Winners and Losers: Boehner's Retirement

John Boehner, Speaker of the House and third in line for the Presidency, just announced he would be retiring at the end of October.  This surprising decision will have repercussion that may seriously affect the 2016 Presidential election.  There are still a lot of moving parts but here is my early take on the winners and losers of Boehner’s announcement.

John Boehner – Winner

There is something to be said about going out on top.  Perhaps Boehner took a cue from another famous John, Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway.  In his 14^th season in the NFL and his 4^th Super Bowl appearance Elway finally got his ring, he came back for one more Super Bowl championship then retired on top.  By leaving office now, Boehner avoids the potential embarrassment of losing his speakership to another Republican.  Boehner held on to the top spot in the House after the last election by the smallest margin in speakership history, he has been vilified by the ideologues in his party and there is no guarantee he could have held the post through another election.  As it stands, however, Boehner cannot be called anything but a great success.  His announcement comes at the heels of an accomplishment two decades in the making, a Papal address to a joint session of Congress.  As a proud Catholic, this must feel like one of Boehner’s greatest achievements.  More importantly, though, Boehner leaves office with the strongest Republican majority in the House of Representatives during the modern era.  He now has the option to go make buckets of money as a lobbyist or to retire comfortably to his recently purchased Florida property.  I don’t know if he has any intention of running for office in the future, but the inevitable GOP inter-party train wreck might make Boehner an appealing Presidential candidate in 2020 or 2024.

President Obama – Loser

Obama and Boehner have had a rocky relationship to say the least.  But there is little doubt that Boehner’s replacement will be more conservative and principled than he was.  The conservative faction of the GOP has been itching to replace the pragmatic institutionalist and they are now likely to get their way.  There is still a great question as to who will replace Boehner, but in all likelihood his replacement will be more combative towards the President.  My guess is that we will see another government shutdown before the end of Obama’s term.  During the last fight Obama spent a lot of time using his bully pulpit to argue against this tactic and he is likely going to have to do that again.  This means less time to work on the rest of Obama’s lame duck agenda.

Conservative Republicans – Winners

Boehner’s announcement coincided with the Value Voter Summit in Washington D.C., a conservative conference that attracted many GOP Presidential hopefuls.  Marco Rubio was the speaker who got to break the news to the crowd who enthusiastically cheered for the departure of the highest-ranking Republican.  While Rubio was tempered with his remarks, saying only that it was time for “a new generation of leadership in this country,” others were not so tepid.  Ted Cruz claimed Boehner had joined the “Democrats to implement all of President Obama’s priorities” and that this is “not the behavior one would expect of a Republican speaker of the House.”  The GOP frontrunner, Donald Trump, said, “We want to see… people that are going to get it done,” indicating he did not approve of the job Boehner had done.  This is all coming just two months after North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows offered a motion to vacate the chair, a move that would have stripped Boehner of his speakership had it prevailed.  Now that Boehner has decided to retire, it is quite likely that the GOP will elect a candidate that is less pragmatic and more conservative.  The ‘just say no’ caucus will finally have their chance to lead.

Conservative Republicans – Losers

Having a chance to lead is about the worst thing that can happen to this caucus.  They function best as outsiders causing a ruckus and complaining about leadership in Washington.  I don’t know that any of the truly conservative members will actually want to be in Boehner’s position.  They are relatively safe in their conservative districts.  They have been safe to vote no on everything knowing that the moderate Republicans will fall on their swords by working with Democrats to keep the government running.  If the conservative caucus really does win the speakership they are either going to have to capitulate now and then, an unforgivable sin within their group, or they are going to cause irreparable damage to the Republican party and potentially be viewed in the future as the cause of the second President Clinton.  This is a lose-lose situation for any member of the conservative caucus looking to take over the speakership.

Hillary Clinton – Winner

This is assuming that she holds onto her lead and wins the Democratic nomination for President in 2016.  I think it is quite likely that the conservatives will push through a less pragmatic Republican as next speaker of the House (even if not the most conservative) and s/he will have to repay that favor by letting them have their government shutdown.  This is good for the conservative Representative drawn into safe districts, but it is also good for Clinton.  Government shutdowns are not popular and Republicans will be the ones to take the blame.  This gives Hillary the chance to make the election a referendum on Congress, a much better option than a referendum on Obama.  If the House GOP goes wild, Hillary’s chances just went up.

