For speaker of the house. As a practical member, its been a member of the house of representatives, but that is not a limitation on the selection of the speaker. Host how partisan is the post . Guest thats a great question, and the i would say this, its a partisanship of the office the speaker change overtime. From the very beginning, the office of speaker had both partisan an nonpartisan responsibilities. In other words, to some extent, the speaker was expected to represent the Majority Party in the house, but also to some extent speaker has parliamentary responsibilities ensuring that the rules are followed every member has the same rights, treated fairly, and to preside over the daytoday operations of the house on the house tbloor. Overtime, the position of speaker has become more partisan, and i would say reached the height of the temporary partisanship around the 1990s and 2000s was because gingrich and Speaker Pelosi. Boehner pulled away from that and tried to reintroduce the left partisan aspects of the speakership, but its still a very partisan position, and the Majority Party in the house expects the speaker to carry out the will of the party. Host when you look back at the history of the speaker, who have been some of the more effective ones or well known ones . Guest well, first what comes to mind a sam rayburn, speaker from 1940 s until the early 196 os, and he was a prominent speaker in part because he lasted so long. He served off and on for 20 years and rare to have a speaker last as long as as that, certainly after two or three terms. He was a rare speaker in that he understood the house in which he served, and he understood what it was that motivated members of the house of representatives. He had what you say is a spiel for the chamber, making it possible for him to get a lot done, understand whats possible after politics. Some of the major legislation that was enacted during that time period was enacted during his speakership whether it was transportation legislation, civil rights legislation, legislation related to world war ii, and so he was, in many ways, one of thee most effective and best known speakers of the house of representatives. Weve also had recent speakers who dplon dmon straighted considerable effectiveness. Newt gingrich in the early years, the first 100 days, turned the house into a real machine just producing major, major legislation under his leadership, relatively swiftly, which was very impressive. Nancy pelosi, the enagentment of health care legislation, a huge feat, a last minute outcome. Host what is the speakers normal interaction with the senate . Guest with the senate . I dont say its a normal relationship, but varies by who the speaker is, which party is in control of the house and which is control of the senate, and varies on the personalities of the speakers and senate leadership. Theres app expectation that speakers need an open line of communication with the senate because you cant get legislation enagented without the senates approval, and so to that respect, theres some communication or relationship, but the degree of closeness that there is between the speaker and the senate andth senate leaders, its going to vary tremendously by who the individual speaker is and the leader is dependent on. Host who are the least effective speakers . Guest haha, least effective speakers . Well, good question. Id say theres a host of speakers in the 19th century that did not serve long and are not known for doing much, and you can put those on the list, and you can focus on the speakers of the 40s, focus of the book, and i would say the first name that comes to mind it probably either carl albert serving in the early 1970s or John Mccormick after rayburn. They had, for various reasons, difficult time for getting legislation enacted. They had a difficult party to work with, the Majority Party, Majority Democrats had rebels, folks who wanted to go their own way, making it hard to enact legislation. They also had personal issues, for example, new mccormick in te end waited to be speaker for many, many years, and when he finally got the chance, he was somewhat elderly, and i heard he presided over the house with an oxygen tank, so he did not have the fortitude, the constitution necessary to put in the effort necessary in order to get the legislation done. Mccormick and albert were lower on the list of those effective contemporary speakers. Host how would you grade boehner . Guest how would i grate boehner . Well, i hesitate to grade boehner to the extempt hes still speaker. We see in history that sometimes speakers save their biggest and most amazing accomplishments for the end of their tenures so we still have, i think the jurys still out. I would say this about speaker boehner. Back in the early 1930 s, we had a speaker named john nans garner, democrat from texas, later Vice President under fdr, and he said that speakership is the hardest job in washington, and i think thats pretty much summing up the experience of boehner. Imagine how much changed since the 1930s when they said that, if anything, the job has gotten exponentially more difficult, and they deal with Campaign Funding, independent groups that fund sometimes primary challenges against members of your party, you have a 24hour news cycle, a variety of Interest Groups, putting tremendous pressure on the job of speaker to try to get things done. I think boehner has challenges to the speakership, and you couple that with some of the more shall we say independent minded members of the party right now in the house of representatives, and to make it harder for him to count on the Party Loyalty necessary to enact legislation. How much attention to they pay to the particular district once speaker . Guest once speakers become speaker, what they think about, really, is their party. They want to do what their party wants, after all, its their party, Majority Party, the speaker will be, and while i acknowledge thats