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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

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

“The question,” Bonnie Kristian writes at The Daily Beast, “isn’t whether we want a Republican reckoning or not. It’s whether we want the dream of mass public repentance for bringing Trump to power or the reality of Trump remaining out of power.”

Kristian’s argument, in summary:

Seeking the former “could push wavering Republicans toward a reflexive defense of Trump,” keeping the tank full and the engine running on his attempts to remain relevant.

Letting bygones be bygones, moving on instead of expecting Trump voters to don hair shirts and loudly denounce themselves, on the other hand, might let a (still illiberal) GOP find its way out of the Orange One’s shadow.

Maybe she has a point. On the other hand, she seems to be missing a point as well: American politics is designed to minimize “reckonings” in the form of lasting consequences for massive failures like, say, nominating a Donald Trump for office.

Ballot access laws, debate exclusion measures, and either/or voting (as opposed to, for example, ranked choice) corral voters into a “two-party” system.

Gerrymandering makes some districts safe for one of the two parties; in “swing” districts, party loyalty may make small moves at the margins, but it’s still either/or, not “how about something else?”

Fixed terms (four years for president, six for Senate, two for House), as opposed to snap elections when the president loses a vote of confidence, mean we’re stuck for long periods with the same faces.

Maybe you’d just like to leave? That’s fine, if you’re willing and able to fly to another country, fork over hundreds of dollars to file a statement renouncing your citizenship, pay an “exit tax” on assets you take with you, and continue paying US income taxes for ten years. And your exit won’t change the system, even to the extent that it frees you from that system.

Political “reckonings” have become short-term inconveniences. Americans under 30 years of age or so missed an era when one party (the Democrats) controlled both houses of Congress for nearly 40 years. These days, control of one or both houses changes at least once per decade.

Even after nominating, electing, and re-nominating Trump, the Republican “reckoning” lasted only two years before they regained control of the House. And we can expect that slow teeter-totter to continue indefinitely with neither party taking a hard enough bump to be thrown off.

Could substantial reforms “fix” that problem? Maybe. Ranked choice voting, un-gerrymandered districting and/or proportional representation, and repeal of draconian ballot access laws would at least open the system up to real alternatives.

The bigger question is whether the system is WORTH fixing. The history of political government says no — that we’re better off without it.

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