Boehner Joins Reagan, JFK in Political Crow-Eating

By Julie Bykowicz - Dec 24, 2011 3:38 AM GMT+0700

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner’s acceptance of a two-month payroll tax-cut extension after he spent several days disparaging the plan is the daily special on a long menu of political crow.

Similar dishes: President Barack Obama’s debt-ceiling deal with Republicans that didn’t include the new revenue he had earlier demanded, President George H.W. Bush’s tax increase after his campaign directive to “read my lips” and California Governor Ronald Reagan cracking out of self-imposed concrete to raise taxes.

“We know that politicians make public commitments, and we know that our system demands compromise,” Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said in an interview today. “We shouldn’t be surprised that they find themselves having to backtrack.”

Such cave-ins typically play out over months or years -- not in just a few days, as happened with Boehner’s response to the short-term payroll tax cut passed by the Senate Dec. 17.

In fact, Boehner, an Ohio Republican, began yesterday by defending his days-long rejection of the Senate’s bipartisan deal, saying at a press conference “the best policy is a one- year extension.” He ended the day by announcing he was accepting the Senate plan, preventing a Jan. 1 increase in the tax from 4.2 to 6.2 percent for 160 million U.S. workers.

Bush, Reagan

The technical nature of the payroll tax debate -- a yearlong extension rather than a two-month one -- means it probably won’t stick in public memory the way a more clear-cut flip-flop does, Binder said.

“Read my lips: No new taxes,” Bush said while accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 1988. He raised taxes in 1990 as part of a deficit-reduction plan. The “read my lips” comment has become an emblem of a statement that led to political crow-eating, Binder said.

Reagan also notched a number of memorably colorful collapses.

Before taking the governor’s office in cash-strapped California in 1967, he insisted his “feet are set in concrete” on the issue of raising taxes. In 1971, as the Republican signed a tax increase, he said at a press conference, “The sound you hear is the concrete cracking around my feet.”

U.S. House Democrats dished up another serving of crow when Reagan was president and pushed for cuts to Social Security benefits.

‘Famous Backing Down’

Then-Speaker Tip O’Neill and fellow Democrats “just blasted the White House,” Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey, said in an interview today. “The administration backed away from it and never talked about it again. It was a famous backing down of a very popular president.”

About-faces cross party lines.

Lyndon B. Johnson set the stage for a flop as he was nominated as the Democratic candidate for president Aug. 26, 1964: “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

The Vietnam war continued throughout his presidency.

Obama, a Democrat seeking re-election next year, consistently said in July he wouldn’t agree to a deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling unless it included new revenue as well as spending cuts sought by Republicans. He then hunkered down with the Republicans and hashed out a plan without tax increases, drawing complaints from his party.

‘There Was Caving’

“There was caving this time,” Representative Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, said as Obama signed the deal Aug. 2.

The president also backed off on imposing stricter smog limits in September, agreeing with Republicans and industry leaders that the costliest regulation should be scrapped.

“High-profile defeats are part how it works -- half of Washington usually is losing,” Zelizer said. “It’s not so much about having to reverse yourself, it’s how you handle it. Either you want the public not to be paying a lot of attention, or you want to claim this is the outcome you wanted all along.”

President George W. Bush was a “master” at adopting a loss as a win, Zelizer and Binder said. He was opposed to creating the Department of Homeland Security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- until it became clear Congress would pass it.

That was an example of “where he says, ‘Yep, that was my idea,’” Binder said. “That’s a great way to put these potential debacles behind you.”

Offsetting Blow-Back

Admitting failure after a high-profile political mistake can help offset blow-back, Zelizer said. Neither Boehner nor Obama has characterized their about-faces as such.

President John F. Kennedy’s popularity rose after he acknowledged policy errors in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.

“We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors,” Kennedy said in a televised press conference April 21, 1961.

An example of being prepared to accept one’s political mistakes came from the man who would become the 34th president. General Dwight Eisenhower on June 5, 1944, drafted a statement for possible release if the following day’s allied invasion of Europe became a failure.

The landings “have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops,” Eisenhower wrote in the note later found by an aide. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Julie Bykowicz in Washington at jbykowicz@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net