true to a large degree in the book, i point out that speakers have done things on behalf of issues and concerns permly, very important, and if we look further back in the past, nancy pelosi and human rights, John Mccormick and catholic education, sam rayburn, and the energy since the oil and gas industry in texas, we see speakers sometime saying this matters enough to me, that i want to pursue this, and they also do have to think about themselves getting relegislated. They could be in danger of losing a seat, but this has not happened very often. The last to lose reelection was tom fully in 1994, but speakers, like other members, need to be aware of the possibility they could lose reelection, and so they will, and just like any other member of congress would. Before tom, who was the last speaker . It had been over a hundred years. Host what makes a good speaker . Guest i would say its a combination of a number of things. First id say be a good listener. Speakers have to be good listeners. They have to hear what members are saying. They have to know when a member of Congress Says something if they mean what they say or if theres Something Else going on there, understand what members want and need, and related to that is knowing districts of members of congress so that if you have someone in the party saying i cant support you on this because my constituents oppose it, they need to say, well, actually, i understand your district, and i dont think its quite the situation that you portray. In other words, being able to persuade members involves knowing members in the district. Obviously, persuasion is the third thing that malters, being able to persuade. In addition to the personal traits, what makes a good speaker is an understanding that they are representing the entire chamber, remitting the whole house of representatives, voters, the president , the senate, and so that means sometimes saying to members of congress, you know, i know you want this, but if we do it, Social Security going to make the chamber look bad, going to hurt our ability to do our work, and if you dont like t you know, i understand that, but this is my job as speaker, is to do things that help the whole chamber because when we help the whole chamber, help the louse of rentives as an constitution, and then we help the American People and then the country. Displs what is the level of interaction historically speaker had with the president . Guest historically, speakers have had a fair fairly significant degree of interaction with president s. Again, just because just as speakers needs to have a relationship with the senate in order to get a bill enacted, they got to have a relationship with the president in order to get that bill signed into law, and the president is seen by the American People as the person who sets the gnarl agenda, who represents the country at large, and so it is important for speakers to have some relationship with president s and hopefully a positive working relationship. Now, that has been a challenge for speakers when they are the opposite party of the president , and we have seen, from time to time, cases where issues have seriously divided speaker and president s, and even look into the late 1990s, the intensity impeachment proceedings of president bill clinton. Obviously, that creates a huge strap on that relationship. At the same time, theres an understanding of avenues of communication. If they do not talk to each other, nothing gets done. The president loses, the speaker loses. The ability to thack on the phone once a week, to meet, if necessary, those are part of the job of the speaker. Host why did you choose to write the book . Guest i chose to write this book, actually, it was experiences i had as congressional aide in the mid1990s. I worked on capitol hill, and i was there during the 1994 election, which was the election where the republicans won control of the house and senate, and most notably, the house, had not had a majority in the house in 40 year, and i was struck by a number of things, one was that you could tell walking the halls of congress, the parties, you know, overjoyed, and that was quite a remarkell experience, and them also watching speaker Newt Gingrich and how hi operated as speaker, and forcefulness with which he exercised leadership, speed at which he got legislation enactedded made an impression on me, and i thought about what is it that speakers do and whether Newt Gingrich was an anomaly or part of the trend or one of many speakers to use the power of the office, and so that was the experiences that got me thinking about writing about this, and them later in graduate school, looking for topics to write aboutings i realize the speakership is something that was not explored much, and i was still interested in it, and interested, at this point, in the end of the speakership and the new speakership, and based on that, i started doing historically research and found all these interesting stories about the speakers beginning back to the 1940s and then i thought, well, speakers meater. You need to really kind of understand that, and how dupe they matter . When can we say, yes, they change the outcome of the vote . Also, we have to understand why they do it. Always because what the party wants or Something Else . Based on the research, i found something interests is they adopt only make a difference, but do it because they think it matters or their district they represent thinks it matters or the president thinks it matters, even if their own party in the house of representatives does not think it matters, and so that started. Host could Newt Gingrichs speakership have been longer . Well, its difficult. Hard to see if it could have been longer. There was a way in which Newt Gingrich had a somewhat similar problem to boehner, a fairly large group of new young members who, and this is not unusual, both parties had this, they come in, zealous, a sense they know how to fix things, and