With six fingers of Johnnie Walker swirling in his favorite tumbler,
John Boehner speaks with the quiet assurance of a man on the brink of
something big.
“Like most of us, I came to this town hoping to make history,” he says, refilling his tumbler. “And, damn it, that’s what I’m about to do.”
Downing his glass in one gulp, he reflects upon “all the little things that had to go right” to make the year of epic underachievement possible.
“There were the Benghazi hearings, of course, and all the votes to repeal Obamacare,” he says. “But when we shut down the government in the fall, I started thinking, Jesus, the record—it could happen.”
During those heady shutdown days, Boehner didn’t dare speak about the record he had long dreamed of setting—“didn’t want to jinx anything”—but with Congress’s work year set to end on Friday, he now admits, “I’m so close I can taste it.”
Yesterday, when members of his caucus came up with a bipartisan budget deal, Boehner “had a little come-to-Jesus meeting with them,” he says. “I told them, I’ve worked too long and hard for this record, damn it. Don’t mess it up at the last minute by accomplishing something.”
So with the record for worst Congress seemingly in the bag—“I can cross that off my bucket list,” he says—what does John Boehner do for an encore?
“It’s going to be tough to make next year’s Congress even worse,” he says, pouring himself another tall one. “But it’s going to be fun trying.”
.
