Let’s hope a valuable lesson was learned in Washington

Whether John Boehner paint- ed himself into a corner or whether his own Republican delegation did it for him will be debated by political wonks in the future.

But what had become clear to everyone long before it became apparent to Speaker Boehner was that he was the one who was going to have to yield in the most recent standoff over a tax cut.

What was at stake was not just 2 percent, plus or minus, in the amount that Americans were going to have withheld from their paychecks come Jan. 1.

The one thing Republicans in Washington have steadfastly opposed is raising taxes. Indeed, about 95 percent of them have tied their own hands by signing activist Grover Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge.” So once the Senate said the best it could do was a two-month extension of the tax cut — which presumably gives Congress two more months to reach a compromise that will provide a longer extension — Boehner would have been smart to climb aboard.

Instead, he dug in his heels and demanded that the Senate return to Washington and do things his way. Oh, and President Barack Obama should call the Senate back into session — so that it could do things Boehner’s way.

Lost art of acquiring power

Throughout history, powerful speakers of the House have emerged — men who served multiple terms in the office and have buildings named after them. Being speaker for 11 months doesn’t really put a man in a position to tell the Senate majority leader or the president how it is going to be.

What a speaker should be able to do is make a commitment on how his delegation will vote, and there’s ample evidence that Boehner isn’t in a position to do that.

He wants to be the tail wagging the dog, but his tail is wagging him.

This is not a dynamic that bodes well for Congress.

It takes a strong leader to be ready to compromise on difficult issue of state.

The Associated Press quoted a Georgia Republican representative paraphrasing Boehner during a conference call Thursdays afternoon: “He said there comes a time when you’ve got to move on, and this is the time.”

Actually the time was nearly a week ago, after the Senate, in a rare bipartisan vote, approved the two-month extension and signalled that it would take the issue up again in January.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is that the House and Senate are going to have to do exactly that after their holiday recess.

Compromise is a dirty word only to zealots. Most Americans realize that we have to give and take in the interest of the greater good.

Let’s hope that Boehner has learned that lesson at the end of his first year as speaker. The best result would be that during the first months of the new year, all the Washington power brokers place a premium on compromise over gridlock — in the interest of the greater good over politics.