New York Mag: John Boehner’s Resignation Is Bad for Everyone

From Marin Cogan writing at New York magazine:

John Boehner announced Friday that he would step down from both his job as speaker of the House and his seat in Congress at the end of next month. The news is at once shocking and inevitable. Almost from the moment Boehner became speaker in early 2011 there were signs that he would be the victim of his own success. The tea party, in full revolt over the congressional stimulus and health-care packages, sent him a 63-seat majority. These new members, many of them first-time lawmakers, came to Washington certain that they had a mandate to stop at all costs the reckless spending they felt was happening in Washington.

At the time I was a beat reporter at Politico assigned to cover the freshman class. Because those freshmen had given Boehner the majority, and because they seemed — to the Republicans, anyway — to represent the best American democracy had to offer, a real, responsive movement to the politics that were unfolding in the Obama era, Boehner and his allies originally rolled out the red carpet for the new members. He gave freshman-class liaisons to leadership positions and made it clear that their voices would be valued in the party. (The members were also subject to way more media attention than the average rank-and-file member, which may have contributed to their outsize sense of self-importance.)

Read the rest of the story at New York magazine.