NEW SPEAKER:With 20 years' Congress experience, the man of an 'easy-going' nature is set for centre stage
OHIO CONGRESSMAN John Boehner is now President Barack Obama’s leading adversary in the United States.
With broad Republican gains giving the party the majority in the House, Boehner (60) is on track to become the 61st House speaker, something that seemed implausible in March 2009, when Obama’s approval ratings were north of 60 per cent and Republicans were still groping for a legislative strategy.
A consummate insider with 20 years of experience in Congress, including eight years in two stints in party leadership, Boehner tapped the activist energy of the Tea Party movement. At the same time, he raised tens of millions of dollars from a network of lobbyists and corporate friends who he had long cultivated, placing him at the nexus of what could be two competing tugs at his political heart.
How Boehner navigates these two competing interests could determine the shape of the next two years. The conservative movement provided the energy and many of the candidates who won, particularly first-time politicians such as Larry Bucshon, a heart surgeon who easily claimed a Democratic seat in southwestern Indiana.
But Boehner is fond of recalling his days as education committee chairman, when he crafted the bipartisan No Child Left Behind legislation over the objections of his party’s conservative flank. Many Boehner supporters say that effort could serve as a blueprint for how he will bring competing sides together, citing his more easy-going nature than the more partisan speakers of recent history, including Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich.
He has a sharp partisan side to him but it tends to come with a more sarcastic, comedic tone.
Boehner has said he has no real relationship with Obama. “I don’t have any personal animosity toward the president. We’re not very close, but I get along with him,” he said in a September interview. However, the two have jousted back and forth since Obama’s election.
Obama has made Boehner a frequent target of criticism over the years, poking fun at his deep tan during a black-tie dinner in 2009 and accusing him of being too close to lobbyists during the midterm campaigns.
The personality mix among the congressional leaders will also be up in the air. Nancy Pelosi’s future is uncertain; some Democratic insiders think she will step down from leadership. Her most likely successor would be Maryland congressman Steny Hoyer, the majority leader who Republicans have long considered a more accommodating figure than Pelosi.
The re-election of Senate Majority leader Harry Reid sets up an odd-couple partnership, not just because of the partisan differences.
Reid is an introvert and a soft talker, rarely seen on Washington’s social scene. Boehner is gregarious, someone who loves to work the room and who is often out and about.
Boehner’s first stint in leadership, under Gingrich, ended with him getting ousted after the disappointing 1998 midterm elections, along with Gingrich.
Rather than leave, Boehner and his top advisers began plotting his long march back into leadership. His staff prepared a memo on a long-term plan to reclaim a leadership spot. He waited and waited, and it paid off in 2006, when he joined the leadership table just in time for Republicans to get kicked out of the majority. He applied many of the same principles to life in the minority as he did during his life in exile from leadership, plotting and planning.
“For some odd reason,” Boehner said recently of his 1998 defeat, “I always believed that the opportunity was going to present itself. I didn’t know when, I didn’t know how, but all I knew was I had to just keep doing a good job every day and, when the opportunity presented itself, had to be ready.” – (Washington Post service)