wheels come off.
J.
C.
Watts, a former college football star and Oklahoma representative, announces he’s running against Boehner.
Watts doesn’t look like much of a threat until two senior members of the House – still sore about the House bank business – throw their weight behind him.
Boehner loses and spends the next seven years on the fringes of the House.
It’s only in 2005, when the House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, is indicted on criminal charges of conspiracy and money laundering, that he gets another shot at a top position.
He throws his name in the hat and wins.
His pitch for House Majority Leader rests on a promise nobody thinks he can keep: banning earmarks.
To get a federal spending bill through the House, you have to get a lot of stubborn folks with competing interests on board.
That’s easier to pull off if you can offer them something in exchange for their votes.
Enter the earmark.
In return for their support, members get sweetheart deals for their districts.
Sometimes it’s a new post office or federal building; other times it’s a bridge or a highway.
The point is, representatives get to return home with a big check, smile for the camera, and say they’ve brought tax dollars back to the community where they were earned.
But it’s not quite the win-win it sounds.
Sure, earmarks keep unruly members of the House in line, which makes governing easier, but they also encourage a culture of venality and waste.
The example Boehner brings up in the House is a project known as the “Bridge to Nowhere.
” In return for his support for a bill, Alaska representative Don Young gets an earmark for a brand-new 223-million-dollar bridge between the Alaskan mainland and a small island.
He says it’s vital infrastructure.
Boehner points out that the island, home to no more than a few dozen people, already has an airport and a ferry service.
In short, it’s a boondoggle.
Young doesn’t like what Boehner has to say about his bridge.
After an ill-tempered showdown, he pulls out the ten-inch hunting knife he carries on his hip, pins Boehner to a wall, and puts the blade against his throat.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” he says.
Boehner, who figures there are worse ways for a chain-smoker to go than being gutted by a wild Alaskan senator, looks him in the eye and answers the only way he knows how: “Fuck you.
” The incident is over in seconds, but talk of the confrontation echoes around the House for weeks.
Boehner’s campaign to ban earmarks lasts even longer.
It’ll only be in 2011, when he becomes Speaker of the House, that he’ll finally get his way.
A close call
We’ve reached the summer of 2008: one year into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
How bad is it, exactly?
Boehner finds out in a meeting with Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, and Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Paulson tells him the American financial system is on the verge of collapse.
If it goes down, it’ll take the global economy with it.
Boehner glances at Bernanke.
The banker is pale and his lips are trembling.
You don’t often see Wall Street types shaking in their boots.
He realizes this is the real deal.
The Democrats have recently taken back control of the House, which makes Boehner the minority leader.
It’s his job to get Republican members on the same page as President George W.
Bush.
Bush wants a massive bailout.
The view from the White House is that the economy needs a 700-billion-dollar cash injection just to stop things from getting worse.
After that, who knows?
In effect, Bush is asking Congress to write the federal government a blank check.
Democrats in the House have already signaled that they’ll vote for any bill put before them, but Republican members are dragging their feet.
It falls to Boehner to convince them.
It’s a hard sell.
Republicans – especially Reagan Republicans like Boehner – have spent decades trying to rein in government spending.
Their whole philosophy is about reducing public debt.
Bush’s bill just doesn’t smell right.
If banks and companies are going bust, it’s because they’ve made poor financial decisions.
Taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for their mistakes.
If this were a normal situation, Boehner tells members of the House, he’d agree.
But it’s not.
He conjures images of the Great Depression – the run on banks, hungry Americans unable to afford food, the lines of unemployed workers.
This won’t be happening to people in black-and-white newsreels – it’ll be happening to their constituents back home.
But this isn’t the same party Boehner joined almost two decades before.
Today’s Republican freshmen talk a lot about principles like low spending and balancing the budget, but what they’re really interested in is chaos.
They don’t care about the economy – they want to throw sand in the gears of the hated federal government until it fails and they’ve finally proved that it’s beyond saving.
Every time they vote down a bill, they get another invitation to go on Fox News or talk radio.
It’s a narcissistic – and dangerous – feedback loop.
In the end, cooler heads prevail and enough Republicans vote with the Democrats to pass a bailout package.
But while the economic crisis passes and America recovers, the political crisis is just beginning.
These new, far-right Republicans don’t just go unpunished for almost causing a second Great Depression; they’re getting stronger – and their power will only grow from here on out.
George W.
How to lose an election
Bush’s last days in the White House are miserable.
Among conservatives, who hate his liberal immigration policy, his stock is at an all-time low.
And he’s not much more popular in the country at large.
Americans are tired of the war in Iraq, now in its fifth year.
The financial crisis makes everything even worse.
Bush can’t open his mouth without the market nosediving.
It seems the Republicans have outgrown Bush, but who’ll take the party forward?
One-time Reaganite insurgents like Boehner and dyed-in-the-wool conservatives like Dick Cheney increasingly feel like they’re being frozen out.
Change is in the air, and a new breed of Republican is on the rise.
Bush’s heir apparent, John McCain, tries to straddle the line between what Boehner calls the “crazies,” and his own moderate conservative instincts.
He chooses Sarah Palin, a fringe radical from Alaska with little understanding of government, as his running mate as a sop to the party’s right.
But he also tries to cut a more statesmanlike figure.
When negotiations for a bailout package stall, McCain suspends his campaign and heads to Washington.
It’s a grand gesture, and the press is full of praise for the senator’s decision to put the nation’s interests ahead of his bid for the presidency.
Boehner meets him on Capitol Hill.
It doesn’t take long to figure out that McCain isn’t the cavalry riding in to save the day.
He doesn’t have a plan.
He doesn’t even have staff with him.
It’s a stunt – and a costly one at that.
As they head over to the White House to meet with Bush and leading Democrats, Boehner spots Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, huddling with presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
These Democrats have a game plan.
This isn’t going to end well.
The meeting starts.
Surprisingly, Obama takes the lead.
He gives a long speech demonstrating genuine, if superficial, knowledge of what’s needed to put together a bailout package.
Bush feels he has no choice but to call on McCain.
But the senator shakes his head, saying he’ll wait his turn.
He means to signal his deference to the senior lawmakers in the room and show Obama up for being arrogant.
But it’s at odds with the take-charge attitude he’s been trying to show everybody.
When McCain does finally speak, it’s a word salad of positive-sounding but meaningless clichés.
It’s impressive, so long as you don’t listen all too carefully.
Unfortunately for him, everyone in the room is listening carefully.
It’s a disaster.
During McCain’s speech, Boehner catches a glimpse of Obama with a faint smile on his face.
It occurs to Boehner that the senator from Illinois has just realized he’s going to win the next presidential election.
Final summary
John Boehner was elected Speaker of the House in 2011, three years into Obama’s first term.
It proved a tumultuous time.
Leading today’s Republicans is no easy business – Boehner likens it to becoming the mayor of “Crazytown.
” From the get-go, right-wing Republicans rejected the legitimacy of Obama: Donald Trump leading the charge with claims that Obama was a secret Kenyan Muslim who hates America.
On top of that, increasing power shifts to the right, or – as Boehner dubs them – the “freak show set,” saw influential conservative opinion-makers like Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity able to make or break careers, and use their influence to get favored candidates into office.
In 2015, Boehner stepped down, grateful to leave Congress before the Trump presidency.
As he puts it, he’s not sure he belongs in this Republican Party.
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