By David A. Patten and Ronald Kessler

When the white house made the curious announcement that it was putting its willingness to work with Congress “behind us,” it wasn’t long before Team Obama demonstrated what that meant. Teleprompter in tow, the president paid a high-profile visit to the aging and heavily trafficked Brent Spence Bridge over the Ohio River near the home district of House Speaker John Boehner.

“Mr. Boehner,” Obama railed, “help us rebuild this bridge. Help us rebuild America. Help us put this country back to work. Pass this jobs bill right away!” As political gamesmanship goes, trying to embarrass a sitting speaker in his own district is about as confrontational as it gets.

Obama’s effort to blame Boehner and Republicans for the dead-on-arrival status of his half-trillion-dollar jobs bill — legislation so toxic that even Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was reluctant to bring it to the Senate floor — seemed designed to goad Boehner into a petty squabble. But if the objective was to provoke a tempest that could be used to paint House Republicans as extremists, the maneuver proved to be one bridge too far.

“I’m glad the president has brought attention to this much-needed project,” the equable Boehner replied the next day. “But now is not the time for the president to go into campaign mode. Earlier this week, the White House said that the governing phase is behind them. For the sake of American families and small businesses who are struggling, I certainly hope this isn’t so. They have every right to expect us to solve the problems that we have, rather than run away from them.”

Voters were left with the image of a president pointing to a bridge — while burning his bridges with Congress. Boehner came off as more presidential than Obama, some analysts said.

That Boehner has proven himself a more formidable figure than the White House initially expected should have been evident from the speech he gave following the 2010 GOP landslide that handed him the speaker’s gavel.

Instead of pounding his chest over the victory, Boehner talked with touching humility about the heartland values that comprise the fabric of his personal tapestry. And he cautioned his fellow Republicans that it was no time to celebrate.

“We can celebrate when we have a government that has earned the trust of the people that it serves, when we have a government that honors the Constitution, and stands up for the values . . . like liberty, and personal responsibility.

“I’ve spent my whole life chasing the American dream. As a lot of you know, I started out mopping floors, waiting tables, and tending bar in my dad’s tavern. I put myself through school working every rotten job there was, and every night shift I could find. And I poured my heart and soul into running a small business.”

Together, Boehner and Obama personify the clash of values that define America in 2012 and beyond. The contrasts could hardly be clearer. Boehner is from the Midwest and exemplifies its values. Obama hails from Hawaii and Illinois, blue states that lean strongly left.

The character of one was formed in a close-knit family of 14. He thrived on interaction with siblings, customers of his family’s business, and gridiron comrades. The other was a single child coddled by his grandparents and mother.

One earned his degree working part-time jobs, and went on to make his fortune running his own small business. The other was educated in the best school in Hawaii (Punahou School in Honolulu, which Obama described as a “fancy prep school”), attended the elite Ivy League universities Columbia and Harvard, and quickly ascended a professional ladder whose rungs were labeled community organizer, lawyer, college professor, best-selling author (writing two autobiographies before the age of 45 without a significant professional accomplishment to his name), and finally, Oprah-backed political celebrity.

In many ways, Obama has become the perfect foil for Boehner. While the president positions himself as the champion of disadvantaged, blue-collar folks struggling to better themselves, it is Boehner, rather than Obama, who has actually lived the narrative.  Their political visions of America’s future offer an equally stark contrast.

Boehner sees himself as a guardian for the American dream, and fears that expansive federal government may crush the private sector, making a success story like his own unachievable for future generations.

Obama was not without challenges and suffering himself. As a newborn, he was abandoned by his father. He was raised partly in Third-World Indonesia. He spent years separated from his own mother, living with his grandparents. He has acknowledged feeling the sting of racism, and said his mother had to live on food stamps. She died at just 52 of ovarian cancer.

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Obama sees himself as the crusader and protector of America’s underclass. As such, he has pushed for arguably the largest expansion of federal power and bureaucracy in the history of the nation, to achieve his aim of social justice for society’s disadvantaged.

