are saying. they have to know when a member of congress says something. if they're really saying -- meaning what they say or if there's something else going on there, so being able to understand what members want and need. related to that is knowing the districts of members of congress. so that if you have someone in your party saying issue just can't support you on this, because my con state opportunities would oppose it, the speaker needs to say, actually, i also understand your district and i don't think it's quite as the situation you portray. in other words, being able to persuade members involves knowing members and their districts. and persuasion is a third thing that matters. but in addition to these personal traits what makes a good speaker is an funding they are representing the entire chamber, the whole house of representatives. to at the voters and the president and the senate. so that means sometimes saying too members of congress, i know you want this but if we do it,

it's going to make our chamber look bad and it's going to hurt our ability to do our work, and if you don't like it, i understand that, but this is my job as speaker, is to do things that help the whole chamber. when you help then whole chamber as an institution, we're helping the american people and we're helping the country. >> host: what is the level of interaction historically that a speaker has had with the president? >> guest: historically speakers have had a fair -- fairly significant degree of interaction with presidents, just as speakers need to have a relationship with the senate in order to get a bill enacted, they have to have a relationship with the president in order to get that bill signed into law, and the president is seen by the american people as the person who sets sets sets the national, who represents the countried a large so it's important for speakers to have some relationship with presidents and

hopefully a positive working relationship. that has been a challenge for speakers when they're of the opposite party of the president, and we have seen from time to time cases where issues have seriously divided speakers and presidents, and even -- looking to the late 's so the impeachment proceedings of president bill clinton. that creates a huge strain on that relationship. so, at the same time, there's an understanding that there has to be some avenues of communication. if they don't talk to each other, nothing gets done. president loses but the speaker also loses. so, the ability to at least talk on the phone once a week, to meet is necessary. those are part of the job of speaker. iwhoa why -- >> host: why did you choose to write this book. >> the experiences i had when i was a congressional aide in the

mid-1990s, i worked on capitol hill, and i was there during the 1994 election, which republicans won control of the house and senate, and most notably the house, because they hadn't had a majority in the house in 40 years. and i was struck by a number of things in that experience. one was that you could tell the next day walking through the halls of congress what party a staffer was because people either were overjoyed with huge smiles on their faces and that was quite a remarkable experience, and then also watching speaker gingrich and how he exercised leadership, the speed with which he was getting legislation enacted, made an impression on me, and start evidence get knowing think about what it is that speakers do and whether gingrich was an anomaly or part of a trend or one of many speakers who have used the

power of the office to get things done. so that was the experience that get to me thinking about writing about the speaker, and then later in graduate school when i'm looking for a topic to write about issue realize the speakership is something that hadn't been explored very much and i was still interested in it and interested at the end of the gingrich speakership and then the hastert speakership. so i started doing some historical research and found all these interesting stories about speakers going back to the 1940s and sam rayburn, and then i started thinking, well, if speakers matter, we need to really try to understand that, how do we know they matter? when can we say they're actually changing the outcome of a vote? and then also trying to understand why they do it. is it always because it's something their party wants or is it something else? and then based on my research i found something interesting, which is that speakers not only

made a difference and do make a difference but they do things sometimes because they think it matters or the district they're representing thinks it matters or the president thinks it matters. even if their own party in the house of representatives doesn't think it matters. and so that became the basis of the book. >> host: could newt gingrich's speakership have been longer. >> guest: historical counterfactuals are different. hard to save it could have been longer. there was a way in which gingrich had a similar problem to speaker boehner which is a fairly large group of new young members who -- this is not unusual, both parties have had this. they come in, they're a little zealous, they have a sense that they know how to fix things, and at first that creates tremendous enthusiasm and energy, which is youful to the majority party, but invariably that group or members of it start to get disillusioned and see the things they got elected on are not

being done, and then they become a challenge for a speaker, and again, this happened to carled a beryl -- albert in 1970s and in many ways happened to speaker boehner, but with gingrich he had the same problem. so itself was a difficult situation for anyone, would have been difficult no matter who the speaker was. but there was another more personal aspect it to, which is that gingrich was the kind of speaker who believed in being in the general, the leader of the troops and the folks who follow, and the things i mentioned earlier about the importance of listening and understanding where members are coming frock. no necessarily gingrich's strong suit. because of that i think it exacerbated the tensions in the party and led some republicans to question his ability to lead past the first couple of years of his speakership. and so those elements of his personality, i think, made it --

contributed to the relatively short nature of his tenure. had he been a different kind of leader or acted differently after the first two years, then possibly we might have seen gingrich last longer as speaker. >> host: john boehner reaply said after the government shutdown that he didn't really want to do it but he saw where his members were going. >> guest: right. and this is an example of the difficulty that boehner himself -- personally is in with a lot of members who are strong opinions, strong views and at that time really believed this was their one source of leverage to try to get the policy outcomes they wanted from president obama, was to use the instruments at their dispostal, like the debt limit and budget more generally. the danger is -- so in that respect boehner was doing what a

