I saw it again recently. The myth that the Freedom Caucus pushed John Boehner out of the Speakership and out of politics. It isn’t true. It’s one of those zombie myths that persist because the media gives the impression that they don’t really care one way or the other. They got a story. It sounded good enough. Now onto the next story. But somebody should care to put it right.
This isn’t a defence of John Boehner. He certainly hasn’t helped to set the record straight. In fact, there’s absolutely no doubt that he lied to the media on at least two occasions (probably more) and deliberately led them up the garden path away from the truth. It’s up to each individual to decide whether the fact that he did it to protect himself is enough of a reason to excuse him. For some it will be; for some it won’t.
However, the media were both foolish and careless in their acceptance of what he said. One lie was easily unmasked with some straightforward research, the kind of research we should expect the media to do as a matter of routine. But they failed and swallowed the lie hook line and sinker.
It’s probable that some in the media knew that Boehner did what he did for very personal reasons and decided to let those sleeping dogs remain undisturbed by public scrutiny. But many in the media used the story of his resignation as a cudgel to beat on Boehner. After all, it played well with Democrats as well as the far right conservatives to whom so many of the media pander. That should satisfy nearly everyone so, shrug of the shoulders, let’s move on.
But some of us are the kinds of pains in the arse who want to know: what are the lies, the misdirections, and what is the truth?
The story as everyone must know by now is that the crazies in the House Freedom Caucus pushed Boehner into resigning by threatening to bring a motion to the floor to vacate the Speaker’s chair. This version was repeated endlessly by the media without their mentioning:
1) the Freedom Caucus, even with their tea party affiliates, never had the numbers to pull off such a move,
2) this call for a motion to vacate had been around since at least early March and had waxed and waned ever since; indeed it had appeared as an item in the news in March, April, July, August and September,
3) the crazies were relying on Democrats joining them in the vote to vacate without realizing that the House Democrats were never going to side with them to destabilize Congress. Besides, Pelosi had more power in dealing with Boehner than in blindly following the crazies with no deal in hand and no prospect of one in the future.
In the media conference after his resignation announcement, Boehner contributed to this misconception by saying:
“My first job as speaker is to protect the institution,” Mr. Boehner said. “It had become clear to me that this prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable harm to the institution.”
That was a very convenient one-legged stool for Boehner, provided he didn’t let it stand on its own. It was of course interpreted as meaning that Boehner was resigning to prevent the motion to vacate from coming to the floor. Had he wanted to do that, then he’d had since the first week of March to do so and in all honesty, nothing had changed since then. If it had not threatened to “do irreparable harm to the institution” in the first week of March, it’s hard to see why it suddenly would in September.
It’s also the case that the House Freedom Caucus was no closer to making that motion a reality nearly seven months after they first brought it up. Only one person, Rep Mark Meadows, was actually still talking about it in September. He said Boehner was scared of him but it’s farcical to think that Boehner was cowed by Meadows of all people – and Meadows’ shock when Boehner announced his resignation was too transparent to be feigned. Boehner also knew the crazies didn’t have the numbers to roll him.
But the media had talked about this motion to vacate on and off for seven months so it was an easy bone to toss them without actually mentioning the motion or the Freedom Caucus. He knew the media would leap to their own conclusions – they inevitably do.
To give the media some credit, they did acknowledge that Boehner had talked about resigning the year before. However, they pointed out, Boehner had changed his mind when Eric Cantor, the then Majority Leader and natural heir to Boehner, had lost his seat in the 2014 primary. Boehner, they said, stayed on to help McCarthy. Boehner even helped them along by agreeing with this version of events.
It’s true that Boehner did announce in 2014 that he had considered retiring at the end of the year but decided instead to stay on. He added that he was confident of being reelected Speaker though he didn’t see himself serving out the full term.
So that seems to fit... except...
Cantor lost his primary in June and Boehner made his announcement a full month earlier in May. Therefore, unless Boehner had a premonition that Cantor was going to lose his seat the following month, his announcement had nothing to do with Cantor or McCarthy.
