The End of the Long, Windy Road

Speaker Boehner from the Speaker's Balcony

When he wakes up tomorrow, Congressman John Boehner of Ohio will not be Congressman anymore- for the first time in 25 years. He will have resigned as Speaker and as a member of the House and moved on in life at age 65. He came to office in 1990 as a 40 year old troublemaker from the right, and left office as a 65 year old establishment figure that the troublemakers tried to undo.

For all the bad things I could write about John Boehner, from his inability to control the Tea Party crazies, to his unwillingness to allow a vote on immigration reform, to his willingness to allow his caucus to walk the nation into shutdowns and near defaults on the national debt, I can't help but feel a bit for the guy as he leaves. In as far as we should judge Congressmen for their actual work product, how they vote on the issues, Boehner was one of the most conservative Congressmen to ever walk the halls of the capitol, and yet he became the sober-minded person in the Republican Party that you could believe wouldn't actually damage American society to just get his way. He was vilified on the right for being unwilling to live in a fantasy world. I came to respect him almost as much as I disliked his voting record, politics, and party.

From 2007 until Thursday, John Boehner was a part of one of the most stable periods of Congressional leadership in America's history. Boehner, former Speaker and current Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and former Senate Majority Leader and current Minority Leader Harry Reid have all been leading their caucuses in Congress since early January of 2007, a period of nearly nine years. The negotiations between them always include posturing and arguing, but they generally have arrived at some kind of conclusion. We know that Reid will also leave in 2017, and that there could be more upheaval ahead. I consider this to be the beginning of the end of the Obama era, the point where we are shifting our thinking towards the next President and the next paradigm of American politics. I'm actually happy to think that way too. Perhaps as new figures emerge as the leading names in American politics, we can get away from the ghoulish obstruction, the manufactured crises, and the stagnation that plagues Washington. Maybe not though too. For Boehner and the others' faults, they didn't want to make trouble for the general public more than they had to. Lord knows what will replace them.