The speaker in waiting was waiting to speak, perched atop a bale of hay on a small platform outside the Spread Eagle Tavern, where the windows were draped with patriotic red, white and blue bunting.

Back in his home state on the weekend before the biggest election of his career, John A. Boehner absent-mindedly flicked a hand through his hair, though it was already perfectly in place. He listened as one local conservative after another railed against Washington and the federal government and the Congress that Mr. Boehner has inhabited for 18 years, only to emerge now, perhaps improbably, as the face of much hungered-for change.

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