Review: John Boehner’s “On the House”

“On the House does not provide a clear answer, but, if one reads carefully, one might find that Boehner’s short-term pessimism and long-term optimism are both warranted.”

“There are people we are electing who will destroy this country if we aren’t careful.”

—John Boehner in On the House: A Washington Memoir

Dire warnings like these are sprinkled throughout the expletives and laugh-out-loud anecdotes filling former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner’s new book On the House: A Washington Memoir. But so are lines like this one: “I want this book to be filled with hope. Because I do think we can solve these problems. I believe in this country and in our system.”

Throughout the course of his book, Speaker Boehner waffles between buoyant optimism and utter dread over America’s political future. Readers will leave entertained but also a bit confused. What does John Boehner, the scrappy son of a bartender from Ohio, really think? Is America doomed, or is it not? Will we muddle through like we always have or fall flat on our collective face? On the House does not provide a clear answer, but, if one reads carefully, one might find that Boehner’s short-term pessimism and long-term optimism are both warranted.

The roots of Boehner’s more dour, pessimistic takes in On the House are in the rise of the “political terrorists.” Whether it is “The Squad” on the Left or the Freedom Caucus-turned-MAGA base on the Right, Boehner detests those in Congress “peddling chaos and crisis so that everyone keeps paying attention to them.” Boehner’s time as Speaker coincided with the strengthening of the right-wing media outrage-peddling machine, so he has seen up close and personal how the so-called “political terrorists” have hijacked our politics.