Boehner and Meadows: A tale of failed leadership

By

LeRoy Goldman

Guest Columnist

Asheville Citizen-Times

October 2, 2015

House Speaker John Boehner has packed it in. At the same time one of his principal tormentors, Congressman Mark Meadows, has kept a low profile. Thus far he has had the decency to not dance on Boehner’s grave.

Boehner’s demise and Meadows’ role in bringing him down have significance that goes way beyond the bad blood between a 25-year House veteran and an upstart back-bencher. The real significance that their dispute throws into sharp relief is that the House of Representatives no longer functions. It has paralyzed itself with the help and assistance of state legislatures that can’t resist drawing congressional district lines in ways that enable members of Congress from both parties to pick their voters. It’s called gerrymandering, and it has run amok with devastating and unpredictable consequences.

Speakers of the House have become an endangered species. Five of the last six Speakers, dating back to Democrat Jim Wright in 1989, have been ousted. In addition to Wright the list includes Democrat Tom Foley, and Republicans Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert and now Boehner.

Boehner says he had decided to announce his retirement on his 66th birthday, Nov. 17. But he abruptly advanced the timetable when he sensed rising conservative opposition to his leadership as Congress was about to consider stopgap funding for the government.

Boehner knew that the most intransigent members of his caucus, the 40 or so ideologues who comprise the Freedom Caucus, were planning to force another shutdown of the government if they could not defund Planned Parenthood. Boehner knew their effort would fail because the president would veto any bill that defunded Planned Parenthood. He also knew the GOP would be blamed by the voters if the government shut down again as it had in 2013. And he knew that the Freedom Caucus didn’t care.

And all of this was in addition to the resolution that Congressman Meadows, a member of the Freedom Caucus, had introduced in the House just two months ago. Meadows’ resolution contained a motion to vacate the chair. Such a motion, if brought to a vote and approved, would have ousted Boehner.

Meadows, tongue in cheek, simply said he wanted to start a “family conversation on the course of congressional leadership.” Family conversations are typically unproductive when one member of the family has the barrel of a gun in the face of another family member.

Mark Meadows found himself in the right place at the right time in 2012 when he first sought election to the 11th Congressional District. Widespread voter revulsion to Obama, and especially the way he and the Democrats had rammed through Obamacare in 2009-10, gave the GOP control of the House in 2010, and, more importantly, gave them control of many state legislatures and governor’s mansions. All of this came just in time for the required redrawing of congressional district lines based upon the 2010 census.

Here in North Carolina the GOP had gained control of all of the levers of power in Raleigh for the first time in over a century. Not surprisingly, the Republicans in Raleigh went on a gerrymandering orgy. A state which heretofore had seven Democrats and six Republicans in the House, now has ten Republicans and only three Democrats.

Meadows coasted to victory in 2012 with 57.4 percent of the vote, and was re-elected in 2014 with 62.9 percent of the vote. The district has been gerrymandered by removing thousands of voters who live in Asheville.

Therefore, Mark Meadows, like hundreds of other members of Congress from both parties, is congressman for life. His only real threat is if he challenged from the right in a Republican primary election by an opponent more extreme than he. Thus his incentive and the incentive of his GOP colleagues is to move as far right as possible in order to forestall such a challenge. Democratic House members do the same thing, though they race far to the left.

And that process produces two groups of zealots in the House who refuse to work with one another. They don’t care. It’s the system that keeps them in power.

In their own different ways, both Boehner and Meadows have failed. Both are casualties of a process they support — gerrymandering. Both applauded with all the rest of their colleagues when Pope Francis addressed Congress recently and urged Congress to practice the Golden Rule.

Hypocrisy is rampant on Capitol Hill. It’s also bipartisan. A subsequent column will propose ways to curtail gerrymandering.

LeRoy Goldman lives in Flat Rock. He was a member of the federal government’s senior executive service for many years, he can be reached at:

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