BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | SEP 29
House Speaker John Boehner said in his first post-retirement interview on CBS’ Face the Nation that it takes more courage to do what you can do than to try to do what you can’t.
The Speaker could have said that better, but his observation sums up quite well the philosophy of governance that has been both the accelerator and brake of his journey through Congress. The statement also defined one of the most debilitating divides in politics and government, a divide that not only defined and confined his Speakership but will undoubtedly do the same for the next, regardless of whose it is.
The King is dead, long live the King.
John Boehner entered Congress in the vortex of tumultuous political and social change in America and globally, a degree of transformational change vastly under appreciated for its profundity. It didn’t start with Boehner and it won’t end with his departure. The New York Times, swimming in the shallow end of the intellectual pool as the media often do, called Boehner’s circumstances an “intramural brawl (that) makes it clear that they (the Republicans) are incapable of governing themselves.”
Really? An intramural brawl? History will look at it differently. More on that, but first, Boehner.
History will also judge the Speaker more favorably than some are judging him now. It will honor him for honoring the institution and through it, us. He did so with character. He fought to preserve civil discourse, and he practiced it, even in the face of some incredibly guttural criticism. He understood, as Sam Rayburn did, that it is much easier to burn down a barn than to build one. Boehner chose to build rather than destroy, without deviating from the architecture of conservative principles and Republican dogma. Boehner lunged at the opportunity. Thomas Edison once said that most of us fail to see opportunity because “it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Not so, the Speaker. Boehner tried to govern when many around him chose not to. He was a good listener, one of his few communications skills, but the most important.
His retirement from Congress, though, should not be framed in a narrow context. It is about him, but it isn’t; so to the lens of history. This period in Congress, stretching back more than two decades, has been about so much more than right-wing intra-party temper tantrums. These times—where we’ve been, where we are and where we’re going– deserve more respect and reflection. There are several observations worth our time.
The first is the gradual transformation in political partisanship occurring at both ends of the political spectrum, what George Washington warned us of in his farewell address. Political parties have become more rigid and isolated. They are less representative and more partisan in their partisanship. The two-party system is a system in as much disrepair as the institutions of governance themselves.
Second, is the ascendancy of the new populism, that power-to-the-people refrain against anything rich, big, corporate, materially cosmetic or greedy. The new populism is gaining in popularity particularly at the right end of the spectrum, where once traditional, staid Republicans, worshiped at the altar of the Wall Street bull. It may be a worthwhile refocus on the middle class, but history has shown that populism is easily radicalized.
Third, are the broader realities of citizen participation in their own governance and the vast number of factors that inhibit it. For example, through technology people have at their command more information than in any time in the history of the world. Tragically, however, too much of it is junk. The knowledge essential to make intelligent decisions and ensure that participatory democracy is more than empty rhetoric is sadly lacking, to say the least. The knowledge gap is cavernous and makes governance or the willingness to govern responsibly difficult if not impossible. The media share much of the blame. They have abandoned the precious and powerful four words afforded them in the First Amendment.
Fourth, the traditional labels used to define ideology—conservative and liberal–have been relegated to meaningless clichés that are confusing and confounding political discourse, in good measure, because of gross misuse, especially by the media. We cannot have an intelligent national dialogue, if we can’t even define the terms of the discussion.
Why is John Boehner, one of the most conservative members of the US Congress vilified by what the media inaccurately describe as ‘fellow conservatives’? The answer is that few of Boehner’s critics are conservatives. They are libertarians and some are anarchists. The one Republican with whom everyone wants to identify, Ronald Reagan, refined the definitions for himself, long before he became President.
Reagan said conservatism was actually subsidiary to libertarianism. He told Reason magazine back in 1975 that, “The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority and more individual freedom and this is pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”
But Reagan went on to express a prophetic concern of monumental relevance today: “Now I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy.”
The same distinctions need to be made on the left as well. I’m reminded of the observation of another actor turned politician, the former Mayor of Carmel, CA, Clint Eastwood, who said “you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.”
I am not suggesting that Bernie Sanders is an idiot, but he is no liberal either. He is an unabashed socialist, but you will seldom see or hear him identified by the media as such. American consumers are better educated about the different varieties of peanut butter. They deserve to know more about the lines and shades of demarcation in thinking and beliefs at both ends of the spectrum.
Much of the Reagan presidency gave libertarians fits. Reagan turned out to be a connoisseur of a pragmatic conservatism that recognized the role of government and the one principle of it that compels every responsible and successful leader; it doesn’t matter whether you want to tear the government down or make it bigger, whether you want it stronger or weaker, you have to govern to do it. He preached the gospel of principles but he practiced the politics of pragmatism and getting results.
That brings us back to Boehner’s view of political courage, and the fifth subject for discussion. The dysfunction in government with which Boehner has struggled is about ideological differences, but most often those differences are slight, differences without distinction. The gridlock is not about principles or beliefs or ideas but how they are transformed into public policy in a nation far more homogenized than is reflected in this Congress. It’s about the structure of government, and the strategy and tactics employed in governing. Dysfunction is most often the result of recalcitrant legislators on both the right and the left who believe doing nothing accomplishes something; that serving partisan, parochial interests is in the nation’s best interests. The seeds of that partisan gridlock were planted more than twenty years ago.
Boehner, once the back-bench rebel took it upon himself to rid the political field of this blight before becoming Speaker. In 2010, he committed himself to healing the wounds that were already dividing policymakers and making government a dysfunctional mess. In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute he talked about restoring the People’s House to its rightful place as the governing body closest to the people.
“These wounds have been self-inflicted by both parties, and if we do not fix them, it’s possible no one will. In the Constitution, the House of Representatives is the first institution of the first branch of government—the body closest to the people…The House, more than any other part of our government, is the most direct voice of the people—and therefore should be afforded the most care in protecting its ability to reflect the people’s will. So today I’d like to talk to you about why this institution is broken and how we make it function again. Because until it does, ladies and gentlemen, we don’t stand a chance of addressing our deepest and most pressing problems.”
Well said, but yet unfulfilled. It still takes more courage to do what you can do than to try to do what you can’t.
Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.