Kevin McCarthy needed 15 tries to confirm him as the speaker of the House of Representatives, which also confirmed America's political dysfunction.
The health of American democracy has been a frequent topic of discussion for the past six years after Donald Trump was picked as the Republican party’s candidate for president. The discussion tends to centre around Trump as he is the face of anti-establishment politics which has increasingly veered into anti-democratic politics since 2020, but as the drama in the House of Representatives shows problems can and do arise even when Trump isn’t actively involved. Those problems, all 15 of them, were in connection to a routine and largely ceremonial vote to elect a speaker. After 14 failed votes Republican Kevin McCarthy became speaker of the house on the 15th try. Why did McCarthy struggle so much, and are there any political reforms which could prevent something similar from happening again?
The reason why McCarthy had such trouble being confirmed for the speakership is the divide in the Republican party. The Republicans have a majority in the House of Representatives since the midterms in November. That majority is slim though, so the Republicans needed a united front to get McCarthy confirmed. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue but since Trump entered the picture the Republican party has seemingly split into at least two camps: the moderates and the Trumpists. McCarthy is generally aligned with the Trumpists but the most hard-line Trumpists consider him a part of the establishment; one of the dissidents reportedly called McCarthy the biggest alligator in the Swamp. To me, when a party is so fractured as to not being able to get enough votes on a parliamentary procedure vote with a majority there’s a real question whether that party can perform its functions at all. Both voters who support the moderate wing of the party to win and those who support the radical wing are being poorly represented by the party. High profile public fights over which individual gets to be speaker are embarrassingly unprofessional for national politicians made all the worse by the fact that the real legislative work of the House of Representatives was held up by this debacle.
The first vote of the post-mid term congress needed 15 tries to pick a speaker. Imagine how many failed votes they’ll have time for during the next two years. The main problem, as alluded to earlier, is that the Republican party is so far from unified as to be functionally two parties under a common name. The Trumpian Republicans and the pre-Trump Republicans have fairly little in common in terms of their political agendas except for being generally on the conservative side of most social issues. If America is to have a functioning political system, I think it needs to formalise the current de facto system of more than two parties. Both the Republican and Democratic parties have more radical cadres which are antagonistic towards the broader party. By splitting the current big tent parties into more focused smaller groupings votes like the recent one over McCarthy’s speakership could be simplified as there are a higher amount of tighter blocs with which to bargain. Not to mention how much better a system of four parties is for the voters. In the current system voting the Democrats means supporting Bernie Sanders, Joe Manchin, and everyone in between. Similarly voting for the Republicans means voting for Liz Cheney, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and everyone in between. It’s hardly surprising that the current system is unwieldly and produces situations like the speakership vote.
These issues aren’t new to the congress which just began, but it has clearly gotten worse recently. I don’t think it’s fair to blame everything on Donald Trump, as the questionable design of many of America’s political institutions and procedures existed long before Trump. Still, his influence has over the past six years really increased the intensity of the political dysfunction. Trump is not going anywhere, so it would be better to work around him than to continue as things were. McCarthy’s start as speaker has certainly been inauspicious. I’d expect more of the same to come.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
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Cover photo by Kendall Hoopes from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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