A week into 2023, The New York Times has gotten perspective on the news from further back than one week.

In the newspaper’s January 7-8 weekend edition, Carlos Lozada took “A Peek Behind the Curtain of American History” via a deep dive into Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past.  (Not to be confused with Richard Shenkman’s Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History from 1989.)

The longtime editor of The Washington Post‘s 5 Myths series acknowledges that “some myths serve a valid purpose” when they provide a narrative for facts rather than being mere falsehoods, or akin to what Nigel Andrews called political spin “somewhere between the simple truth and the possible souping-up” in the Arnold Schwarzenegger biography True Myths.

Lozada pushes for a more complex interpretation; even focusing on outright deceptions from the right-of-center aisle of American politics implies that “left-wing activists and politicians in the United States never construct and propagate their own self-affirming versions of the American story.” Ironically, Lozada buttresses conservative framings while determined to push back against them.

Lozada lists “notions that free enterprise is inseparable from broader American freedoms” among the “myths peddled or exaggerated, for nefarious purposes, by the right.” While Trump slapped tariffs on Canadian imports that literally provided the paper on which dissenting views were printed, his opponents extended their dismission of free trade to civil liberties in general (earlier American left leaders like Henry George supported both.)

Lozada and Myth America contributor Eric Rauchway consider the New Deal unfairly maligned by misguided reactionaries, reinforcing what Ronald Radosh dubbed “The Myth of the New Deal.” That two of the essays forming the basis for Radosh’s were Barton Bernstein’s “The New Deal: The Conservative Achievements of Liberal Reform” and Howard Zinn’s “The Limits of the New Deal” —  and that Radosh saw them as understating the failure of the New Deal to break with the status quo — indicates how far it was from a partisan potshot.

“The Myth of the New Deal” was part of A New History of Leviathan, in which coeditors Radosh and Murray Rothbard attempted to “transcend the ideological myths that enable the large corporations to mask their hegemony over American society.” Rothbard balanced Radosh’s uncovering of the corporatist nature of the New Deal with a retrospective on how its policies amplified those set in motion by Franklin Roosevelt’s supposed antithesis, Herbert Hoover.

Marvin Gettleman and David Mermelstein observed that “although Rothbard’s critique is based upon a belief in the kind of free-market, laissez-faire principles that are usually associated with the political ‘right,’ many of the points he makes could easily be assented to by the ‘new left'” to which those editors of The Great Society Reader: The Failure of American Liberalism belonged.

If, as Chris Matthew Sciabarra noted in 2005, “mainstream politics offers no genuine opposition to FDR’s Old ‘New Deal’ or Bush’s New ‘Old Deal'” equally committed to “massive government intervention,” that may be because it has forgotten the old lessons of the New Left.

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

1. “In 2023, myths are true lies and new deals are old” by Joel Schlosberg, Newton, Iowa Daily News, January 12, 2023
2. “In 2023, myths are true lies and new deals are old” by Joel Schlosberg, Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman [Wasilla, Alaska], January 12, 2023
3. “In 2023, myths are true lies” by Thomas L. Knapp [sic], The Madill, Oklahoma Record, January 12, 2023

After four days of acrimony and 15 ballots, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) finally became Speaker of the House early on January 7. Yay! Congress is finally back in business! Gridlock ends! The republic is saved!

Well, not really.  The whole sorry exercise was just another attempt to compete with professional wrestling for the attention of entertainment-seekers. Congress, unfortunately, was never OUT of business, except for exactly as long as, and precisely to the extent that,  it CHOSE to be out of business, for the purpose of attracting attention to its own supposed importance.

How vital is the position of Speaker? What’s its role and function? What can or cannot happen while the office remains vacant?

The answer to all those questions is “whatever Congress decides.”

For nearly 200 years, the position of Speaker was referenced a grand total of once in the US Constitution, in Article I, Section 2:  “The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers.”

It wasn’t until 1967, when the 25th Amendment was ratified, that the Constitution ascribed any particular significance to the position at all, and that significance is fairly minor (he or she is one of the officials to be notified of presidential incapacity).

