The president called three times to speak with Boehner about his latest offer, according to Woodward. But the speaker didn’t return the president’s phone call for most of an agonizing day, in what Woodward calls a “monumental communications lapse” between two of the most powerful men in the country.
When Boehner finally did call back, he jettisoned the entire deal. Obama lost his famous cool, according to Woodward, with a “flash of pure fury” coming from the president; one staffer in the room said Obama gripped the phone so tightly he thought he would break it…
“I was pretty angry,” the president told Woodward about the breakdown in negotiations. “There’s no doubt I thought it was profoundly irresponsible, at that stage, not to call me back immediately and let me know what was going on.”
The failure of Obama to connect with Boehner was vaguely reminiscent of another phone call late in the evening of Election Day 2010, after it became clear that the Republicans would take control of the House, making Boehner Speaker of the House.
Nobody in the Obama orbit could even find the soon-to-be-speaker’s phone number, Woodward reports.
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