The Last Gasp of the Politics-as-Usual Memoir
New books by Barack Obama and John Boehner promise a trip down memory lane as the world burns
John Boehner, the former speaker of the House, is enjoying a glass of red wine. A cigarette is balanced against an ashtray in a dim bar with dark wood panels. Boehner leans forward in his red leather armchair, relaxed and lightly tan, smirking as though he has something delicious to tell us. It’s a scene that might sound like the beginning of a bad spy novel, but it’s the cover of Boehner’s forthcoming book, On the House: A Washington Memoir.
I had completely forgotten about the existence of John Boehner until I saw this cover, which dropped yesterday and was roundly mocked online. It seems like a relic from a less terrible, if still pretty awful, time in politics. And maybe that’s exactly what Boehner wants us to think. His book is an almost too-obvious brand of nostalgia for a different sort of conservative power, one that is gentler on the surface if not fundamentally different.