a smart speaker does, you act accordingly. they don't have as many tools at their disposal you might think and another countries we see parliamentary leaders who can say if you don't support me you're not going to be nominated again for office. and our speak ever doesn't have that kind of power. so to that extent boehner was speaking truthly. he but there is also a way in which it is part of the job of speaker to try to -- i think his office and the leadership detroit to educate members and explain, look, if we follow path a., this is going to be very harmful to our party. and also harmful to the country and so forth. i if with take path b., less harmful. won't get what we want necessarily, everything we want if we take path b. we take path a., we almost certainly aren't going to bet what we want and make ourselves the party and congress look bad.

it -- not saying it would be easy to accomplish that or other members of congress could have done a better job but that is what was missing from the equation and what led to so much of the conflict, the government shutdown last winter, was the difficulty of boehner and the leadership team, whether it was inability for just not a possible situation to get members to understand that the direction that many of them wanted to go would problematic. and one other thing, which is the minority party in the house of representatives. now, if boehner had been able to get votes of democrats to avoid a government shutdown and do something else, this wouldn't have been an issue, and in decades past, something like that was possible. but in today's highly partisan congress, that's just not something that speakers have at their disposal. minority parties refuse to give votes to the majority. now they have to get only the vote thieves majority party, and

if you have a critical mass of members of congress in your party who don't want to good along, glory real trouble. so this is something that has made it harder to be speaker than ever before. >> host: what are some of the rewards and punish. s that a speaker has at his or her dispostal. >> guest: the rewards -- this has changed over time -- the reward vary from saying, well, i'll schedule a vote for a bill that you want, or amendment you want, to saying, i'll put in a good word for you for a committee position, and speakers offer have a decisive influence on who gets committee assignments. so that's a very important thing. speakers can say i'll visit your district and help raise money for you. that's an important asset. speakers have little things that people might misbut in fact are very important to members. such as saying, well, we'll have a congressional delegation going

to syria, and i can only have three members of congress on it. would you like to be one? this is something that members would love -- members of congress wants to do it. it's a great incentive. so those are some of the rewards that speakers can provide. however -- then there are some punishments, the reverse. they can say you're not going to get a committee position or not going to give you a congressional delegation spot, a trip on a congressional delegation train. so, it's important for those to toe work that the members care about these things, and traditional hill they do. members of congress care about committee assignments, care about raising money, but what has happened particularly with the boehner speakership is you have a group of members in his party who aren't interested in these things. maybe they're not running for re-election or they can get plenty of campaign funding from some outside interest group. or they say, i don't really -- i'm not interested in moving up here in the house of

representatives itch want to stay on the committee i'm on and just do what i want to do. and that is another reason that it's been hard for the boehner speakership, you have members saying, what you have to offer isn't enough for me, and there is one other benefit speakers used to be able to provide which boehner no longer and can that are the so-called earmarks, when specific items can be put in a bill that provide funding for a dam or a bridge or a road in a district. and the republicans as the minority under speaker pelosi campaigned on getting rid of these because they are argued they were being abused. and so they stopped using them. when they stopped using them they no longer had a very important car rot, so a member of congress would say my constituents don't want me to vote for this bill. boehner would say i wish i could get you've that road i want but i can't do that. if you can't get me anything, then all i'll have is to explain this volt they won't like so i have to vote against you. that's been a huge problem for

the republican leadership in the house of representatives, the lack of this benefit that they can provide members in exchange for their votes. >> host: how would you rate nancy pelosi as a speaker? >> guest: in terms of her effectiveness, the kinds of things she got done, i would rate her very, very highly. i think she was a very active speaker. she -- for nothing else will be moan for providing critical support for the peace ongoing of affordable care act or obamacare. when it looked like it was going to fail at the last minute. and her ability to -- her sort of relentlessness in taking up jobs and lobbying members and helping members of congress and work topping get things done is really quite remarkable. i think the jury is still out but if there will be any criticism of the pelosi speakership it will be whether or not there was too high a price to be paid for some of

this legislative accomplish. s. the first two years of the obama white house, you had the house of representatives under her leadership passing a slew of major bills and some of them became law, some did not. some were tough vote ford moderate members of her party, votes on climate change, votes on obamacare, and those members subsequently lost re-election. now, it's not clear if the votes necessarily cost them re-election, but for some of them it may have made the difference, and to the extent it did, it may have cost the democrats the control of the house another representatives. so this is a dilemma that all speaks hear which is do you get major bills passed if it hurt yours member's re-election charges or you protect them in getting re-elect end ted response of getting what you want done? if it cost the control of the house of representatives and hindered president obama agenda, that could be something that would be part