John Boehner's candid look at the broken House ============================================== Sam and Sophie dive into John Boehner's memoir, 'On the House.' They talk about his working-class roots, the rise of the Tea Party, and why he thinks Congress is broken. Plus, the story of his famous feud with Ted Cruz. ---------------------------------------- SAM: Hey there, welcome back to 7 Minute Books. I'm Sam, and today we're cracking open 'On the House' by John Boehner. Sophie, I gotta ask, what did you think of this one? SOPHIE: Hi there Sam, I really enjoyed it. This is a memoir from the former Speaker of the House, and it's way more personal and funny than I expected. He's surprisingly candid about everything from his childhood to his battles with the Tea Party. SAM: Right? I mean, I knew he was a colorful character, the crying, the tan, the cigarettes, but the book really shows how his upbringing shaped his whole approach to politics. SOPHIE: Absolutely. He grew up in a working-class bar in Ohio, one of twelve kids. And he argues that the bar taught him that people with different views can still get along. That idea, that personal relationships matter more than ideology, is the backbone of his whole philosophy. SAM: Yeah, he talks about how Democrats and Republicans would sit together at his dad's bar, argue about baseball, and then buy each other a round. And he thinks that's completely gone in Washington now. SOPHIE: Exactly. He says the House used to have a code of conduct, you could fight hard during the day and still share a drink at night. But that broke down, especially with the rise of the Tea Party. SAM: That's the big drama of the book, right? He becomes Speaker in 2011, and he's trying to govern, but there's this faction that just wants to say no to everything. He calls them 'legislative terrorists' at one point. SOPHIE: He does. And he's brutally honest about his frustration. He almost cut a 'Grand Bargain' with President Obama on deficit reduction, spending cuts and entitlement reform, but his own caucus killed it because it included some tax increases. SAM: And he's especially harsh on Ted Cruz. He calls him 'Lucifer in the flesh.' I mean, that's not subtle. SOPHIE: No, it's not. But Boehner's point is that Cruz and others like him are more interested in making a point than in actually governing. They'd rather shut down the government than compromise. SAM: And the irony is that Boehner is a real conservative. He voted against bank bailouts, fought for tax cuts, tried to repeal Obamacare dozens of times. But because he believed in actually making the government work, he became the enemy. SOPHIE: Right. He says he was a conservative brought down by conservatives. And eventually he just got tired. He resigned because he realized the people he was leading didn't want to be led. SAM: There's this great moment where he describes looking around a caucus meeting and thinking, 'These people don't want a solution. They want a fight.' And that's when he decided to leave. SOPHIE: And he cried during his resignation speech. But he says it wasn't out of self-pity. It was out of frustration for the institution he loved. SAM: The book also has these wonderful, human stories. Like the time he played golf with Obama and Biden, and they spent more time arguing about who was cheating on their scorecard than about policy. SOPHIE: Those anecdotes are his way of showing that politics used to be about relationships. He argues that when members stopped socializing across the aisle, the institution broke. SAM: He's also interesting on Trump. He doesn't endorse him, but he says Trump is a symptom of the anger the Republican Party spent years feeding. SOPHIE: Right. He says the party told its base that government is the enemy and compromise is weakness. Then Trump came along and took that rhetoric to its logical conclusion. SAM: So the book is partly a eulogy for an older way of doing things. He believes in the backroom deal, the handshake, the art of the possible. SOPHIE: And he's honest about his own failures. He admits he stayed too long trying to cut deals that were never going to happen. But he still believes the American people are smarter than the politicians they elect. SAM: Yeah, he ends with a prayer, basically. That the next generation will be more interested in fixing than fighting. It's surprisingly moving. SOPHIE: I think the one thing I'm taking away is that governing is hard, and it requires trust. You can't just shout your way to a solution. SAM: Totally. And honestly, if you want to go deeper, the whole library's over on the 7 Minute Books app, with over six thousand fiction and nonfiction titles you can read or listen to in any language. It starts at $2.99 a month, $9.99 a year, or $19.99 for lifetime access. SOPHIE: So if you take one thing from Boehner's book, it's that politics is about people, not purity. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next one.