On the House by John Boehner

On the House: A Washington Memoir
By John Boehner
St. Martin’s Press, 2021

Former Speaker of the House, Ohio Republican John Boehner, was already out of his most prominent job before Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017, but Boehner’s very entertaining, very frustrating new book, On the House; A Washington Memoir, is nevertheless very much a response-volume to the Trump presidency as much as it’s anything else. 

There have been many such response-volumes, of course, ranging from gossipy bestsellers like Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury to ostensibly more clinical (and equally bestselling) studies like veteran Watergate reporter Bob Woodward’s Fear. What sets Boehner’s book apart from such earlier works is not only that it’s written by a seasoned Washington insider - Boehner joined the House of Representatives in 1991 - but also that it’s pitched as a coroner’s report. 

Boehner includes the requisite autobiographical details of his personal life and schooling, but the obvious point of the book is the picture of its author as the most unlikely Jeremiah figure imaginable: a “chain-smoking, merlot-slurping, perma-tan and ever-golfing” (as Robert Draper described him) lifetime politician acting as a moral and practical scold for the sins of his successors. 

The way things have worked in Washington for a long time, Boehner contends, depends on inertia. The system in its traditional form doesn’t allow for major swings in policy, which gives businesses of all kinds the stability they need to carry on. “Hotheads on either side of our political spectrum almost never understand that,” Boehner writes. “That’s why it often falls to guys who’ve been around a while - like yours truly - to help them figure it out.” 

All this changed, he says, “once the crazies came to town.” 

He’s referring to the rabid, scorched-earth tenor of modern American politics, of course, and although he seems unwilling to ascribe the beginning of that tenor to his grandstanding old colleague Newt Gingrich, he’s perfectly willing to blame lots of other people. His book will doubtless capture a few headline-cycles due to its refreshingly frank assessment of “the crazies,” very much including their leader, Donald Trump, on whom he squarely lays the blame for the deadly January 6 insurrection that breached the Capitol and wanted to lynch Trump’s Vice President. Boehner also takes swipes at the QAnon conspiracy mania that forms the fuel for so much of the political change he’s talking about, with its ravings about the Deep State. “There is something very destructive - not to mention delusional - about the notion that there is some deep plot within the nation’s capital - in the FBI, in the federal courts, in the intelligence community - to undermine democratically elected officials and, as Trump often charged, ‘undo’ his election in 2016,” he writes at one point. “Let me be diplomatic here: that’s horseshit.”

Earthy, explicit language runs throughout the book. It reflects the way Boehner sounds in everyday conversation, and it’s clearly intended to convey sincerity. And it does, all too well. The cumulative impression is far from a compliment to its author. He comes across as a shallow, foul-mouthed, opportunistic dimwit who’s the hero of his own story only because he’s not one of the crazies. He implicitly characterizes himself as a rumpled but fundamentally honest avatar of the old, effective, non-crazy Washington of decades past, but it’s not tough to look good when you’re comparing yourself to outright traitors like Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley. 

Any reading of Boehner’s book makes unavoidable the conclusion that although he’s not a bad American, he was still a pretty bad politician. Thirty years ago, when he was being sworn in, an older colleague asked him what kind of Congressional member he wanted to be. Some members were “all about the district,” concentrating on representing their constituents. Others were “really into their committee work,” becoming experts on national policy. And other members put themselves on “the leadership track,” seeking advancement. Guess which Boehner chose?

Well, I didn’t have to think about it for very long. I was going to be a leadership guy, and that was that. And from there, it was pretty easy to figure out the end goal - if I didn’t want to end up at the top of the leadership ladder, as Speaker, what was the point of climbing on in the first place?

Although it’s probably useless in 2021 to point this out, it’s also necessary: the correct answer - the only correct answer - is #1, “all about the district.” And the wrong answer - the only wrong answer - is #3: maniacally chasing personal ambition over public service. 

Boehner works up a phlegmatic kind of outrage over all the “crazies” and their cult-worship of a disgraced and bankrupt Queens real estate fraud. But the earth was scorched well before the crazies came to town, and the idea that John Boehner’s own hands are clean? Well, he said it himself: “that’s horseshit.”

Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The American Conservative. He writes regularly for The National, The Vineyard Gazette, and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.