Who wouldn’t want to be the Speaker of the House? Third in line to the presidency, the power of appointment to committees, presider of house sessions and a significant platform to grow as a politician. Yet, in recent years, the Speaker of the House position has become a less glorified and less appreciated position. While it does grant power, it also puts a name and face to the inefficiency and incapacity of our government, opening the door for constant and intense scrutiny.
On Oct. 3, 2023, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted from his position as Speaker of the House after eight right-wing Republican Congressmen, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), joined House Democrats in voting to vacate the speaker’s chair. As much as we would like to blame this entire crisis on McCarthy himself, we can’t.
This is a national embarrassment, and fault falls on both Democrats and Republicans.
McCarthy, in my opinion, was not remotely satisfactory as Speaker of the House. His problems can be summarized in a single word: unreliable. He was doomed from the start — making promises to both the moderate and more extreme right.
For example, he was split between the extreme right who argued to stop aid to Ukraine and the moderate right and Democrats who wanted to continue aid. On the other hand, McCarthy abandoned a negotiated spending deal to appease the far-right faction.
As moderate Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC) stated, “I feel like the House was in chaos with Kevin McCarthy. He broke his promises.”
Ultimately, such inconsistency and unreliability led to his downfall.
If we criticize McCarthy for his failure to negotiate and compromise with numerous Congressional factions, we must also turn to the leaders of other factions for their failure to extend the olive branch. Without a doubt, Democrats had a chance to turn this crisis into a turning point for Congress and even further, the entire country. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Democrats had the opportunity to make peace and compromise with Republicans and show that there was at least one competent party in Washington D.C., but they squandered it.
Democrats took a gamble by ousting McCarthy — dismissing him without assurance that a less extreme, less conservative Republican would take power. The recent failed attempts to elect a Speaker of the House show, however, that the next Speaker, like McCarthy, will have to try to keep promises to a multitude of factions. Whether they will be successful in doing so is a whole different story.