Apart from that single specific role, everything defaults to Article I, Section 5: “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.”

The only reason the House couldn’t swear in new members, consider and pass legislation, etc., until a Speaker was elected was that that’s how the House chooses to do things.

Nor was there any reason the House couldn’t have chosen to do things differently, even in the middle of the chaos.

The only conceivable — and exceedingly unlikely — material fallout from the position remaining vacant indefinitely would be if the president or vice-president had needed to let the Speaker know that the president was incapacitated, or if both the president AND the vice-president were incapacitated or killed and a Speaker was needed to fill the office of president. In which case the remaining anti-McCarthy holdouts in the Republican camp would have knuckled under in minutes rather than in days.

At any time in that four-day pageant, a majority of the House could have changed its rules to let it pick the Speaker by, say, drawing names from a hat. Or to proceed with the chamber’s other business and hold weekly votes to eventually fill the position. Or any sizable group of Democrats or Republicans could have changed their votes to elect McCarthy, or Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), or for that matter you or me (the Speaker need not be a House member).

What finally broke the impasse? Two things:

First, once the thing really got going, Republicans weren’t going to let it stop on January 6, the anniversary of the 2021 Capitol riot.

Second, once they were past January 6, they weren’t going to delay further and risk letting Saturday’s NFL schedule steal their thunder.

Which should tell you all you need to know about the ratio of drama to substance. It was just another TV show, folks.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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A peremptory order from former US president Donald Trump appeared on his personal social media platform on January 4: “[I]t’s now time for all of our GREAT Republican House members to VOTE FOR KEVIN, CLOSE THE DEAL, TAKE THE VICTORY.”

Effect: Zero.

Rebellious Republicans — including some of the Trumpier than Trump variety — continued to vote against electing Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as the new Speaker of the House. As I write this, McCarthy has failed of election on six consecutive ballots, and only God knows how long the circus will continue.

Whatever one thinks of McCarthy, or of who should be elected Speaker, or of the consequences of continued delay in choosing someone, Trump’s decreasing influence over the Republican Party seems worthy of note.

With at least some justification, many Democrats credited — and, more importantly, many Republicans blamed — Trump for the 2022 midterm election’s Mysterious Vanishing Red Wave. Democrats increased their majority in the US Senate instead of losing that majority, and Republicans seized a slim, rather than fat, majority in the House.

His 2024 presidential campaign announcement, shortly after the midterm trickle, came off more as a wet firecracker than an explosive development.

Even some of his staunchest supporters met his next major “major announcement” — Donald Trump superhero trading card NFTs! — with a mixture of scorn and disbelief. Although the NFTs quickly sold out at $99 a pop (putting more than $4 million in Trump’s pocket), then rocketed in price on the secondary market, they’ve since lost about 75% of that early value.

Ever since the GOP’s 2018 midterm losses, we’ve heard the question — and the plea — on a near-daily basis: When, oh when, will Republicans abandon Donald Trump?

Scandals weren’t enough. His supporters in the electorate made it clear that his values and behavior were irrelevant in the face of their desire to “own the libs.”

Policy differences weren’t enough. His supporters in Congress made it clear that they’d discard any and all supposed Republican principles on command, or at least continue to back him if HE did so.

Even two impeachments and several publicly confessed crimes weren’t enough. His supporters in the electorate and in Congress made it clear they considered him above the law.

Losing (or at least not winning very much) in the 2018 midterms, the 2020 presidential election, and the 2022 midterms didn’t LOOK like it was enough, at least until now.

And even now, I think there’s a bigger factor: Boredom.

It’s taken six years, but Trump’s whiny, spoiled, sore-loser shtick finally feels less like a rallying cry for angry Americans and more like the persistent, annoying buzz of a gnat in one’s ear on a hot summer day.

My prediction: By the end of 2023, the boilerplate GOP response to Donald Trump’s name (which Democrats will of course continue to invoke as often they think politically profitable) will be “Donald who?”

Personally, I think that’s a good thing.

On the other hand, forgetting Trump isn’t the same thing as letting go of TrumpISM as either touchstone or bete noire. That’s going to take longer.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY