What Speaker Boehner Should Have Told House Republicans about Compromise—A Year Ago

Rather than using his leadership position as House Speaker to help educate new House Republicans and others, including American voters, about the noble history of political compromise, he succumbed to ignorance, displaying a lack of leadership. Here is what he could have stated, if not on 60 Minutes, then soon after assuming his House Speakership:

A distinguished American and author of a Ben Franklin​ biography, Walter Isaacson, recently wrote that “we like to think of our nation’s founders as men with unwavering fealty to high-minded principles. To some extent they were. But when they gathered in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 to write the Constitution, they showed that they were also something just as great and often more difficult to be: compromisers. In that regard they reflected not just the classical virtues of honor and integrity but also the Enlightenment’s values of balance, order, tolerance, scientific calibration and respect for other people’s beliefs.”