Just Finished Reading On the House by John Boehner

Retired Ohio Representative and former Speaker of the House John Boehner has just published a memoir of his life and times in the U.S. House of Representatives, titled On the House, and which I just finished reading.  He wrote it with pretty colorful language, echoing his speaking style.  Boehner never pulled any punches as a politician: he said what he thought and I always respected him for that...much unlike the slimy worms slinking through the legislative halls of Congress and state legislatures nowadays: guess he's not the only one using colorful language!  The book's title is a play on words about a free drink, and the author, known for his drinking affection...at least for red wine...also hearkened back to his father's profession as a barkeeper and his own work decades before in the family business.  I was interested in this book because I remember Boehner from his House Speaker days when Obama was president...especially in regard to the two times he had to negotiate with the White House over continuing government funding resolutions.  It shed light on his frustration both with Obama...who would agree to a hard-slogged-out deal with Boehner and then back out on it...and with the Tea Party faction of his own caucus, spurred on in the 2013 negotiations that featured the interference of new senator Ted Cruz, for whom he shows nothing but the greatest contempt.  And of course the book wouldn't be complete without John Boehner's take on Donald Trump, with whom he had golfed before: like myself, he was taken aback at the massive reality denial...spurred by Trump...of most of the Republican Party, both politicians and members-at-large, of Joe Biden's legitimate 2020 election victory.  Boehner also blamed Texas representative Tom Delay for the GOP's move to impeach Bill Clinton...it was a cynically-designed ploy to give the Republicans election gains in 1998, which backfired.  Boehner himself, while decrying the "crazies" of the Tea Party movement and later of Trump's idolizers, started out in the House making waves by exposing its own banking scandal...but he admits up front that he's a "jackass": my opinion of Donald Trump would go up drastically were he ever to admit the same about himself.  I happen to like John Boehner and wish that his type of conservative politics were what the Republican Party stood for instead of the fascist personality cult going on there now.  It's a very funny, brutally honest book...I think you'll like it unless you're one of those Trump worshippers...