Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives (9 page)

In 1978, California Congressman Leo Ryan became the first U.S. representative to be killed in the line of duty when he was gunned down in Jonestown, Guyana, while investigating the mass suicide of the Jim Jones cult there. Two decades later, a man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia entered the Capitol with a .38-caliber handgun and shot two policemen to death before being subdued. In the days following the 9/11 attacks, a package mailed to the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was found to contain a deadly strain of anthrax. In both 2009 and 2010, a man carrying a firearm in the vicinity of the Capitol was chased down and killed by police.

That members had largely managed to avoid danger all this time did not mean they were unaware of the risks. Implicit in their job description was contact with constituents, without security, and their workplace was open to anyone who walked in. In town halls they often encountered belligerence or worse. The calls that came into their offices were at times hostile, at other times plainly nuts. Most of them had received threats of varying severity, only a few of which were passed on to the Capitol sergeant at arms. Everyone seemed to have a story. One California Democrat had been tailed in a pickup truck loaded with weapons and driven by some unhinged former high school classmate. In early 2009, Heath Shuler’s office received a call from a disabled Vietnam vet threatening to kill the Blue Dog Democrat. Federal authorities arrested the man, who was heavily armed and readily admitted his intent to kill his congressman.

During the final voting on the Affordable Health Care Act in March 2010, Blue Dog Democrat Betsy Markey’s office received a death threat by telephone. Her fellow Coloradoan, Senator Mark Udall, had also been threatened for having voted aye. Then–Minority Leader Boehner went before the cameras on March 25 and said, “I know many Americans are angry over this health care bill, and angry at Democrats here in Washington for not listening. But as I’ve said before, violence and threats are unacceptable.”

Boehner himself had never received any serious threats in all his twenty years as a congressman. Now the new Speaker was beginning
to grasp the full responsibility of his office. He was the custodian of the lower body’s welfare. It was not the sort of thing that you prepare for.

He had prepared for everything else.

During the summer of 2011, a dinner was held in Kentucky marking the two hundredth anniversary of the great Henry Clay’s inauguration as House Speaker. Three of the attendees were Boehner, Pelosi, and her predecessor as Speaker, Dennis Hastert. Each of them spoke at the dinner. Hastert had been well down the leadership chain in early 1999, when scandal brought down Gingrich and Bob Livingston and suddenly thrust the Republican deputy whip into the Speaker’s chair. Listening that night to both Pelosi and Boehner describe the elaborate plans they had made for the day when each of them ascended to the Speakership, Hastert thought to himself:
Wow. These two people were thinking about all this for a
long
time.

Boehner had never bothered to conceal his ambitions. But they were limited to the institution of the House. Boehner was a bartender’s son from Reading, Ohio, and it seemed plausible to draw a straight line from his upbringing behind the bar at Andy’s Café to the contentment he derived from the House’s raucous confines. Many if not most congressmen didn’t share his contentment with being one among a body of 435. It was a given that just as the Senate was composed of one hundred self-regarded presidents-in-waiting, the House functioned for many members as a senatorial way station.

One House Republican harboring such ambitions was Jason Chaffetz, an aggressive conservative sophomore from Utah who was publicly contemplating a 2012 primary challenge against Senator Orrin Hatch.
Chaffetz came to Boehner
for advice on the matter. The Speaker made his preferences plain. “You’ll enjoy it more over here,” Boehner told Chaffetz. “There’s action. If you’re a serious legislator, you can really dive down into an issue—you can really own it on this side. And we need more specialists.” The Speaker reminded Chaffetz that there was greater turnover in the lower body. An ambitious fellow could move upward in a hurry.

It was the most persuasive argument Jason Chaffetz had heard for
staying in the House. Ultimately, and to the surprise of many, he took Boehner’s advice.

