While Speaker of the House John Boehner hasn’t scored as many legislative victories as he might have liked in his first 186 days, National Journal’s Major Garrett says he’s on track to be a “stronger” Speaker of the House than was Newt Gingrich.
On this weekend’s broadcast of “The McLaughlin Group,” Garrett explained that though there are many similarities between Gingrich and Boehner — both presiding over the House of Representatives with a Democrat in the Oval Office, for instance — polling would indicate Boehner has an edge in the court of public opinion. (Gingrich: ‘This is the Obama depression’)
“There’s lots of ways to measure that,” Garrett said. “One is the polling data. For 12 polls for Newt Gingrich’s early speakership, his negatives were always higher than his positives. John Boehner’s positives are relatively equal to his negatives so he’s doing a little bit better in the polling with the American public. Congress’ approval rating though is lower now than it was in the mid-90s. Congress is held in much higher contempt now than then. That’s the broad outside the beltway analysis.”
However, at the same point in his tenure as Boehner, Gingrich had a few more legislative victories, particularly since he fulfilled his promise to pass the “Contract with America.”
“The inside Congress analysis is that this stage of Speaker Gingrich’s speakership he had already gotten the ‘Contract with America’ through — a massive legislative accomplishment to 10 high priority items,” Garrett said. “So he had more legislative victories than Boehner does right now. But that was essentially the effective end of the Gingrich speakership. He had no great follow-up after that and the Speaker Gingrich tale after that was of diminishing power, diminishing influence and in turn the same fire. Boehner has taken a gradualist approach — actually removing power from the speakership, giving it more to committee chairmen, allowing legislation to move organically through the House.”
Ultimately, it is Boehner’s managerial style that sets him apart from Gingrich, according to Garrett.
“That is giving him greater confidence, greater latitude to strike deals like you referred to,” he said. “So Boehner internally is stronger and is probably going to remain stronger as a speaker than Gingrich was.”
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