On the house A Washington memoir

You can almost smell the smoke curling off the page. The book's cover shows former Republican Speaker of the House Boehner, a glass of Merlot in one hand, cigarette burning in an ashtray, and the whole vibe in the memoir itself suggests an old pol telling war stories--stories that spare almost no one. Boehner grew up in Ohio, one of 12 children living in a two-bedroom house, earning a few bucks working at his father's bar. When he joined Congress in 1991, he was the rabble-rouser, taking on the graft-ridden House bank, which resulted in an ethics scandal that ruined some careers but uplifted his. Two decades later, he was elected speaker by a new gang of firebrands, the Tea Party. For a while, he thought he was in charge, but it eventually became clear that if he wanted to keep his job, he had to accede to the Tea Party's wishes; as he puts it, "a leader without followers is just taking a walk in the park." There's a disheartening underside, however, to all this truth-telling. Even as he calls out the "knuckleheads" and "crazies" in his caucus, noting that Ted Cruz is Satan in the flesh, the fact remains that Boehner supported events like the government shutdown in 2013, despite believing it was a horrible idea. What produced giggles early in the memoir may turn eventually to anger as readers recognize that Boehner waited until he was safely out of government to share his opinions about his fellow Republicans, right-wing talk radio, and "political terrorism." Amusing and appalling in equal measure.

Much anticipated tell-all by the former speaker of the House of Representatives. Boehner (b. 1949), the former Ohio congressman who served as speaker from 2011 to 2015, has a flair for the crude mot juste and a willingness to scrap, as when he told Don Young, a powerful, long-serving fellow Republican, "Fuck you." Granted, Young had put a knife up to his throat--a knife, Young would later say, that grew longer and sharper every time Boehner told the story. The author, who grew up in his father's Ohio bar, has plenty of stories to tell. Some of them come with grudging admiration: He never liked Trump, but he gives him credit for his ruthless political maneuvering. He laments the radical craziness of the current GOP, touting Mitt Romney as the kind of conservative who should have led the party "before the rabble-rousers decided he wasn't a big enough lunatic for their liking." Not that Boehner cares much for Obama and the left either, whom he accuses of arrogance--though he does write about his friendships with Teddy Kennedy and Joe Biden. Valuable lessons in crossing the aisle came from Gerald Ford, who kept him from becoming "a bomb-throwing Meadows/Mulvaney-type jackass." In passing, after denigrating almost everyone in national politics, Boehner corrects his bibulous image. As he writes, he preferred beer when he came to D.C., learned that hard liquor was a recipe for disaster, and switched to red wine. "Drinking wine is a marathon, not a sprint, and makes sense for the more mature drinker," he counsels. That, a pack of cigarettes, and a golf club, and he seems to have quite enough to keep him contented far from the fray. Boehner doesn't take himself too seriously, but this is a serious study in how our politics went so far off track. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.