Over the course of his career, various Republicans would sidle up to Boehner and suggest that
he
make a run for the Senate. He assured them of his disinterest. Upon latching on to Newt Gingrich’s coattails, he and a few other class of 1990 Republican upstarts known as the Gang of Seven helped Gingrich engineer a revolution that drove the House Democrats out of power for the first time in forty years.

Boehner didn’t want to break out of the pack. He just wanted to be leading it. From 1995 onward, he was riding the leadership escalator. And though the chain-smoking, merlot-slurping, perma-tanned, and ever-golfing Republican conference chairman was not the type to outwork or outthink his fellow GOP leaders Gingrich, DeLay, and Dick Armey, Boehner’s steadiness had a way of growing on people. He refrained from the kind of risk-taking that might make him a lightning rod. (Among the Gang of Seven, it was always someone like Jim Nussle or Rick Santorum insulting President Clinton or putting a paper bag over his head—while Boehner sat behind the back rail, smoking and observing the antics of his colleagues.)

Of course, in Washington, the road to endearment is the fund-raising trail. Fortunately for Boehner, he loved to drive. Every summer he would head out of West Chester in his RV, which he nicknamed Freedom One, and would amble across America, district by district, from one fund-raiser to the next—smoking and crooning to cheesy music with the country whipping past him, occasionally spelled behind the wheel by his next-door neighbor Ron. Boehner was well aware of the Washington verity that the most powerful politicians are the ones who distribute money to other politicians. It suited his backslapping manner to talk up his colleagues to wealthy Republican donors. In this way he made friends, and they stayed his friends.

He also made a few enemies. Boehner’s alliances with powerful lobbyists became embarrassingly apparent in 1995, when the conference chairman materialized on the House floor and proceeded to disseminate campaign contributions from tobacco lobbyists to fellow Republicans who were about to vote on a tobacco subsidies bill. And yet one thing differentiated him from the backroom dealmakers on the Hill: he didn’t like earmarks. He just thought designating taxpayer dollars for
a particular congressman’s local college or airport wasn’t the right way to do business. Even before Gingrich became Speaker and routinely sent over to the Appropriations Committee lists of federal projects to fund for Republicans in vulnerable districts, Boehner as a freshman took to the House floor to excoriate the 1991 Highway Bill, which bore the fingerprints of eventual Transportation Committee chairman Bud Shuster:
“I stand opposed
to this legislation because spreading pork around to secure enough votes to pass this turkey is wrong!”

As GOP conference chairman, Boehner continued to criticize Chairman Shuster’s earmarking antics. He was warned by colleagues, “This could be trouble for you.” It was. After Gingrich had worn out his welcome and skulked off in 1998 following a poor performance by Republicans in the midterms, the conference reckoned that more changes in leadership needed to be made. J. C. Watts of Oklahoma ran for Boehner’s job. Some thought Watts, at the time the party’s only black House member, would be a fresh messenger. Others, like DeLay and Hastert, believed that Boehner had botched his job overseeing the House Republican communications apparatus. Then there was Shuster, who had a long memory and a formidable bloc of indebted colleagues.

On the evening after he was pushed out of leadership, Boehner went out with about thirty allies to Sam & Harry’s, a Capitol Hill steakhouse. He blubbered a bit that night, but he also declared bravely to his disheartened staffers, “Look, sometimes blessings come in a form where they’re not immediately obvious.” It was the kind of thing someone’s grandmother would say. It was also common Boehner-speak. He seemed to actually believe it.

Following a script carefully plotted by his chief of staff, Barry Jackson, the deposed conference chairman reestablished himself as a legislator. He took over the chairmanship of the Education Committee’s most desolate backwater, the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations. Showing a surprisingly aggressive streak, Chairman Boehner won a few turf wars and steered important legislation through his bailiwick. He became the full committee chairman in January 2001 and immediately caught a big break when the new Republican president, George W. Bush, decided to lead off with the No Child Left Behind education initiative. Boehner’s work on the bill with Bush, Senator Ted Kennedy, and California Congressman George Miller won glowing reviews.