“I’m a product of the free-enterprise system,” said Boehner in an interview during a November visit to Newsmax’s West Palm Beach, Fla., headquarters. “I went to Congress because I thought the free-enterprise system was under assault. I went there to get the government off the backs of American business, because it’s the American capitalist system that’s provided opportunities for all of our citizens unlike any other country.”

oehner’s lifelong walk with heartland values began in southwest Ohio not far from Cincinnati. One of 12 brothers and sisters, he grew up cleaning floors and doing odd jobs for the family business, Andy’s Cafe, named after his grandfather. Located in Carthage, Ohio, the “tavern” actually was a family establishment where parents would bring their kids.

Boehner’s sister Lynda Meineke still works there, and she says the stereotype of Boehner could hardly be more off. “They think he’s a rich guy who’s got this tan, goes into tanning beds, plays golf all the time, goes to the country club,” Meineke told ABCNews.com, adding, “That’s not John Boehner.”

In fact, the Boehner family was steeped in the values of the cultural heartland. The oldest of the children, Bob, says their parents taught them a simple message: “As long as you work hard and play by the rules every day, you’ll achieve your dreams.” The Boehner household, with a dozen kids growing up in a two-bedroom home on Hill Street in blue-collar Reading, Ohio, relied on a cistern rather than running water. Their parents slept on a pullout couch in the living room. With the family focused on minding the tavern, one of the kids had to assume a leadership role. That somebody was John Boehner.

Each day, he made sure his siblings had completed their chores and their homework, stayed in line, and went to bed on time. Some say he became something of a co-parent, continually focusing on the best interests of the family, rather than on himself. “John was the disciplinarian,” says childhood friend Jerry Vanden Eynden, who recalls occasionally letting Boehner slip over to his house for a shower. “Whenever [his brothers and sisters] saw him coming, they’d head to the woods and hide. They were afraid he would spell out what their chores were.”

Boehner played linebacker and center for a local football legend, coach Gerry Faust, at Cincinnati’s Archbishop Moeller High School. At Moeller, a Catholic prep school run by the Marianists, students were required to attend daily Mass. He graduated in 1968, just as the Vietnam War entered full bloom.

Boehner enlisted in the U.S. Navy, but was honorably discharged eight weeks later due to a back injury — an infirmity that continued to bother him until he underwent back surgery a few years ago.

Boehner wanted to go to college, but his family couldn’t afford the tuition. He resolved to work as many shifts as possible on “every rotten job there was,” to put himself through Xavier University. It took him seven grueling years. “I was determined, I was miserable, and I didn’t have anything,” Boehner says of his early years. “I was trying to make something out of nothing.”

One of those rotten jobs was tidying up the offices of the William S. Merrell Chemical Company in Cincinnati, which became Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals.

In the summer of 1972, while working the late shift as a janitor in the customer service department, he happened upon a young employee named Debbie Gunlack. “I was changing the accounts over,” she recalled, “and he was emptying my garbage in his khakis.”

At a company softball game, Debbie later would notice how very blue the janitor’s eyes were. A few months later, Boehner asked Debbie out. They went to see The Sound of Music. Boehner, who had been working long hours, dozed off in the middle of the movie.

In April 1973, John and Debbie got engaged. They were wed in September. Still married after 38 years, they have two daughters, Lindsay and Tricia.

By the time he graduated from Xavier, Boehner had been promoted to Merrell Dow’s purchasing department. That’s where he met Dave Kessler, the owner of Nucite Sales, a packaging and plastics firm that sold corrugated boxes. Kessler loved Boehner’s can-do personality, and offered him a sales job at Nucite. This was the small business Boehner “poured my heart and soul into.” Boehner and the company succeeded in tandem. After Kessler passed away, his family agreed to let Boehner buy the firm on friendly terms.

The year 1978 marked Boehner’s political conversion. Until then, he was a scion of Kennedy Democrats. But that year, his federal tax bill exceeded his entire gross income from just two years earlier. Always mindful of the bottom line, Boehner began questioning just how much the government could encroach on people’s lives. About that time, a former actor-turned-politician named Ronald Reagan got his attention.

