In February 2013, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) delivered a biting assessment of President Obama’s relative political strength, just months after Obama secured a second term by a comfortable margin.
"I don't think he has the guts to do it," Boehner told reporters, referring to Obama's ability to rally Democrats around a fiscal deal that would cut the deficit, a Republican priority, and trim back aspects of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, programs sacrosanct to the Democratic base.
“He doesn’t have the courage to take on the liberal side of his own party,” Boehner said. “Never has.”
On Friday, Boehner, to prevent a government shutdown, announced that he was resigning his post as speaker and his congressional seat. He had concluded that it was futile and self-defeating to take on the conservative wing of his own party — perhaps his own failure of political courage.
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Obama and Boehner have shared an ambition to achieve political compromise, even at moments of ideological polarization, and ultimately it was a trait that ended the speaker’s career. A relationship that began with this common sensibility eventually ended when each concluded that the other was incapable of bringing along the purists in his party.
And fairly or not, Obama and Boehner, as much captives as leaders of their respective parties, will be indelibly identified with the dysfunction of their times.
The political relationship culminated Friday in the White House Rose Garden, where Obama called Boehner "a good man" and "a patriot" who understood the need for compromise to make democratic government function.
Those virtues never resulted in progress, though, even on some of the political goals the men shared: lasting fiscal reforms, a meaningful immigration bill, keeping the government open at times of fiscal disagreement.
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The two were rare among Washington politicians in keeping — for the most part — their personal feelings safely insulated from their political differences, at least when it came to each other.
A game of golf, an Obama sporting obsession, served as an early icebreaker at the start of partisan wrangling in 2011 over the approach of the federal borrowing limit and whether it should be raised.
Advisers subsequently said the two managed quite easily to reach a compromise on fiscal issues that summer. But once the group broadened to include more conservative and liberal lawmakers, the framework crumbled and so, too, did parts of the personal relationship at the center of it.
Boehner and his allies accused the president of moving “the goal posts” during those talks. White House officials said the speaker lacked the political muscle to solidify Republican support for a pact that would have included higher taxes along with the party’s wished-for budget cuts.
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Facing reporters in the James S. Brady Briefing Room at the White House in July 2011, just after the negotiations’ collapse, Obama sounded personally hurt.
"Up until sometime early today when I couldn't get a phone call returned, my expectation was that Speaker Boehner was going to be willing to go to his caucus and ask them to do the tough thing but the right thing," Obama said.
“I think it has proven difficult for Speaker Boehner to do that,” he added. “I’ve been left at the altar now a couple of times.”
The two men did not give up entirely on each other. They continued to talk, especially about how to push an immigration reform measure through the House. But by June 2014, the president had abandoned that effort, too, and headed to the Rose Garden to say that his administration would act on its own.
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Obama said Boehner and his fellow Republican leaders had “proven again and again that they’re unwilling to stand up to the tea party in order to do what’s best for the country.”
Republican pollster David Winston, who has advised both the House and Senate leadership, said that Boehner and Obama "tried to insist there was always an open channel" between them as they sought to navigate partisan Washington.
“The problem they ran into was the policy differences were just too significant,” Winston said.
But it was Obama, the one who felt stranded at the altar in the past, who decided to move on.
At the start of 2014, the president decided to pursue a strategy that emphasized executive action over legislating. It produced several concrete results, halting the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants, setting limits on power-plant emissions and extending paid leave for federal employees, among other domestic policy items.
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The moves came with political costs — and a lawsuit, filed by Boehner, challenging Obama’s authority to take such executive actions.
Only once this year did the White House and the House cooperate in a shared success: Passage of trade promotion authority in late June, which gave Obama broad powers to negotiate the details of trade agreements. Nearly 200 House Republicans voted to give the president such authority.
Days later, Boehner accepted a ride on Air Force One to attend a ceremony commemorating the nine African American churchgoers shot in Charleston, S.C.
Obama called Boehner on Friday, between meetings with Chinese officials and his Rose Garden appearance alongside visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping. The news broke hours before Obama heard it, and he was informed only minutes before his news conference.
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Asked by a reporter for his reaction, Obama called Boehner “somebody who understands that in government, in governance, you don’t get 100 percent of what you want, but you have to work with people who you disagree with — sometimes strongly — in order to do the people’s business.”
Obama added that Boehner had never been able to win over “members in his caucus who saw compromise of any sort as weakness or betrayal.”
On the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said the fact that Boehner felt compelled to exit highlighted how troubled the nation’s political system had become.
“This is a victory for dysfunctional government. This is a victory for confrontation,” Hoyer said. “This is a vote for my way or the highway, and that’s not democracy. That’s not how the Congress of the United States works. That’s not how America works.”
Alice Crites and Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.
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