The Republican Party – Loser

With or without John Boehner the GOP was likely to lose seats in both houses of Congress in 2016.  In the House, Democrats always do better during Presidential elections rather than Midterms; this advantage was likely to earn them a few seats, though far from a majority.  In the Senate, Republicans have a lot more vulnerable seats than the Democrats; this is because this is the first re-election campaign for Republican Senators who took over traditional Democratic seats during the GOP wave of 2010.  Whether the Democrats win enough seats to take over the Senate is still up in the air, but it is likely they will increase their numbers.  Now, say what you will about John Boehner, but he helped the Republican Party win more seats than anyone would have predicted in 2008.  I think it is inevitable that the next Speaker will have to appease the conservative caucus, and this will hurt the Republican Party in the 2016 election.

Government Workers - Winners (for now)

John Boehner’s resignation effectively ends the imminent threat of a government shutdown.  Without fear of political backlash, Boehner can now push through a funding bill that will keep the government opening at least until December.  Boehner will have to rely on Democrats to pass the bill, but there is no way he wants his last action as Speaker to be a government shutdown.  This means that all the ‘non-essential’ government employees who would otherwise stop working andstop getting paid will continue to work.  The question now, is for how long?

Fixing the Primary Debate

The second Republican presidential primary debate is tonight and it is going to be terrible.  I’m comfortable making that claim even without consideration of the candidates themselves, the moderators, the questions, or the fact that Trump will be there.  My criticism is with the format itself.  It does not serve our democracy well, it does not serve the candidates well and it is always a bore.  I’d like to propose a different format that would go a long way towards fixing the primary debate process, but first lets take a look at what exactly is wrong with the status quo.

1)   It is undemocratic

The GOP has allowed the networks that are hosting the debates to determine the format and so far both the first two debates decided to cut down on the extraordinarily large field.  There are 17 legitimate and (arguably) qualified candidates running for the GOP nomination, that is, if we continue to count Rick Perry.  Yet the first debate only invited 10 candidates and the second had to (arbitrarily) change the rules to allow 11 so that Carly Fiorina could join the other 10 men onstage.  It should be noted that, even though they are doing poorly in the polls, these are legitimate candidates with bona fide resumes.  Even if we exclude the longest serving Governor of the largest red state (Rick Perry) the first GOP debate excluded the three-term former Governor of blue state New York (George Pataki), the former Governor of swing state Virginia (Jim Gilmore), the sitting Governor of Louisiana (Bobby Jindal), the senior South Carolina Senator and U.S. Air Force Colonel (Lindsey Graham), the former head of Hewlett Packard and the only women in the field (Carly Fiorina) and the former Pennsylvania Senator and man who came in second in the 2012 GOP primary (Rick Santorum).  For everyone but Carly Fiorina this has largely meant the beginning of the end for these presidential candidates.  This has, rightly, been criticized for usurping the power of the voters many months before the first primary voter has cast their first ballot.  The networks have used National poll numbers to eliminate about 1/3 of the GOP field at a time when national poll numbers mean virtually nothing.

2)   It is useless

Debates are supposed to be the chance for the public to finally get to hear the candidate’s vision for the future of America.  After months (sometimes years) of being stuck in the sound byte world, the people who want to lead the most powerful nation on earth finally have a chance to provide details about their plans for our country.  Anybody who has ever watched a primary debate knows that that is not even close to reality.  Primary debates are not a break from sound byte politics; they are relatively uninterrupted sound byte politics, live.  Let’s take a look at the first debate for the stats.  Trump led the field with 11 minutes and 14 seconds of airtime… I’m going to let that sink in.  The most anyone had to make their case for why they should be President of the United States was less than 12 minutes, that’s how long you get for group discussion the week your teacher didn’t really put a lot into lesson planning.  From there it gets worse.  Only Trump and Bush had over 7 minutes of airtime and two candidates (Walker and Paul) never had a single response that lasted even one minute.  If you are looking for substantive policy debates, don’t look to the debates.

3)   It is unhelpful

Perhaps I should take a step back.  I have been under the assumption that the debates were supposed to be for the people to see the candidates vying for president.  Maybe I am wrong, maybe it is a chance for the party to weed out bad candidates and to prepare the candidate that emerges for the general election.  At this stage in the game the party is not beholden to the general public, maybe it is not in their best interest to have their candidates going into detail about their plans, especially while trying to appeal to the GOP primary constituency.  Okay I suppose that is fair, but is this really the format you would choose.  It seems awfully risky to let network moderators ask “gotcha” questions having your candidates look uninformed out there.  Wouldn’t it be better to have the candidates go out there making prepared statements on pre-determined topics?  And if the goal is to prepare your candidates for the general election debates, doesn’t it make more sense to have them go one on one against each other, like they will against the eventual Democratic nominee?  If this is really about showcasing the GOP options and preparing them for the general election, are you sure this debate format is helpful?