“When Ronald Reagan came along, I thought he kinda fit my idea of what government ought to look like,” he recalls. “In 1980, I was a big supporter of Ronald Reagan in the primaries.”

His political conversion complete and his finances secure, Boehner got into politics. In 1982, he won a seat on the board of trustees of Union Township, now called West Chester. From 1985 to 1990, he served in the Ohio State Legislature. George H.W. Bush was president when Boehner first won election to Congress in 1990. But Boehner wasn’t headed to Washington to pad his resume or play establishment politics.

Boehner became a member of the Gang of Seven who, along with then-GOP Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, blew the lid off the House bank’s practice of allowing members of Congress to kite checks, effectively providing them with zero-interest loans of indefinite term. The subsequent investigation resulted in closure of the bank, and in the wake of the scandal four former members of Congress were convicted of various charges. Also exposed were abuses of House post office privileges, as well as the habit some members had of dining in the House restaurant without paying their bills.

Today, when people call him a member of the old guard, Boehner just smiles. “I was a reformer before it was cool,” he explains.

A few months ago, he says, a couple of the more rambunctious members of his conference paid him a visit to make sure they hadn’t crossed the line.

“They came over one day to say, ‘Hey, we don’t mean to be a problem,’” Boehner says. “I said, ‘Listen guys, you have no idea what a problem is. I’ve been a problem. I know what a problem is.’”

As headstrong as his tea-party steeped caucus can be, none of them has put members of Congress behind bars. Like young John Boehner and his colleagues did. 

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oehner’s reputation as a reformer propelled him to his first taste of congressional power, but also to his first fall from grace. One of the fascinating aspects of Boehner’s resume is that twice before becoming speaker, he crashed so hard that it looked like his career could be over.

Boehner joined forces with Gingrich and Dick Armey to help craft the Contract With America that helped Republicans take over Congress. After Gingrich and the GOP rose to power in the 1994 elections, upending 48 years of Democratic domination of Congress, it was understandable that GOP leaders tapped the ambitious young legislator from Ohio to serve as House Republican Conference chair. That made Boehner the No. 4 GOP leader in the Gingrich Congress — heady stuff for a congressman just elected to his third term.

The rush of that ride at the pinnacle of power came to a rude halt in the 1998 midterm, however. Voters punished Republicans that year for their role in shutting down normal government operations in a brinksmanship scenario not unlike the recent impasse over the deficit, although it went much further. Gingrich has maintained the shutdown led to balancing the federal budget. Polls, however, indicated voters were displeased with the GOP’s crusade against then-President Bill Clinton.

House Republicans lost five seats in that election, the first time since 1934 that the party not holding the White House lost seats in a midterm election. And for a debacle like that, there would be hell to pay.

In the political carnage that followed, Gingrich left Congress. Boehner was ousted as conference chair.

According to New Yorker magazine, Boehner told Chief of Staff Barry Jackson that he intended to move on, rather than retire. “I just walked out of the room, I looked at Barry, and I said, ‘We’re just gonna put our heads down, and we’re gonna work our way back.’”

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Boehner rolled up his sleeves as chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee. Working with politicians on both sides of the aisle, he played a key role in the Bush-era No Child Left Behind act, thereby establishing his reputation as an effective legislator who could manage complex legislation and get things done. 

Boehner’s political revival appeared complete in February 2006, when he leveraged his personal popularity and long record of opposing earmarks into a successful campaign for GOP majority leader.

But his return from the political wilderness was destined to be short-lived. That November, buoyed by a serious case of Bush fatigue, Democrats recaptured control of the House. Boehner found himself in the minority once again. “We are going to smile, we are going to work hard, and earn our way back,” the new minority leader declared.

But when Obamamania broke out following Sen. John McCain’s 2008 defeat, most Beltway wags figured Boehner and his colleagues would be back-benchers for a long time, possibly decades. That they were wrong is largely attributable to events associated with April 15, 2009.

That day, Boehner attended a routine fundraiser in Bakersfield, Calif. A new group of activists worried about the rapid expansion of government would be on hand. Boehner expected a few hundred might turn out.