So why did Boehner pretend that it did? Why say he’d announced staying on beyond 2014 because of Cantor when obviously he hadn’t? Why insinuate that he was resigning because of some threat to the institution of Speaker that hadn’t bothered him six months earlier? Why let the crazies think they’d got the better of him when they hadn’t? It’s true that he was frustrated and fed up with them but he certainly could have weathered another year had he wanted to.
So if he used them and Cantor and McCarthy as his cover story, why? What is the real story? For that we have to look for John Boehner the man rather than Rep. Boehner the politician.
John Andrew Boehner was the second of twelve children born into a devoted Catholic family. He was an altar boy at their church in Reading and he attended mass every day before school. There was always a photo of the Pope in the home and it was updated whenever there was a new pontiff. For as long as he can remember, young John wanted to meet the Pope and that fervent desire never left him.
Boehner was elected to the US House and took his seat in 1991. He talked to colleagues about inviting the Pope to address a joint session of Congress but nothing came of it. In his second term, Boehner decided on a different strategy. He organized a petition urging then-Speaker Tom Foley to invite the Pope, writing that he is a “world leader, ambassador of peace, and an important catalyst in the fall of the Iron Curtain” and stressing that “the Pope is an important figure in world politics.”
Foley made the request, but that Pope, and the next one, declined the invitations. Boehner, however, never gave up. When he became Speaker, he continued to send his appeals to the Vatican. He extended the invitation to Pope Francis in March 2014, a year after the pontiff was chosen to succeed Pope Benedict XVI. A couple of months later he received encouragement in the form of a phone call from the Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who told Boehner the Pope was excited about the invitation.
Though it wasn’t firm at that point, it was in the pipeline and communications with the Vatican continued to be positive. It was several more months before the Pope’s acceptance was definite. Boehner’s staff members were ready to go as soon as they received the confirmation. They spent more than seven months preparing for the papal visit, the culmination of a childhood dream come true for their boss.
Jerry Vanden Eynden, a friend of Boehner’s since childhood, explained, “You looked at the Pope as almost God living on Earth, or at least God’s representative. So for John to meet him and pull this off, this is a big, big deal to him.”
An obviously excited John Boehner said a couple of days before the Pope touched down in the USA, “For a little Catholic boy like me, this is big stuff!”
For twenty years from 1994, Boehner had appealed for the Pope to address a joint session of Congress. March of 2014 was to be his final request. John Boehner had decided long ago that he would retire at 65. He’d be 65 on November 17 that year and the plan had been to retire at the end of that term. However, the Pope’s imminent acceptance of Boehner’s final invitation changed everything.
He knew in May that this time it was more than hope and a prayer that the current pontiff would make the trip. It was also in May that Boehner announced he would, after all, seek reelection for his seat and the position of Speaker though he did warn that he was unlikely to finish his final term. He knew there would be nothing left for him to achieve once he had met the Pope.
When Boehner announced his retirement the day after that momentous visit, the media wondered if the Pope had perhaps said something to Boehner that prompted his announcement. There’s no indication that he did. The media were just unaware of the powerful influence the pontiffs of Rome had exerted over Boehner and his family so they failed to make the connection.
Why would Boehner not say this? Because it was intensely personal and had nothing to do with the business of the House or politics at all. Because it would not play well to confess that the only reason he’d run for reelection in 2014 and for the Speakership again in 2015 was in order to meet the Pope in person. He was fed up with the House and many of his own party but the Pope was far more important to him than all of that. These are not considered good or acceptable reasons for a politician to remain in power. Nor would it sound good to say that he’d had no intention of working until his 66th birthday let alone beyond it.
A man with a lifelong dream would consider it worth putting up with a few more months of a less than congenial workplace to finally experience that dream come true. Who wouldn’t? It’s a very compelling reason to stay on and just as compelling a reason to leave when the dream was finally realised.
In every way that counts, Boehner chose his own time to leave. The choice of the day was determined firstly by Boehner’s reverence for the Pope and secondly by his intention to retire at 65. It was the man who made the decision, not the politician. As much as they like to think they were, the tea party crazies were not pulling Boehner’s strings. That’s giving them far too much credit and none of it deserved.