How Boehner Got His Groove On

[Valin]

The American Spectator:

The never-told story of how the Ohio rep became a party leader.

Quin Hillyer

10.29.15

 

As John Boehner this week steps down as Speaker of the House, it’s worth telling the never-reported tale of how Boehner first got on the House Republican leadership track in the first place. The story shows, in microcosm, both Boehner’s remarkable skill-set and his oft-infuriating wheeler-dealer nature.

 

Let’s start the story sort of in the middle. It was in November of 1994, the second day after the then-remarkable takeover of the House by Republicans for the first time in 40 years. U.S. Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana, for whom I worked as press secretary (plus certain special projects), was walking up Independence Avenue with me, alongside the Longworth Building. He was telling me that he wasn’t sure yet if he wanted me to serve as chief of staff of the House Republican Conference, or as its Communications Director. As the main job of the Conference Chairman is to oversee internal communications among House Republican offices, I saw the two jobs as equally invigorating: either way, I would be in the middle of developing overarching communications strategy for the new Republican Congress.

 

The reason Livingston was discussing the two jobs with me was that a huge super-majority of the members already had committed to vote for him to be Conference Chairman. For two full years, he and I had traded memos anticipating what few thought possible, namely the GOP takeover in 1994. In late spring of 1994 he started predicting it publicly, when nobody else but he and Newt Gingrich would do so. In August, he sent a letter to fellow House members announcing his race for Conference Chair, a spot then held by Dick Armey — because, he said, Gingrich would become Speaker and Armey would move up to Majority Leader, thus opening the position.

 

(Snip)

 

(As for me, I found I wasn’t built for the insiderish ethos of the Appropriations Committee, even with Livingston stomping hard against its big-spending proclivities. Within two years of Boehner’s astonishing feat of wheeler-dealership, I skedaddled back into journalism, where I belonged.)

 

I’ve waited more than two decades to tell this story. And, forgive the cliché, but a lot of water has flowed under the bridge in those 21 years. Boehner now leaves the stage without much public approbation for his quarter-century in office. But if his talent for national legislative leadership fell well short of his talent for securing votes for Leadership, the latter talent for insider baseball did help him secure more victories — for school choice, against earmarks, and even on budget and tax policy — than conservatives right now are willing to credit. His legacy is not a bad one, but merely mixed.

 

Meanwhile, we’ll never know the alternative history that might have occurred if Boehner had left Livingston as he was on a sunny day in November of 1994, walking alongside the Longworth Building, planning how to run the House Republican Conference.

[Valin]