--- title: Michael Grunwald on Speaker John Boehner | TIME description: TIME reporter Michael Grunwald says there’s much more to John Boehner than the caricatures and conventional wisdom about the likely House Speaker canonical: https://time.com/video/G6Vi6zhR/ og:title: Michael Grunwald on Speaker John Boehner og:description: TIME reporter Michael Grunwald says there’s much more to John Boehner than the caricatures and conventional wisdom about the likely House Speaker og:url: https://time.com/video/G6Vi6zhR/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/G6Vi6zhR/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Michael Grunwald on Speaker John Boehner twitter:description: TIME reporter Michael Grunwald says there’s much more to John Boehner than the caricatures and conventional wisdom about the likely House Speaker twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/G6Vi6zhR/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Michael Grunwald on Speaker John Boehner > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Michael Grunwald on Speaker John Boehner [Watch (HLS stream): Michael Grunwald on Speaker John Boehner](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G6Vi6zhR.m3u8) (2:36)  _Published 2010-11-04. TIME reporter Michael Grunwald says there’s much more to John Boehner than the caricatures and conventional wisdom about the likely House Speaker_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:07 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [House Speaker John Boehner Resigns: "It was an honor to serve"](/video/EMxeFBc3/) ### House Speaker John Boehner Resigns: "It was an honor to serve" [Speaker John Boehner Is Resigning From Congress](/video/zf8KdhAR/) ### Speaker John Boehner Is Resigning From Congress [A Day with Speaker Boehner](/video/3YGJGx5e/) ### A Day with Speaker Boehner --- ## Transcript John Boehner is what he is. There's not a lot of mystery about the guy. He's extremely conservative but he's also extremely pragmatic. There's sort of characters about him being this sort of freakishly tanned, golf- obsessed lobbyist encircled, you know, case street stooge. They don't tell you the whole story about John Boehner. He had a real working class background, one of family A. He had 12, 11 siblings. He's a very hard worker. Now, Grant, a lot of his hardwork is, you know, drinking red win at fundraisers and playing golf in fundraisers which maybe fits the stereotype but he is a tireless fundraiser. You know, he's done hundreds of fundraisers this year for his Republican colleagues and he's raised a lot of money for them and he's really been committed to taking back the house, you know, to the extent of people think he's lazy. They're wrong. He's really committed to this. I also think he showed another side of himself after he was booted from leadership and sort of found himself as chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee and he decided that he was gonna do some legislating. And he worked with President Bush but also with Ted Kennedy and George Miller to push No Child Left Behind, the education reform, back in 2001. He stood up to some real pressure from his then party leaders from Tom DeLay and Dick Armey who did not wanna do a bipartisan bill. They wanted to really push him a little hard- edged Republican bill. But President Bush wanna compromise and Boehner went President Bush's way. He's talked a lot about trying to lower the partisan temperature and opening up the house kind of more democracy, less power that is centered in the Speaker's office, more power for committee chairmen, giving the Minority their say. But that said, this is a very conservative Republican partisan and he is- made it very clear that he is essentially committed to going back the Obama agenda and, well, he may be this kind of genial institutionalist. The Republican base right now is not really interested in compromise. And it's not clear how Boehner will be able to push a compromised agenda. I think, to the extent, you hear him talking about compromise. Essentially, if Obama wants to do what we wanna do, that will be fine. 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