Book Review: John Boehner laments his party’s mutation into a cult in new memoir

A wave of Tea Par­ty Repub­li­cans, elect­ed in 2010, made John Boehn­er Speak­er of the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, a job he describes as “May­or of Crazy­town” in the new mem­oir On the House (St. Martin’s Press, $29.99).

The tone of Boehner’s book, toward his own cau­cus, evokes Ital­ian dic­ta­tor Ben­i­to Mussolini’s wartime remark: “The human mate­r­i­al I have to work with is useless.”

An exag­ger­a­tion? Nope. Of Repub­li­cans sent to Con­gress in 2010, Boehn­er writes: “You could be a total moron and get elect­ed just by hav­ing an R next to your name – and that year, by the way, we did pick up a fair num­ber in that category.”

In retire­ment, Boehn­er has a lot to get off his chest. The exple­tives come so fast and furi­ous that, should Boehn­er tire of life as a cor­po­rate direc­tor, he could write for The Stranger. Wit­ness this spot-on descrip­tion of a fel­low Repub­li­can in the Sen­ate: “There is noth­ing more dan­ger­ous than a reck­less (exple­tive) who thinks he is smarter than every­one else. Ladies and gen­tle­men, meet Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz.”

The ex-Speak­er is, how­ev­er, wash­ing his hands of respon­si­bil­i­ty for awful deeds, acts of extrem­ism and fias­cos engi­neered by his caucus.

He had no respon­si­bil­i­ty for the 1998 impeach­ment of Pres­i­dent Clin­ton, which back­fired and cost the Repub­li­cans sev­er­al House seats (includ­ing two in Wash­ing­ton). It was all the doing of then-House Major­i­ty Whip Tom DeLay.

House Repub­li­can bomb throw­ers were also a thorn in the side of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, resist­ing leg­is­la­tion to sta­bi­lize the finan­cial sys­tem in 2008.

“Too many Repub­li­cans in Con­gress cared more about what Sean Han­ni­ty thought than the Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury or the Speak­er of the House or the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States,” he writes. “They were ready to destroy the econ­o­my for decades rather than come up with any real­is­tic alter­na­tives – just as long as it looked like they were stand­ing up to the ‘estab­lish­ment’.”

What’s glossed over is that Boehn­er was once a bomb throw­er in the Newt Gin­grich mold, help­ing set the stage for the Tea Par­ty crowd to come.

He failed in lead­er­ship, unable to hold his cau­cus to nego­ti­ate any of the sort of bipar­ti­san deals that once raised the min­i­mum wage and gave us the Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act.

A dis­charge peti­tion — spear­head by the bipar­ti­san team of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Den­ny Heck and Dave Reichert — was required to go around Boehner’s House lead­er­ship and force a vote on renew­ing the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

One of twelve chil­dren, from a fam­i­ly that ran a bar, Boehn­er is from a mold of those brought into the Repub­li­can Par­ty by Ronald Reagan.

Hav­ing found suc­cess in busi­ness, he got angry that he was pay­ing more than he want­ed in mem­ber­ship dues to his coun­try. The man’s goal in pub­lic office was always to curb rather than expand social and human services.

On the House is strewn with anec­dotes. Boehn­er is a guy’s guy: His wife and daugh­ters are bare­ly men­tioned in the book. He smokes his Camels, so many that suc­ces­sor Paul Ryan spent months try­ing to rid the Speaker’s office of tobac­co stench. The beer of his youth had giv­en way to a taste for red wine. He is an avid golfer, writ­ing of Rus­sia: “The golf cours­es there are all (exple­tive) anyway.”

We learn that George W. Bush is a pok­er play­er unable to bluff.

Ex-Pres­i­dent Ger­ald Ford is a great guy save for one episode on the golf course. Ford hits three balls, in suc­ces­sion, into a water hazard.

Writes Boehn­er:

“And then the eighty-six-year-old for­mer leader of the Free World began to jump up and down scream­ing [the most famous exple­tive in the Eng­lish lan­guage] as loud as he could scream. Over and over again… It was like some crazy exer­cise rou­tine. I’d nev­er seen any­thing like it on a golf course and haven’t since.”

Ulti­mate­ly, for all his excus­es, Boehn­er is appalled at what has become of the Repub­li­can Par­ty he helped lead on Capi­tol Hill.

He is crit­i­cal of Pres­i­dent Oba­ma as a nego­tia­tor, con­ve­nient­ly ignor­ing the Mitch McConnell block-every­thing leg­isla­tive strat­e­gy. But there fol­lows this insight:

“He (Oba­ma) could come off as lec­tur­ing and haughty. He still wasn’t mak­ing Repub­li­can out­reach a pri­or­i­ty. But on the oth­er hand, how do you find com­mon cause with peo­ple who think you are a secret Kenyan Mus­lim trai­tor to America?”

Boehn­er has already intro­duced read­ers to Don­ald Trump by describ­ing his boor­ish­ness toward an aide who screws up names of golf­ing part­ners. His dis­gust with Biden’s pre­de­ces­sor, and Trump enablers, boils over at the end:

Trump incit­ed that bloody insur­rec­tion for noth­ing more than self­ish rea­sons, per­pet­u­at­ed by the [non­sense] he’s been shov­el­ing since he lost a fair elec­tion the pre­vi­ous November.

He claimed vot­er fraud with­out any evi­dence and repeat­ed these claims, tak­ing advan­tage of the trust placed in him by his sup­port­ers and ulti­mate­ly betray­ing that trust.

It was espe­cial­ly sad to see some mem­bers of the House and Sen­ate help­ing him along — although some of the peo­ple involved did not trust me in the least. The leg­isla­tive ter­ror­ism that I’d wit­nessed as Speak­er now encour­aged actu­al terrorism.

The Repub­li­can Par­ty of John Boehn­er – “of small­er, fair­er, more account­able gov­ern­ment, and not con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries,” as he describes it – has now grown to include “every­one from gar­den-vari­ety whack jobs to insurrectionists.”

What a dev­as­tat­ing admission.

The extrem­ists’ enablers have includ­ed a mem­ber of Boehner’s lead­er­ship team from this state, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, R‑Washington.

Already, mil­i­tant extrem­ist Repub­li­cans (includ­ing a state leg­is­la­tor) are plot­ting revenge against Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Dan New­house and Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler, R‑Washington, who vot­ed for Trump’s impeachment.

While enter­tain­ing his read­ers, John Boehn­er has laid out a chill­ing threat to Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Insur­rec­tion­ists didn’t just invade the U.S. Capi­tol. They are already inside and work­ing to destroy Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy from within.

I would love to share a glass of fine Wal­la Wal­la wine with John Boehn­er and hear his sto­ries of Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton tak­ing mul­li­gans on the golf course. But nev­er again can I vote for a House or Sen­ate can­di­date from his party.