In defense of John Boehner

From Andrew Klavan, who draws my grudging attention to the accomplishments of this unappealing statesman:
You can’t get more anti-government than Ayn Rand, so here’s Jack Wakeland writing from an Objectivist perspective on the sequester Boehner stuffed down the president’s throat: “The sequester is the only policy that has reduced spending by the federal government. In fiscal year 2013, total federal spending decreased 1.5% to 2.0% in real, inflation-adjusted dollars. And it promises to do so again in 2014. The FY 2013 sequester is the first time in my lifetime that federal spending shrank in absolute terms. After the ramp-down from WWII, the only decreases in federal spending were decreases as a percentage of GDP, e.g., during the Clinton-Gingrich term in 1995-96. These occurred only because GDP expanded more quickly than spending.”
...
Now, okay, Boehner may not believe everything hardcore conservatives believe… or in fact, he may and may simply find it useful not to say so. But his job is not to lead the nation. His job is not to inspire the base. His job is not to stand as a beacon for our ideals. His job is to organize and mobilize an enormous collection of scorched cats (aka Republican congressmen) into a political guerilla army so that they can blow up the tracks beneath what once looked like a Progressive juggernaut — and is now beginning to look kind of like smoking wreckage. If the speaker equivocates, if he deals, if he horse trades, compromises, accepts losses where losses are inevitable and makes a virtue out of necessity where virtue itself is not available — well, yeah, it can make a true believer crazy, but it may actually get a lot of practical and important stuff done, too.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yup. Considering the hands he has been given, I'd say he has played them very well.

I also have trouble telling the alleged true believers from troublemaking Democrats. The true believers have nothing whatsoever nice to say about any prominent Republican, ever, and they say really stupid things, such as there is no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, and therefore Conservatives should stay home and not vote.

Which is fine, if you want the Democrats to win.

Valerie

E Hines said...

Pretty much what Valerie said. To which I'd add that bomb-throwers like Ted Cruz are only being fiery for their personal political gain, and not at all for the sake of the nation--or even of Texas.

The too far right wing of the Republicans in Congress (they're not tea partiers, who are a valid and valuable push to the right; they're to the right of those folks) are indistinguishable from Progressives in their "tactics:" they want what they want, all of it, right d*n now, and they'll blow up everything--including compromises that move in their direction and that in their aggregate would take these...persons...all the way to where they want to go (just not right d*n now)--if they can't have it. Two illustrations: the budget offered by Boehner that allowed a small tax increase, that if passed by the House had a chance to pass the Senate, but at the least would have put the Democrats on record as refusing to compromise to get the rest of the 98% of what they wanted. Blown up by titular Republicans because of that compromise on a small tax increase, which resulted in an even larger tax increase being passed.

And the constant calls for Obama's impeachment. With what votes? And with what being talked about in public that would not include Progressive/Democrat damage-doing?

Eric Hines

Cass said...

Amen, Valerie.

That last excerpted paragraph is dead on.

Ymar Sakar said...

People are still being deluded by politics.

Cass said...

And the constant calls for Obama's impeachment. With what votes?

Hey, Barack has his Imaginary Son, these folks have got their Imaginary votes :p

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I don't think it's just an inability of the that part of the right wing to understand tactics. I think it is a type of personality that cannot bear to embrace a politician or cause that is not pure enough. It fits somewhat with Jonathan Haidt's theories about conservatives and liberals - though I have also contended that there is a different sort of purity that is more popular on the left: anti-GMO, organic foods, symbolic environmental gestures, hypersensitivity to offense.

Texan99 said...

It's much the same tone I encounter on FireDogLake: a fury at the inadequately pure politician. They purely hate a lukewarm pseudoliberal, who gets their hopes up then dashes them.

Conservatives like me are impatient with Boehner, not so much because he finds it necessary to compromise, as because he rarely finds a way to make us believe he regrets the necessity. When he says "this really is the best we can get," we're not sure he's serious. If he's not serious, then he needs to convince us he's a masterful negotiator. I don't usually see a ton of evidence for that, but this article makes a decent case--but it's hard to see the man ever inspiring a lot of personal loyalty either by his heart or by his skill.

Grim said...

I'm still straining at the idea that the sequester represents a kind of triumph. It's interesting that the only thing the political class could agree to do was the one thing they all agreed was terrible, horrible, across-the-board bad policy.

Texan99 said...

That's the problem with reducing spending. It rarely pleases anyone in its particulars. That may be one reason why it rarely gets done, and why it's so important not to start the spending in the first place: it quickly starts to seem impossible to reverse it.

Ymar Sakar said...

The reduction in spending is an illusion. The negotiations are mostly about how to sell that illusion to the gullible public. ObamaCare would have had a lot more difficulties if the public weren't used to these type of techniques already. They've become tolerant of them, like a drug addicted junkie.