?Boehner is taking his own advice right now?

If the government does shut down tonight, it won?t, by any means, be the first time that?s happened. The last major shutdown came in 1995, when President Bill Clinton faced off with a newly Republican House and Senate. Elizabeth Drew, a Washington reporter who?s now a correspondent for the New York Review of Books, literally wrote the book on it. I spoke to her this afternoon about how the differences between House Speaker John Boehner and former House speaker Newt Gingrich, the role Christmas played in helping Clinton, and how fatigue and posturing can make it hard to come to an agreement. A lightly edited transcript follows.

Ezra Klein: The negotiations over whether we should have a shutdown are not as focused on budgetary issues as I would?ve expected. In particular, a rider regarding Planned Parenthood seems to be holding up a deal. Was there any analogue in 1995?

Elizabeth Drew: No, not really. There were much bigger substantive issues then: what to do about Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, agriculture. They were $131 billion apart on the amount to be spent on entitlements. This is the sort of thing we can expect in the next round. They?re arguing over peanuts now. But the public doesn?t always know about the specific issues at hand. At one point in 1995, the White House offered a seven-year budget. And then there was a big argument over how the Congressional Budget Office would score it. But the television coverage was all about people. It wasn?t over those sorts of issues. Even now, Boehner and Reid are saying opposite things as to what the issue is. Boehner is trying to make it spending, and Reid is trying to say it?s ideological. It?s very hard for voters to follow.

EK: There also seems to be the intangible question of which party will be in the driver?s seat for the next two years. The GOP doesn?t want to give in, as that?s bad precedent for them, and the Democrats are similarly unwilling to show weakness. How?d they resolve that in 1995?

ED: When I went back through my book, one of my big themes was that people on both sides were getting very tired. You don?t think clearly when you?re tired. But they didn?t know how to end it. At the time I wrote, ?Both sides were locked in a fatal embrace: politically, neither could afford to be seen as having been the one that broke off the talks.? And that seems to be where we are right now. When Boehner made his announcement on television this afternoon, you could see the fatigue on his face. But pride is a very big factor in these fights, and political pride can be ruinous to governing.

EK: In 1995, Republicans were led by Newt Gingrich. Today, they?re led by John Boehner. You?ve reported on both men, so how do you see the differences between them playing out?

ED: They have some of the same problems in that Newt had to prove to his freshmen that he would stand strong and not sell them out. But they?re very different personalities. Newt was very charmed by Clinton. He?d go back to the Hill, and they?d say, ?Don?t you see? He just snookered you.? But Clinton would?ve spent time admiring Newt?s tie, and Newt would?ve really been taken by that. There was a certain naivete to Gingrich, really. We haven?t seen that from Boehner. There?s no reporting of anything like that. And he, too, is proving he will stand strong and not sell out. But I?m not sure this is just the freshmen pressuring him. I think it?s also the senior members who are more interested in the social issues than the tea party is.

EK: What was Boehner?s role in the shutdown in 1995?

ED: There?s a quote in my book from John Boehner where he says, ?Some of us in the leadership sensed our grip was slipping. The biggest problem we were facing was members who didn?t like the pictures on TV and didn?t like the fact we were sinking, even though Clinton was sinking faster.? Then Clinton went back up. And that allowed Clinton to dig in all the harder. Another thing that Boehner did: He recommended that when Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and Gingrich made their statements, they appear sad. You can see Boehner is taking his own advice right now.

EK: Democrats take a lot of comfort from 1995, as they feel Clinton won and the Republicans lost. How predictive do you think that example is?

ED: I think all the speculation now on who will quote-unquote ?win? ? and we always mean win politically, not win on the substance, when we say that ? is really rather silly. You?d have to wait till we got in a shutdown, because it will have its own dynamic. One reason Clinton ?won? was that the way the shutdown fell over Christmas, and the media spent a lot of time covering so-and-so who wasn?t getting a paycheck and couldn?t buy his children Christmas presents.

EK: And how did it end in 1995? What actually got them past the shutdown?

ED: In the end, the whole thing fizzled out, with Gingrich realizing that his strategy of remaking the federal government through forcing a deal with Clinton by shutting down the government had failed. Clinton undermined the Republicans by agreeing to their demand for a balanced budget for seven years, but he didn?t yield on Medicare and Medicaid. The Republicans felt that they?d been had. Clinton had co-opted their big point.

The result was a hodgepodge: Some minor programs were eliminated, some were funded at lower levels, and the government just lurched along until the next election, which Clinton won handily and the Republicans lost a net of nine seats but retained control of the House. Clinton declared in his next State of the Union, ?The era of big government is over.? But the Republicans, though they had changed the frame of reference, didn?t get their ?revolution.?

Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=604e49393b8e5764a72417024b9d8872

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