Praising Boehner, Obama slams rest of GOP caucus over looming government shutdown

Taking a moment to laud the patriotism of retiring House Speaker John A. Boehner on Friday, President Obama also jabbed at Boehner’s fellow House Republicans as they threaten to shut down the federal government rather than work out a deal with the White House over the budget.

In an homage to the dying art of compromise, Obama called Boehner “a good man” and “a patriot” who understands that elected officials who care about America must work with people with whom they disagree in order to do the people’s business, a hardly veiled reference to the congressional GOP.

Obama revealed his concern that conservatives will refuse to fund the federal government beyond the end of the fiscal year coming next week, choosing to let government services and operations shut down rather than continue funding the women’s health service network of Planned Parenthood.

“We can have significant differences on issues,” Obama said, “but that doesn’t mean you shut down the government.”

He called the continuing operation of the government “the basic work of governance.”

“There’s no weakness in that. That’s what government is,” Obama said. “In our democracy, you don’t get what you want 100% of the time.”

He spoke of the 2011 government shutdown over Obamacare, and he accused Republicans on Friday of causing hardship during that shutdown for cutting off access to government-provided “vital services.”

“Hopefully, they’ve learned some lessons from 2011,” said Obama, recounting “the last time they tried to introduce a non-budget item into budget discussions.”

Obama’s remarks also revealed an occluded personal respect for Boehner, a doctrinal conservative whose long tenure in the House of Representatives reaches back to a time when that credential meant working regularly with Democrats and liberals.

Boehner and Obama tried to work out agreements on significant budget and policy matters, but, conscious of Boehner’s caucus politics, the Democratic president, reviled in their ranks, generally kept his praise of the speaker to himself.

On Friday, he said he hopes House Republicans will heed the example of Pope Francis, who addressed the U.S. Congress the day before at Boehner’s invitation and spoke of the need for politicians to accept compromise in order to work toward a common good.

Perhaps that visit, said Obama, “changed hearts and minds.”

“I would just ask members to really reflect on what His Holiness said, not in the particulars, but in the general proposition that we should be open to each other, we should not demonize each other, we should not assume that we have a monopoly on the truth or on what’s right, that we listen to each other and show each other respect and that we show regard for the most vulnerable in our society.”

That, he added, “is who John Boehner is.”

On Friday, though, as soon as Obama emerged from a private meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and learned of Boehner’s plans to step down as speaker, the president immediately telephoned him to ask if it were true.

And in his side-by-side news conference with Xi, he devoted several minutes to talking about Boehner’s strengths as a statesman, conspicuously contrasting him with fiercely conservative members of his caucus.

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