at first, that creates tremendous enthusiasm and energy, useful to the Majority Party, but invariably, that group or members get disallusioned, feel the things they got elected on are not done, and they become a challenge for a speaker, and, again, this happened to albert in the 1970s, and this happened to speaker boehner, but with Newt Gingrich, he had the same problem. To some, it was a difficult situation for anyone, no matter who the speaker was, but there was another personal aspect to it, i say, which was that Newt Gingrich was the speaker who believes in being a regime, a leader of the troops, and the folks would follow, and things mentioned about the importance of listening and understanding where members come from is not Newt Gingrichs strong suit, and so because of that, it exacerbated tensions going on in the party and led some republicans to question his ability to lead past the first couple years of the speakership, and so those elements of the personality made it and contributed to the relatively short nature of the pen tenure, if he acted differently after the first two years, possibly, we might have seen newt newt last longer than we did. Host boehner said after the Government Shutdown that he didnt really want to do it, but he saw where his members were going. Right. This is an example of the difficulty that boehner was in, which a lot of members who are believing this was the one source of leverage to get the policy outcomes they wanted from president obama which was to use the instruments at their disposal, the debt limit generally. The danger is, and so in that respect, boehner was doing what a smart teacher does, which are what real members are, act accordingly. Its not as easy as people think for speakers to tell members what to do. They dont have the tools at their disposal as you think they would, and, certainly, in other countries, we see leader who say, well, if you dont support me, youre not getting youre not nominated against the office, and so our speaker does not have that power, and so that extends boehner truthfully did what he had to do, but there is a way in which it is part of the job as teacher to fry to not you know, the office and leadership tried to educate members and explain, look, if we follow path a, this is harmful to the party and also harmful to the country and so forth. If we take pat b, its less harmful. We dont get what we want, necessarily, everything we want if we take path b. We take path a, we almost certainly will not get what we want, and were going to make ourselves the party and Congress Look bad. It was not im not saying it would have been easy to accomplish that or that other speakers, other members of congress could have done a better job, but i think that was what was missing from the equation and what led to so much of the conflict, the shutdown last winter was the difficulty of boehner, the leadership team, whether it was inability or just not a possible situation, and to get members to understand the direction that made them want to go was a problematic, and one other thing, too, which is an important part of the equation, the Minority Party in the house of representatives. Now, if he got the democrats to say, avoid a Government Shutdown, this wouldnt have been an issue. In decades past, it was possible, but in teas highly partisan congress, thats not something that speakers have at their disposal. Minority parties refuse to give votes to the majority on big issues, and that constrained it, now they have to get only the votes of their Majority Party, and if you have a Critical Mass of the republican members in the party who dont want to did along, youre in trouble. This is something that may have harden the speakers more than ever before. Host what are the rewards and punishments that a speaker has . Guest rewards that teas speakers have, and this changes, but the rewards speakers have vary enormously ranging from, say, well, ill schedule a vote, or o bill you want or an item you want to saying, you know, put in good word for you, and speakers have a precisive influence on who gets committee at times, and thats an important power to have, and speakers can say ive going to give you the district and theres money for you and reelection, thats an important asset. Speakers also have little things, smaller things that people might dismiss, but, in fact, are important to members by just saying, well, were going to have a congressional delegation going to syria, and i can only have three members of congress on it. Would you like to be one . This is something that members would love every member in congress wanted tews it, and it is a great incentive. Those are some of the rewards that speakers can provide; however, and then there are some punishments, the reverse of that, and youre not going to get congressional delegation spots, and tricks. So its important for those to work that members care about these thicks, and traditionally, they do. They care about reassignments, raising money, but when it happens particularly with the bane leadership is you have a group of members in the party who are not interested. Maybe they are not running for relix or can get plenty of Campaign Funding from outside Interest Groups or say i dont really im not interested in moving up. I want to stay on the committee im on and just do what i want to do, and thats another reason why its hard in the boehner speaker ship with members saying, you know, what you have to offer is not enough for me, and there is one other benefit that speakers used to be able to provide which boehner no longer can, and thats earmarks when items are put in the bill that provides funding for a dam or bridge or road in the district. , and the republicans urn Speaker Pelosi campaign on getting rid of it because they argued they were abused, so they stopped using them, and when they did, they no longer had an important part, and they said my constituents dont want me to vote for the bill,