Free Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives by Robert Draper Page B

Party rally on tax day, April 15, 2009. Boehner had never seen anything like it—an outcry of anti-Washington vitriol bordering on the elemental—and immediately recognized that he could either board this train or be flattened by it. He deputized McCarthy to oversee the drafting of a Pledge to America, a riff on Gingrich’s Contract with America, which Boehner’s staff had commandeered sixteen years prior. As a sop to Cantor, they unveiled the Pledge in the latter’s district in September 2010. The promises contained in the forty-eight-page Pledge—repeal Obamacare, halt all tax increases, cut federal spending by at least $100 billion in the first year—were an unmistakable paean to the Tea Party movement. (Only a passing wink was given to social conservatives in the Pledge’s introduction: “We pledge to honor families, traditional marriage, life and . . . faith based organizations . . .”)
    Meanwhile, Boehner heated up his own denunciations of the president and the Democratic Speaker. For this task it was clear that he was not the ideal messenger—this pronouncedly retro, Naugahyde-skinned Beltway lifer suddenly spouting maverick claims about how the White House was “out of touch” and that “Washington’s not listening” to the average American.
    He had greater worries, however. By October 2010 it had become increasingly evident that the Republicans would retake the House. But would Boehner be their leader? It was hardly guaranteed. He hadappointed McCarthy his chief candidate recruiter for the election cycle. The Californian had built intimate bonds with the new candidates. Boehner hadn’t. One of the highest-profile candidates McCarthy was advising, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, had told her local paper that she wasn’t ready to commit to Boehner. Another Tea Party recruit, Missouri auctioneer Billy Long, would loudly drawl to a couple of lobbyists at a reception that “John Boehner and Roy Blunt are what’s wrong with Washington.”
    Though McCarthy was unlikely to take a run at the Speakership, he was tight with Cantor, whose ambitions were undisguised. In 2008, it had been leaked that the Virginia congressman was on the short list to be John McCain’s vice presidential candidate. This amused McCain’s senior staffers, who had each been asked to contribute their recommendations and who therefore knew that Cantor had not been recommended by any of them. No doubt the leak had come from Cantor’s inner circle, which was every bit as loyal as Boehner’s.
    Boehner had vowed in the fall of 2010 to “ end earmarks as we know them”—employing that measured construction because there were many in the GOP caucus who supported earmarks. Two weeks later, Cantor, who himself had requested a $7 million flood control earmark in the past, had managed to get to the right of Boehner on his signature issue by declaring in an op-ed that “the next Republican conference should immediately move to eliminate earmarks.” Cantor played offense, and his lieutenants rivaled Nancy Pelosi’s as the most aggressive on the Hill. The mutual distrust between Boehner’s and Cantor’s staffs was at times toxic.
    Still, Cantor had been the Republican whip. He knew how to count votes. Boehner had more of them—for now.
    And so it was John Boehner who rapped the monstrous gavel on January 5, 2011; Boehner who received a unanimous vote from his Republican colleagues that same afternoon; Boehner who led the reading of the Constitution the next day; Boehner who spent his first weekend as Speaker talking with FBI Director Robert Mueller and House Sergeant at Arms Bill Livingood about the security of Gabby Giffords’s 434 colleagues. It was John Boehner who treated his conference earlyand often to the Boehneresque mantra, “Let the body work its will.” He would not dictate in the manner of Gingrich or Pelosi.
    Instead, he would at times lead—as another former House and Senate leader, Trent Lott, would say—“ by being