If there's one thing we know for sure about John Boehner, it's that he's rather emotional. The would-be speaker of the House burst into tears when speaking to the Republican faithful at a victory party Tuesday night marking the GOP's gains in Congress. But it was hardly the first time Boehner has wept in a public forum.
As the Washington Post's Paul Kane noted in a profile of Boehner last week, the GOP leader is "prone to tears," a tic that "drives him crazy, but he can't help it." Boehner is known to cry on the House floor. He's cried in private GOP member meetings.
It's a major stylistic difference between him and current Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has a tough-as-nails reputation even among her own Democratic allies. Perhaps no other politician in Washington has been more noticeably weepy, with the possible exception of former President George W. Bush, who also publicly teared up several times while in office. (Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, would also choke up and mist over on occasion, but generally stopped shy of openly crying.)
"There are just some things that tug at me," Boehner told the New York Times last month. "There are times here when we have been involved in some big fights and you get tired and the emotions move up closer to the edge of your skin."
Addressing reporters the morning after the Republicans' big election night, Boehner came close to losing it again. His chin quivered and his eyes were wet, as Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell gave him props for helping to roll up the night's big Republican gains.
Asked by a reporter why he had cried Tuesday night, Boehner said he had tried and failed to keep it together, as his chin noticeably quivered again.
You can relive Boehner's other emotional moments on video below.
Tuesday night, Boehner teared up when recounting his efforts to reach "the American Dream":

http://news.yahoo.com/

By Gail Russell Chaddock, Staff writer / November 3, 2010

Reading, Ohio
He grew up here in a small house with 11 brothers and sisters – a brood so big that when a young John Boehner first brought his girlfriend (and future wife) home for dinner, he told her that all the kids in the backyard were neighborhood friends. In fact, they were his siblings.


He worked at the family bar, the one with the moose head still hanging on the wall, to help pay his tuition to Roman Catholic high school by mopping floors and waiting on tables. Later he would take over a struggling plastics container business after the death of its owner, a baptism in small-town capitalism that shaped his views of the role of government in business.

As Republican House minority leader Boehner prepares to become the likely next speaker of the US House of Representatives in January, he will draw on his varied experiences growing up in this blue-collar town outside Cincinnati, as well as his two decades in the marbled halls of Congress, to guide him through what may be one of the toughest tenures as House leader in modern times. He will have to navigate a bumper crop of tea-party-infused GOP freshmen as well as battle-hardened Democrats at a time when the American electorate seems unusually impatient with its political leaders.

IN PICTURES: John Boehner

Boehner professes to be up to the task, in part because of what he learned in the sharp-elbowed world of saloons and siblings of his youth.

“You had to learn to deal with every character that came through the door,” he said in a recent interview in his House leadership office. “Growing my business, building my team, and serving in this institution for almost 20 years, I think I understand the diversity we have around here and how to manage it.”

Boehner will certainly bring fresh style and substance to the job. Though a committed conservative, he is not an ideologue or firebrand, despite the rhetoric he unleashed toward the White House on the campaign trail. Boehner is pragmatic, typically laid back, and habitually inclined to listen. He watched as House Republican leaders in his day, notably former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and majority leader Tom “the Hammer” DeLay, centralized power in their offices and made themselves the story – and, as a result, some say, fell before their time.

Behind the scenes, across the aisle

Boehner is inclined to work quietly behind the scenes. His instinct is to compromise, but he is not a bipartisan crusader and won’t get out in front of what the Republican caucus is prepared to accept. His public image is that of the consummate Capitol Hill pol – the sharply dressed, smooth-talking lawmaker who once played as many as 100 rounds of golf a year while hitting up lobbyists for big checks.

Former GOP majority leader Dick Armey sees him as Dean Martin without the piano – someone who makes everything look easy. “He is a man wholly without guile,” says Mr. Armey. “I don’t think John Boehner has ever spent a moment of his life in intrigue with respect to anyone else. He is a serious workman and, unlike some previous speakers, doesn’t require attention. He’ll get the job done with little fanfare. It’s not about him.”

Now in his second rise up House leadership ranks, Boehner has built a staff on and off Capitol Hill and a network of loyalists and donors so durable that it has a name: Boehner Land. He is often caricatured for the color of his skin – a famously deep tan – but he may be more notable for the thickness of his skin. He’s a survivor of fierce intraparty power struggles. If he holds grudges, it doesn’t show. He likes to quote Reagan: Disagree without being disagreeable.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Election-2010/House/2010/1103/Speaker-to-be-John-Boehner-More-confrontation-or-a-hint-of-compromise

The accidental speaker

Boehner’s path to Washington was not obvious or even likely. In the neighborhood where he grew up, it’s a steep walk from Andy’s Café, the family bar where he worked as a teenager, to the two-bedroom home that was a mail order from Sears, Roebuck. A small, three-bedroom addition, built by Boehner’s father and twin uncles, helped ease the space crunch for the family, but the boys still often slept outdoors, weather permitting.

High school was a pivotal time for Boehner, exposing him to new worlds and social classes. A photo of a class field trip to Washington, D.C., shows a young Boehner standing out in a flashy madras jacket.

“I’d still wear that jacket, if I had it today,” he said. “High school was one of those important points, mostly because I had grown up in a very blue-collar town. I went to high school and met a bunch of guys from other parts of town, who were clearly a lot more affluent than what I grew up in, and it just opened my eyes that there was just more out there.”

He was, by his own account, not a great student, but found a niche in team sports like football, where he was best known as a center, or long snapper, for punts and extra points. Football coach Gerry Faust recalls Boehner’s willingness to take the field, injured, when needed in big games. “He is a team player. He wanted us to be successful,” he says.

“He understands what it means to be poor,” adds Mr. Faust, who established Archbishop Moeller High School as a state football power before moving to coach at the University of Notre Dame. “Nothing came easy. He had to work for what he got.”

Boehner's wife, Debbie, recalls her first dinner at the Boehner house as a highly regimented affair, with a whirl of new faces, sacks of potatoes, jumbo cans of green beans, and an assigned task for every family member.

“It was tough to go home and tell your dad: ‘I think I might marry a Catholic, he’s one of a family of 12, and he’s a janitor,’ ” she said on a tour of Boehner sites in Reading.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Election-2010/House/2010/1103/Speaker-to-be-John-Boehner-More-confrontation-or-a-hint-of-compromise/(page)/3

Website:........... http://johnboehner.house.gov/