Instead, thousands thronged to the event. The crowd was speckled with those black-and-mustard Gadsden flags, with the slogan, “Don’t Tread on Me.” Protesters cheered Boehner’s anti-Washington message, and waved signs that proclaimed “TEA — Taxed Enough Already.”

To Boehner, the birth of the tea parties was one of those moments when you hear choir music and see cathedral columns of sunlight streaming through the clouds.

It was a revelation, a political godsend. Folks in Washington could call him one of the Beltway’s old guard if they wanted. But John Boehner had spent too many nights sweeping floors and emptying garbage cans not to recognize genuine heartland sentiment when he saw it. These tea party folks, he sensed, were for real.

Boehner rushed back to Washington and advised his GOP colleagues that the tea parties were a serious force to reckon with.

During a closed-door meeting of his conference, he said: “I urge you to get in touch with these efforts and connect with them.” Prophetically, he also predicted, “The people participating in these protests will be the soldiers for our cause a year from now.”

Boehner’s visceral understanding and support for the burgeoning grass-roots conservative movement would bear its bitter fruit for Democrats in the 2010 midterms, as Republicans gained 63 seats in the worst drubbing for Democrats since 1938.

The GOP wave of historic proportions also sent John Boehner to a podium on the evening of Nov. 2, where he spoke as the presumptive 61st speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

hen it became clear in the fall that Republicans might win the majority, the White House’s response was predictable. It tried to caricature Boehner as a rich, well-tanned Republican who didn’t care about poor people. In one speech, Obama mentioned Boehner nine times.

“There were no new policies from Mr. Boehner,” the president said. “There was just the same philosophy that we had already tried during the decade that they were in power — the same philosophy that led to this mess in the first place: cut more taxes for millionaires and cut more rules for corporations.”

Team Obama’s attempt to turn him into a bogeyman proved to be too much of a stretch.

Boehner’s pursuit of the American dream, his rise from nothing economically, and his reputation as a reasonable conservative who worked well with his many friends on the other side of the aisle, including the late liberal icon Ted Kennedy — none of these fit. Even former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called Boehner a “good speaker” who “understands how you get things done in Washington.”

Boehner’s financial disclosures show his net worth between $1.8 and $4.7 million. But while his predecessor Nancy Pelosi lives in a three-story Georgetown manse, Boehner maintains a basement apartment on Capitol Hill. Each morning, he sits at the counter at Pete’s Diner and engages in small talk with the ladies behind the counter, who have dubbed him “John-John.” He irons his own shirts, mows his own lawn. He flies commercial.

Indeed, Democrats have praised Boehner’s shift back to a more open Congress, with rules allowing members to offer amendments. Steny Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat and House minority whip, is one of his longtime friends. James Clyburn, D-S.C., is an occasional golfing partner.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, gives Boehner much of the credit for the GOP’s resurgence. “Because of his leadership,” he said, “Republicans took back the House, bringing Republicans back into the majority. He was able to do it by keeping all of the Republicans together against healthcare, against the stimulus package, against ‘cap and trade.’”

And significantly for Norquist, whose no new tax pledge has become the sine qua non of conservative credentials, Boehner has steadfastly refused to raise taxes. Beltway media suggest many Republicans feel imprisoned by Norquist’s pledge. But Boehner is a true believer in its constraints, and talks proudly of his stubbornness on the issue. “Washington has a spending problem,” he insists, “not a revenue problem.”

 Soon after the Republicans took control of the House, a top Democratic strategist told Newsmax that the White House’s initial strategy was to sit back and wait for an intra-party civil war to break out between the GOP and its incoming tea party members. Boehner knew he had to find a way to channel that grass-roots energy, or it could lead to the Republican fratricide the White House eagerly anticipated. His bid to win over the tea parties began with his longstanding support for banning earmarks. It was a useful way to remind those grass-roots purists that John Boehner really had been a reformer when reforming wasn’t cool.

In 1998, Boehner witnessed first-hand the havoc such a collision could cause at the polls. If he could avoid handing Obama the same political gift that former Speaker Gingrich gave to Clinton, Obama would have to either run on his record despite sky-high unemployment, or stick to class warfare that was so discordant with the post-partisan theme of his 2008 campaign.

In his Newsmax interview, Boehner pushes back against the notion that he’s been low-key:  “We have made it clear from the beginning that this is not going to be about me, and it’s not going to be about us as Republicans. Our job is to listen to the American people and to follow their will. That’s what we published in our Pledge to America, and that’s exactly what we’re doing. I’ve been working with my colleagues to deliver on what we promised the American people we’d deliver. And that’s lower taxes, less spending, and everything we can do to slow down the regulatory onslaught that we’re seeing out of this administration.”

Boehner used the series of budget showdowns in 2011 to educate his new members regarding the limitations they faced with control of just one-half of one branch of the government. At the same time, he worked to help them politically, consolidating his conservative support in the process.

“I think these very conservative newcomers really thought John Boehner was the ultimate fat-cat, establishment Republican who was only there to keep and hold power,” says The Hill Associate Editor A.B. Stoddard. “He might not have won over Tea Party Patriots, but under the Capitol dome he has won over the tea party-backed freshmen in strong numbers.”

Conservative standard-bearer Rep. Paul Ryan, for example, gives Boehner the grass-roots stamp of approval, calling him “a sincerely conservative person.” Ryan praises Boehner for “executing and getting things done.”

Kenneth Duberstein, the former White House chief of staff for Ronald Reagan, has seen  speakers come and go. He offers Boehner high praise. “I think he is absolutely right-on as speaker of the House,” Duberstein tells Newsmax. “He understands what America is thinking right now. And I’m not talking about the left coast and the right coast. I’m talking about the heartland of America.”

Boehner’s ability to unite his conference is all the more impressive considering the flak he’s received almost continuously from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., ever since Obama abandoned his brief flirtation with centrist governance in the aftermath of the 2010 “shellacking.”

After the two leaders had a close encounter with a “grand bargain” on entitlement reform in July 2011, Boehner charged that the president suddenly “moved the goal post” by insisting on new tax revenues. According to sources close to Boehner, the president’s deficit-reduction numbers were always inflated by the always-anticipated $1 trillion “savings” that would result from not endlessly continuing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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ources say boehner has continually expressed frustration, sometimes exasperation, in dealing with the Obama White House. “The speaker has said more than once he doesn’t know who’s in charge over there and who speaks for the president. It was true under Rahm [Emanuel] and continues under [Bill] Daley. You can’t take anything they say, or any senior staffer, to the bank, because the president changes his mind all the time,” said a source close to the speaker.

Personal politics sometimes can cut through a path cluttered by partisanship. But Boehner and Obama, so different in background, policy, and approach, have never developed the rapport that Reagan and former House Speaker Tip O’Neill were able to forge, a relationship that led to significant legislative successes for both sides.

But Obama’s problem may be larger than Boehner. Democrats openly speak of their president as alienated and reserved. A Washington Post story in October was headlined “Obama the Loner.” The paper quotes one Democratic operative as saying of the president, “He just hates politics and politicians.” A senior ambassador, a political appointee close to Michelle and Barack, recently told Newsmax that he was negative about the president’s re-election chances.

The Obama friend said the president “doesn’t like to schmooze” and “he doesn’t like seeing a lot of people. He prefers going upstairs [to the residence] and reading a book. He’s an intellectual.”

As Election Day grows closer minus legislative successes that might have helped turn the corner on the economic crisis, Obama continues to practice what Ryan calls “the politics of division.” Ryan warns that Obama’s willingness to blame successful people, rather than encouraging others to emulate them, “is undermining the American idea.”

Republicans point to the Occupy Wall Street sit-ins as evidence that an entire generation of Americans could be lost, due to confused notions about how to get ahead in society.

As the year drew to a close, with the nation still gripped by chronically high unemployment, the president’s strategists shifted tactics. Boehner’s politesse in dealing with his grass-roots members had thwarted their hopes for a GOP civil war. So they tacked left, adopting populist rhetoric on class divisions in society, in order to energize the Democratic base and take voters’ attention off the dismal economy.

