Almost a year ago now, John Boehner, then third in line to the presidency, wept beside Pope Francis as he addressed a joint session of Congress. That night, as he left the Capitol, he told two reporters that he had nothing left to do as Speaker of the House, since he’d already brought the pontiff to Washington. The next day, he announced that he was stepping down, quietly returning to private life as an average Ohio Republican with much more time on his hands than he was used to.
It seems like there was something else for Boehner to accomplish, however, and that something is helping Big Tobacco. Reynolds American, the company that makes Newport and Camel, announced Thursday that the former House Speaker is joining its board of directors, effective immediately.
It’s a perfect gig for Boehner, reportedly a longtime Camel lover, a smoker so fond of the cigarette that Paul Ryan had to fumigate his office when he took over as Speaker. “You know when you ever go to a hotel room or get a rental car that has been smoked in? That’s what this smells like,” Ryan said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press last year, adding that he would likely need an “ozone machine” to “detoxify the environment.” Nancy Pelosi knew the feeling. When she handed over the Speaker’s gavel to Boehner in 2011 and swapped offices with him, the paint had to be peeled of the walls, and all the carpets and curtains replaced in order to remove the tobacco stench clinging to the room, according to The New York Times. A month after Boehner resigned, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recalled fondly the ever-present odor of his Camel-loving conservative. “You could walk out here in the hall and close your eyes and you knew where to walk toward the odor emanating from the former Speaker’s office,” he said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Boehner himself is in on the joke. He appeared in a video with President Barack Obama, filmed for this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner—a spoof in which the president asked the former Speaker for advice as he faced his own pending political end date. The skit ended with Boehner expounding on the virtues of private life—having a beer at 11:30 in the morning, driving around in a truck, working on his tan, and, of course, tempting him with a pair of Camels. Boehner himself told Jay Leno on The Tonight Show in 2014 that he didn’t have any plans to run for president because he didn’t want to give up cigarettes, among other simple pleasures.
“Listen, I like to play golf. I like to cut my own grass. You know, I do drink red wine. I smoke cigarettes. And I’m not giving that up to be the president of the United States,” he said.
Well, in his second act, it seems like Boehner can have a big job—one that, according to CNNMoney, could afford him as much as $1 million a year—and smoke his cigarettes, too. That is all the proof you need that the American dream is alive and well.
