Anyway, Matt Green has a nice, little summary of what Paul Ryan should learn from John Boehner over at The Monkey Cage, based on the long piece on Boehner over at Politico. I'll forgive Politico for being Politico today since I liked this piece. Matt's write-up actually vaguely hints at one of the fun bits buried in the Politico piece. George W. Bush supposedly talks to Boehner, and asks Boehner if he gives Ryan advice. Boehner says that he does, when asked. Dubya says, "he needs to call you more."
Yes, George, yes he does. And that is kind of my general point about John Boehner. He really was one of our best Speakers, and those who understood politics got that.
Really, though, what was great about the interview was reading Boehner just cut loose and rip into everyone. Ted Cruz (obviously), Jim Jordan, Tom DeLay, Mark Meadows, Jason Chaffetz, Tom DeLay, Don Young (who held a 10-inch knife to Boehner's throat?!*).
Basically, John Boehner hated the people around him. In order to explain John Boehner, the analogy I have often made is as follows: Remember that Twilight Zone episode, "Time Enough At Last," with Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis? All he wanted to do was read. He didn't want to be bothered by anyone. One day, he crawled into the bank vault during a lunch break to read, and a neutron bomb went off, killing everyone outside. He left the vault, to find himself alone. He finally had what he wanted-- the ability to read with nobody to bother him. He gathered all of the books he wanted and prepared for a life of quiet reading. And then his glasses broke.
That was John Boehner. During the summer of 1997, he was the leader of an attempted coup against then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. Gingrich was both corrupt and an idiot. In other words, he was a proto-Trump, as I have written before. What happened? The Majority Leader at the time, Dick Armey, was convinced that he was going to ascend to the Speakership. The problem was that Armey, too, was a fuckin' moron, and there was no way the coup was going to replace one dipshit with another. As soon as Armey found out that he wasn't going to get the job, he ratted the conspirators out. Boehner was excommunicated from Republican Party leadership, and it took him years to work his way back up.
When he finally did-- when he finally got the job he wanted-- it was when the party had been so over-run with Gingrich-style fuckwits who just wanted to shut down the government that being Speaker was an impossible job. They booted him for doing his damned job. Actually, they booted him for doing his job too effectively because the party had been so Gingrich-ified that people like Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows had enough power, combined with enough stupidity to demand failure.
John Boehner was Henry Bemis. He got what he wanted, but Jim Jordan broke his fucking glasses because Jim Jordan is a fucking asshole. And this wasn't about two people in conflict. This was about John Boehner trying to prevent nationwide catastrophe, and Jim Jordan trying to create it. John Boehner actually called Jordan a "legislative terrorist."
Yes, really. This is how only the most brazen Democrats were describing the Republican legislative approach after the 2010 election. John Boehner is now saying publicly, in exactly those terms, what Democrats were mostly too chickenshit to say back in 2011.
And now, as the Republican Party gets ready to release some sort of tax plan after a series of embarrassing failures on healthcare, with no significant legislative victories a year into unified government, perhaps it is time for the GOP to take stock. John Boehner knew what he was doing. Paul Ryan... not so much, but more importantly, would even John Boehner be able to accomplish much now? Probably not.
"Conditional party government." This is one of our basic models of party leadership in Congress. A party will delegate power to party leaders when the party is ideologically homogeneous. Most of the works in this model are associated with John Aldrich and David Rohde. Is the GOP ideologically homogeneous? Well... it used to look that way, but the party's fractures have become more obvious over time, and those fractures are not only policy-based, but dispositional. Semi-sentient malignant tumors like Jim Jordan care less about actually achieving anything than about positioning themselves as purists, and that means they need to be seen as opposing the sell-outs in party leadership. If that is a basic state of the GOP right now, then the party becomes almost definitionally fractured, and incapable of governing.
Even John Boehner couldn't save their worthless asses. Dubya might be right that Paul Ryan should call Boehner for advice, but there's no good way to deal with an asshole like Jim Jordan.
Anyway, youtube has "Time Enough At Last," so here you go. Full episode.
*As a pocket-knife enthusiast: seriously, Don?! Compensate much?!