For months, Obama barnstormed the country blaming Republicans for holding up trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama, knowing full well that his administration had not yet submitted the deals to Congress due to stiff union opposition.

Yet it was Republicans, not Democrats, who rallied behind those agreements once the administration finally sent them up. Insiders consider Boehner’s ability to deliver more than 218 votes on all three trade bills to be one of his most impressive accomplishments.

The South Korean trade deal alone was expected to add 70,000 jobs, leaving Republicans to question why the agreements weren’t submitted to Congress sooner.

Passing the trade agreements validated Boehner’s steady-as-she-goes approach, in contrast to the expensive, transformative overhauls favored by Obama.

The president upped his rhetoric a notch in September, when he gave a high-profile speech in defense of his half-trillion-dollar jobs-stimulus bill. He characterized Boehner’s resistance to raising taxes as “not smart” and “not right.” Boehner’s measured riposte: “I don’t think I would describe class warfare as leadership.”

A few weeks later, with unemployment still stuck at 9 percent, Obama left Washington for a swing-state bus tour to brand Republicans as obstructionists. Obama said congressional Republicans had no plan to address unemployment. Boehner politely called the president to remind him that Republicans had offered their plan back in May.

In fact, Republican leaders cited 22 job-related bills passed by the House that remained stuck in the Democratic Senate, noting the upper chamber had not passed a budget in nearly 1,000 days.

That same month, Obama unsheathed his latest rhetorical stiletto, charging Republicans opposed to his jobs plan were unpatriotic. “It’s time to put country ahead of party,” Obama declared. “It’s time to put the next generation ahead of the next election.”

Considering that presidential salvo, Newsmax asked Speaker Boehner what he believes lies ahead if Obama wins a return trip to the White House. “I don’t think the country can afford four more years of President Obama,” Boehner said.

Ever mindful of the swing voters who will decide 2012, Boehner hastened to add that the president has a tough job. “My job isn’t to make it more difficult,” he said. “My job is to help work with him to get things accomplished for the American people.”

ne of the recurring themes from Boehner of late is the importance of renewing the American dream. He is worried it may not be as available to future generations as it was for him. Voters apparently agree: 74 percent of them now say the nation is on the wrong track.

Boehner says that the president, with his paucity of private sector experience, “doesn’t understand the country we live in and what makes it go. He’s got this belief government plays a giant role in our economy.”

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, says Boehner understands what Obama does not.

“Speaker Boehner, who grew up with his dad’s business, with a bunch of brothers and sisters, he gets the free market,” Jordan says. “He gets the work ethic. He gets the idea that the private sector creates jobs.

“That is the fundamental difference: Do you believe in big federal government, or do you believe in the private sector? Do you believe in bureaucrats in Washington, or do you believe in families and communities? We believe in families and communities.”

Or as Boehner himself puts it: “In America you really can grow up to be anything you want to be, and do anything that you want to do. There’s no limit on what you can achieve.”

President Obama harbors a very different view of the American dream, what it means, and how to achieve it. Which leader’s values prevail in November may determine whether or not America remains the land of opportunity that Speaker Boehner envisions.

As originally published in Newsmax magazine.

photo credits: Opening Photo, Boehner/bill clark/cq-roll call group/getty images / obam speacha/ap images / boehner FAMILY/MICHAEL E. KEATING/THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER / PATIO/PETE SOUZA/WHITE HOUSE VIA CNP/NEWSCOM / boehner timeline/COURTESY OF SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE JOHH A. BOEHNER / GINGRICH/SCOTT J. FERRELL/CQ-ROLL CALL bush signing/CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY/getty images / BOEHNER inset photo/KRT/NEWSCOM / BUSH/AP IMAGES / pelosi & boehner/AP IMAGES / boehner in office/THE WASHINGTON POST/getty images / boehner with kettle/MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES / pelosi, ryan, clyburn, jordan, blakeman/MARK WILSON/AP IMAGES / HASKINS/COURTESY OF BROOKINGS INSTITUTION / boehner apartment/AP IMAGES / diner/pete marovich/zumapress / Afghanistan/AP IMAGES