Today is a very momentous occasion. With the 112th Congress being sworn in, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) will be officially elected as the new Speaker of the House, taking the gavel away from departing Speaker and incoming Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). So let’s get to know Boehner, as he’s grown over the past two years.
At least up until recently, Boehner’s most famous moment was in the mid-1990s, when he handed out checks from the tobacco lobby right on the House floor, while a vigorous effort (and a successful one, at that) was underway to save the industry’s government subsidies. However, no video of this moment exists — but we will get to it later.
But the past two years really deserve a look back. It is, after all, the period when the Republican Party went from dead in the water to a strong majority in the House, and John Boehner grew as a political leader and spokesman in that time, too.
So let’s look at five key moments over the past two years, a time when a wounded Boehner and GOP began as white-collar Washington insiders who you couldn’t give away, only to regenerate into populist Washington insiders with gavels. Okay, it’s not quite as impressive a regeneration as the Doctor, but it’s still a magnificent transformation all the same.
In September 2009, as Boehner was learning to speak Tea Party, he brought up an old quote from Thomas Jefferson in an interview with Jeffrey Brown on PBS:
Boehner: And so this conversation that’s underway is healthy for our democracy. It was Thomas Jefferson 220 years ago who said, “A little rebellion now and then is good for our democracy.”
Brown: Right, but “rebellion” is a charged word, of course, because the rebellion back then was a serious matter.
Boehner: It was. But having Americans engaged in this public debate is healthy. And I would hope that it would continue, but continue in a civil way.
Jefferson’s famous quote was in regards to Shays’ Rebellion, an uprising in the 1780s by rural Massachusetts farmers who were unable to pay their debts to the wealthy elites in Boston. Jefferson argued in a letter to James Madison that the rebels should only face a mild, nominal punishment, and that such rebellions were good for a society.
But as it turns out, Jefferson’s opinion on the benefits of these rebellions was very much in the minority. In fact, the inability of the government of the Articles of Confederation to handle the crisis was one of the final events that spurred the creation of a stronger national government system — that is, the United States Constitution.
On March 21, 2010, as the House was on the verge of approving health care reform, Boehner railed against the Democrats, with a riff on the “Yes We Can” slogan used by President Obama in his 2008 campaign.
“Can you go home and tell your senior citizens that these cuts in Medicare will not limit their access to doctors or further weaken the program, instead of strengthening it? No, you cannot,” said Boehner. “Can you go home and tell your constituents with confidence that this bill respects the sanctity of all human life, and that it won’t allow for taxpayer funding of abortions for the first time in 30 years? No, you cannot.
“And look at how this bill was written. Can you say it was done openly? With transparency and accountability? Without back-room deals and struck behind closed doors, hidden from the people? Hell no, you can’t!”
On Election Night 2010, when Republicans won the majority in the House, the new Speaker-in-waiting showed his softer side.
“I’ve spent my whole life, chasing the American dream,” Boehner said, his voice cracking — and the crowd cheering as he seemed to be holding back tears. As he continued the speech, the applause came back every time he coughed.
On December 2, 2010, Boehner was back to his combative self, using some strong language to bash the lame-duck House Democratic efforts to only extend the Bush tax cuts on incomes below $250,000.
“I’m trying to catch my breath so I don’t refer to this maneuver going on today as chicken crap, alright?’ Boehner said (Note: he just did). “But this is nonsense.”
Following the election, Boehner appeared on a mid-December 2010 segment on 60 Minutes, in which he cried on multiple topics.
“Some things, there are some things that are very difficult to talk about. Family, kids — I can’t go to a school anymore, I used to go to a lot of schools. You see all these little kids running around, can’t talk about it,” Boehner said, the tears welling up — and then he just plain broke down for a few seconds as he continued: “Making sure that these kids have a shot at the American dream, like I did, is important.”
He also expressed his frustration regarding the jokes about his orange-toned skin, and how people say that he goes to a tanning salon: “I’ve never been in a tanning salon in my life, I’ve never used a tanning product in my life.” For this one, though, there were no waterworks.
The talk about schoolchildren begins at about the 5:50 mark below, and the tanning stuff is at 11:45. In addition, at 12:40 he has to blow his nose when his wife says how proud she is of him.
And as a special bonus, here is a 1996 PBS segment, in which Boehner admits that he did indeed hand out tobacco lobby checks on the House floor — though he said he regretted it, and would never do it again:
