Majority Leader Boehner
This afternoon, the House Republican Conference elected Congressman John Boehner of Ohio to be the next House Majority Leader. He replaces Rep. Tom Delay. I wrote about the contest in advance of the balloting here, but with the voting done, let me say that I think Boehner is an excellent choice. Certainly, he has his issues, but he’s a heckuva of a lot better than elevating Rep. Blunt, and I think he will be a very successful leader.
And with the Majority Leader election now complete, I’d like to suggest that Mr. Blunt resign his post and Majority Whip. The Whip is responsible for keeping party discipline and helping implement the party’s agenda. To date, since Mr. Delay’s troubles began in earnest, Mr. Blunt has proven that he is not very good at his job. And Mr. Boehner ought to have the chance to work with a team that he’s most comfortable with. Having to rely on a rival to for implementation and support is not a good solution.
So, congrats to Congressman Boehner. And here’s to your success.
UPDATE: RedState congratulates Boehner, too. And has the skinny on how the voting went down.
UPDATE II: Sounds like Rep. Blunt is staying on as Whip. Here’s hoping that he and the new Majority Leader can be effeective working together.
Jim: My immediate reaction to the news of Boehner’s election was one of ‘blah.’ I knew I didn’t like Blunt, and really didn’t like his spokeswoman comparing bloggers to fire ants. I knew Shadegg was saying all the right things, but remained a longshot.
But this morning, I came to see a certain value in the way John Boehner won this election. Perhaps the style he brought to his victory suggests he might have the right skills to be a successful House Majority Leader.
If you’re a Roy Blunt, and you’re already in a leadership position, it’s hard to be a reformer. I don’t just mean positioning yourself as one to the public, I mean it’s really hard to make a big, dramatic change. I suspect almost every lawmaker, to one extent or another, has a cocoon effect – they’re constantly surrounded by staffers who tell them “yes, great idea, boss”, friendly, back-slapping lobbyists who want favors, constituents who want help and who believe that their congressman is the one who can do it, members of the media acting as if their utterances on renaming a post office back in their district are worth recording for the first draft of history, etc. In these situations, do you really recognize that you and/or your peers have a serious problem, much less spend a lot of time thinking about how to solve it?
If you’re a John Shadegg, and you’re an outsider, you can afford to be a little brash – you’ve got less to lose. You can say things more – well, bluntly (pardon the pun). You’re starting from behind, so you need the attention. You can afford to take risks, because playing it safe is only going to keep you in third place. It has to be liberating. You can trust your gut instincts, throw caution to the wind, damn the torpedoes and let the chips fall where they may, to offer a bouillabaisse of clichés.
But oftentimes in life, you find yourself in circumstances that require flexibility. A little finesse, as well as some strength. Boehner clearly recognizes that Shadegg’s 40 votes on the first ballot demonstrates that there’s serious a serious chunk of the House caucus that wants some brashness, some boldness, some dramatic reforms and a return to the spirit of 1994. On the other hand, we’re talking about Republicans; the GOP isn’t supposed to be the party of big, dramatic, sudden and sweeping changes aimed at bringing about utopia. To suddenly channel the spirits of National Review, the other guys are all about Eschaton-immanentizing (1); our side of the ideological divide is all about mutatis mutandis (2).
So there’s something reassuring about a guy who aims for change, but isn’t an upstart. Incrementalism can be good. Slow, steady changes, with adjustments, can often make better progress than a big, sweeping veer into a new direction.
There’s an oft-quoted line about moderates that “the only things found in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead armadillos.” I think this is a reaction of those with a strong vision to those who they see as having no vision. If you have serious policy ideas that you believe will dramatically improve the country, a “moderate” who wants to water down legislation and preserve the status quo has to be pretty intolerable. But Boehner doesn’t seem to be that. He just seems like a guy who’s willing to be patient, and use the approach that will work best in the long run.
1: William F. Buckley, long may he be praised, popularized this phrase – it means, more or less, to attempt to create heaven on earth or utopianism. Buckley believed/knew that certain problems will always exist and attempts to solve them often create their own problems, so modern conservatism required a certain caution, introspection, and recognition of consequences.
2. “Mutatis Mutandis” – with appropriate changes made for respective differences. It’s a rejection of “one size fits all” solutions, or recognizing that different problems may require different tools.