4)   It is boring

Seriously, if not for Donald Trump only political junkies would watch the early primary debates.  The people who are going to tune in are the ones who are forwarding e-mails, putting up yard signs, making calls, and registering people to vote.  These debates have no appeal beyond those who are already intimately tied to politics.  If your goal is to reach new voters you need an approach that is even mildly entertaining.  Why are they boring?  For starters, they are all the same.  There are a bunch of men (and a woman) standing around a semi-circle at lecterns answering questions under (sort-of) strict time constraints.  That’s pretty much it, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen all 12.  There is also no audience participation, would American Idol have been as popular if there were just a bunch of people who got to go on stage once a week and nobody was ever kicked off and there was no voting and there were no challenges and we eventually just decided who won based on lifetime record sales?  Of course not, that would be a terrible show.  Which brings me to the final reason nobody cares about the primary debates, nobody wins or loses.  If you want to know who won the first GOP debate too bad, there is literally no way to know.  If you want people to care you have to let them crush people’s dreams, that’s the American way.

By now I hope we can all agree that the current primary debate format is terrible.  This is true for the candidates, the party, the public and our democracy.  Fortunately, there is a better way.  Because of the GOP’s uniquely large field they could, for the first time ever, host the: 2016 GOP Presidential Primary Tournament of Champions.  Think about it, nobody cares about college basketball… until March Madness.  The GOP could steal their playbook and completely change the way primary debates work, and it would be so much better.  Nobody would have to be excluded, the candidates would be given enough and equal time to lay out their plans for the future of our country, the candidates would have practice in a head to head debate format, and people who would never watch a normal primary debate would tune in to see how their bracket was holding up.  It is a win, win, win-win situation.  

            Here is how it works.  You use poll numbers (or favorability ratings) to seed the candidates one through 16 (or 17 if Perry still want to play).  Then you have them compete in Lincoln-Douglass style debates once a week.  The entire field would compete the same night and the whole process would take 4 hours each week.  The first week there would be eight 30-minute debates, the first candidate would speak for 10 minutes, the second would speak for 15 minutes and then the first would have 5 minutes of rebuttal.  Over the course of the week registered voters would have a chance to “vote” for their favorite candidates and those who received the most votes would move on to the next round.  Ideally there would be some kind of results show with telegenic host.  Each week the candidate advances would be monumental because it would add a significant amount of airtime they would receive.  The second round of debates would have half the field and so the debate times would be doubled.  Each week there could be a new topic so the candidates would need to be well versed on the economy, foreign policy, national security, etc.  The final debate would be a true Lincoln-Douglass debate with the candidates splitting 3 hours of airtime, a unique opportunity to present their case for the future of this great nation. 

Since you are still reading I’m going to assume that you think this sounds as awesome as I do, so lets get down to brass tax.  If we want to convince the GOP this is a good idea we need to start generating excitement for it.  I think the best way to do that is to start a #GOPBracket trend.  There are two different ways to the candidates for this tournament.  We could use either poll numbers or net-favorability ratings.  I think both are important predictors and have devised a means to incorporate both into my seeding mechanism.  I have used the Public Policy Polling poll released September 1^st as a guide for my seeding.  The numbers may have changed since then but the details don’t particularly matter since no one is being unfairly excluded.  To figure out the seeding I ranked the candidates from 1-17 based on poll numbers and again based on net-favorability.  I then added the numbers of the place they got in each category and seeded them based on who got the lowest number.  For example, Ben Carson came in second in the polling and first in net-favorability so he had the lowest score with three (2+1=3).  Jeb Bush came in third in the poll but 11^th in net-favorability so his combined score of 14 (11+3) earned him the number 6 seed.  Here is how the whole bracket worked out:

Here is how the candidates were seeded:

1)   Ben Carson

2)   Donald Trump

3)   Carly Fiorina

4)   Marco Rubio

5)   Ted Cruz

6)   Jeb Bush

7)   Scott Walker

8)   Mike Huckabee

9)   John Kasich

10) Rick Santorum

11) Rick Perry

12) Bobby Jindal

13)  Jim Gilmore

14)  Chris Christie

15) Rand Paul

16) George Pataki

17) Lindsey Graham

For the record, here is how I’d fill out my #GOPBracket