U.S. Representative John Boehner of Ohio, the elected leader of House Republicans, according to every Member of Congress to whom I have spoken, is one of the nicest gentlemen in Congress. He is affable, he is pleasant, he is considerate, and unlike former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, he doesn’t push from the “top down” (Gingrich famously relied on his Lieutenants Tom “The Hammer” Delay and Dick Armey to push for party discipline). Boehner doesn’t insist the GOP legislators form up as a cohesive group – I can’t even think of one instance where a ranking Republican member of a committee was removed because they went counter to the course charter by Boehner and his team. I can see why as a House Republican, I there is good reason to keep Boehner around. There is no pressure on you to be part of a unified Republican Team – every GOPer can comfortably vote with the Democrats or their favorite third-house interest group, with none of the “inconvenience” of punitive results from your own party.
It is not surprising that “the nice guy” wants to serve another two years as the head of his attentively created GOP social network. Hey, the job comes with a bigger office, more staff members, and accolades from all of your colleagues because you tell them all how great they are, and enforce no party discipline.
While perhaps more personally conservative than former longtime House Minority leader Bob Michel, the comparison of Boehner to Michel, who never saw the GOP gain a majority in his many years as leader, in inescapable. Michel’s Wikopedia entry says, “Michel was criticized by Newt Gingrich and other young, aggressive conservative congressmen for being too easy-going and not fighting hard enough for Republican goals in the House during its long period of Democratic control.”
John Boehner may be a nice guy, but he is not a leader – or at least not the kind of leader that we need to bring together House Republicans into a cohesive and strong, unified opposition force to the Democrats. A quick look shows that the same GOP leaders in the House Conference that ran the overspending show under Speaker Denny Hastert are still there. Boehner was a member (albeit a latecomer) to then-Speaker Hastert’s leadership team. When Hastert stepped aside when Republicans ceded the majority, there was no sea change. Boehner (“the nice guy”) took the reins, leaving in place the entire whip and committee leadership team of his predecessor. The kind of wholesale changes within the Republican conference associated with a former leader, who failed, being replaced with a new leader with a new team never happened.
Our favorite example to cite is the continued dominance of one of the most notorious advocates of egregious pork spending on Capitol Hill, Californian Republican Jerry Lewis, as the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee. How could one possibly take anything Boehner has to say about spending reforms, when he has not demonstrated enough gravitas a leader to have shown Lewis, and others like him, to the back of the room? Boehner likes to brag that he personally carries no earmark. And perhaps it is truly indicative of his lack of leadership skills that while he abstains from this practice, egregious earmarking by Republicans continues at a frenetic pace.
Today in the FlashReport, Rich Wagner and Chip Hanlon, leaders of the well regarded and highly effective Lincoln Club of Orange County have penned a sobering and pointed memorandum to House Republicans, calling for a complete change in our leadership team as an important part of working our way back into a principled majority. It is my hope that Republicans in Congress, especially since there are now nearly 20 less of them, will take an opportunity to think about the lessons learned when the GOP last left a “nice guy” as their leader –decades in the wilderness. Yes, Newt Gingrich had sharp elbows – but you know what, he was a real leader who helped take us into a majority.
House Republicans will hold their organizational elections later this month. After the drubbing we took on election day, I was prepared to say that as a party, we have hit “rock bottom” and so the only way to go is up. But if Boehner is not replaced with a new leader who will be dynamic, hard charging, and help to lead us back to a majority as only someone not associated with the leadership of the “Hastert years of overspending" can credibly do, then I am afraid Republicans still have not bottomed out.