His fellow Republicans appeared to be developing a case of seller’s remorse. One night at a party banquet, a longtime ally, Indiana Congressman Steve Buyer, stood up and began to praise Boehner’s comportment after having been rejected by his colleagues. “You’re like that first-string quarterback who’s asked to come to the sidelines,” Buyer said as he faced his friend. “And when you did, you didn’t just sit on the bench. You grabbed a clipboard and a headset, and you started helping the quarterback on the field. That’s the kind of guy you are!”

The attendees leaped from their chairs and awarded a standing ovation to Boehner—who, being Boehner, proceeded to weep.

In January 2006, Tom DeLay was collared with a federal indictment for illegally transferring campaign contributions to fellow Republicans and was forced by Speaker Hastert to vacate the post of majority leader. John Boehner lunged out of the wilderness.
FOR A MAJORITY THAT MATTERS
, read the title of his majority leader campaign document. “We seem adrift, uncomfortable with our ability to reach big goals,” he wrote. “America needs more from us . . . My goal is to create a
confident
majority . . .” Deftly turning his aversion to earmarks to his advantage, Boehner reminded his colleagues that “I cut my teeth here as a reformer,” suggesting that he was uniquely qualified to lead the party out of the brewing scandal involving GOP lobbyist and DeLay friend Jack Abramoff. The Education Committee chairman now proclaimed that “the lifeblood of the House runs through the Committees and their members” rather than through leadership. And, in a veiled swipe at the autocratic DeLay, Boehner argued that the House majority should “make consideration of bills more open—and always guaranteeing the Democrats the right to offer a substitute amendment,
even when they don’t want to offer one
, so that voters can size us both up and see which philosophy and which proposal they support.”

On February 2, 2006, the Republican conference met to consider three candidates: Boehner, who had cast himself as the reformer; the majority whip, Roy Blunt, who was next in line for the post and thus heavily favored; and conservative favorite John Shadegg. Testimonials attesting to Boehner’s leadership skills were given by two Army veterans, Steve Buyer and South Carolina Congressman Gresham Barrett. But the most surprising endorsement came from House Ways and Means
chairman Bill Thomas, who had tangled with Boehner over committee jurisdictional matters. The famously crusty Thomas professed his admiration of his former adversary.

Boehner prevailed on a secret ballot vote, 122–109. He was now second in command to Speaker Denny Hastert. After the Republicans were stomped in November 2006 and Hastert decided to retire, Boehner ascended to minority leader. Then came November 4, 2008, and the GOP lost even more seats.

The clock was ticking fast for the John Boehner Era.

Fretful of the locomotion that the Democratic majority’s agenda was gathering, his colleagues said it to him over and over: “John, we’ve gotta be more aggressive!”

Boehner’s reply, through a cumulus cloud of cigarette smoke, was more or less the same: “Relax. We’re gonna be fine.”

It drove his fellow Republicans a little bit nuts, the way Boehner stabbed languidly at the ashtray, shrugged his shoulders, moseyed on over to the Capitol Hill Club or Alberto’s with his cycling pals and in general acted as if the rise of Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama was all part of the plan. He was never going to be an advocate of uptight discipline like his lieutenant Eric Cantor, a forty-eight-year-old former Richmond, Virginia, lawyer who was taut with calculation and poised as a cobra. During his January 5, 2011, speech on the House floor to introduce the rules that would govern the body throughout the 112th Congress, Cantor would proclaim that the Republican-controlled House would “hold ourselves accountable by asking the following questions: Are our efforts addressing job creation and the economy? Are they cutting spending? Are they shrinking the size of the Federal Government while protecting and expanding individual liberty? If not, why are we doing it?”

Subsequently, a sign with that very litany of questions and the heading
CANTOR RULE
would be sitting on several desks throughout the majority leader’s Capitol suite.