U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy celebrates with Majority Leader Steve Scalise following passage in the House of a 45-day continuing resolution on Sept. 30 in Washington, D.C.Nathan Howard/Getty Images
Late last week, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy stepped up. Early this week, he confronts the possibility, even the likelihood, that his manoeuvre to avert a government shutdown could mean that he must step down.
The stepping up: The Republican Speaker partnered with Democrats to craft an 11th-hour bipartisan bill that allowed the government to fund its functions and to prevent federal workers from being denied their paycheques, visitors from being denied entry to national parks such as Yosemite and Yellowstone, and essential services from being denied to millions of Americans.
The stepping down: Under current House rules, a single representative can prompt the chamber to declare that the speakership is vacant – possibly forcing Mr. McCarthy to relinquish his presiding gavel, the glittery office suite just off the House floor, the limousine, the security detail and the position he barely won last January after the chaos and upheaval of 15 agonizing ballots.
That effort almost certainly will come this week, followed by a vote on Mr. McCarthy’s future within 48 hours.
“I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican and a leading McCarthy critic, on CNN Sunday. “I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy.”
Mr. McCarthy said on CBS Sunday that “this is personal with Matt” and predicted he would survive as Speaker.
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But at stake over the weekend was not only the fate of Mr. McCarthy, which has been a continuing drama in the Capitol’s fevered politics, or the ability of Republicans, who hunger to regain the White House and may nominate former president Donald Trump to do it, to unite on a basic procedure.
At stake, too, was the U.S. government’s ability to function.
And while American governance has been a maelstrom of mayhem since the Lyndon Johnson presidency – truly, there hasn’t been a moment of political tranquillity, known in Washington as “regular order,” since 1966 – the two parties in earlier eras generally comported themselves with regularity and order, predictability and prudence.
The past week, when a shutdown was avoided by a mere half-hour, provided yet another example of how the United States has been transformed into a 21st-century version of a 16th-century drama where the playwright Christopher Marlowe made an infelicitous reflection on infidelity, writing that the episode “was in another country” and that the love interest involved had perished. The regular order seemed to be in another America, and the governing consensus in the country is dead.
This latest episode, like so many in recent years, was full of contradictions and ironies.
As the danger of a government shutdown grew imminent – hours to go! – Mr. McCarthy did not consult with the Republican leader in the Senate, which under congressional rules must accede to the exact language, down to the comma, of any bill for legislation to become law. The Speaker could not corral Republicans to forestall an embarrassment that would redound to the disadvantage of their party. Mr. McCarthy was forced to appeal, figurative hat in hand, to the Democrats who revile and disrespect him, to fashion a last-ditch effort to avert a calamitous outcome.
Now, he faces the mortifying possibility that he will be removed from office – “fragged,” in the parlance of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, who employed the term to mean an attack on an officer by his own troops.
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While no speaker has been removed through a declaration of vacancy, speaker Joe Cannon in 1910 fought off such an effort. Facing an internal rebellion, the canny Illinois Republican himself supported a move to vacate the office, thereby putting his detractors in a tough spot. He prevailed, and today the House office building that customarily is assigned to the least senior members of the chamber – and thus many of Mr. McCarthy’s foes – is named for him. Two tentative 21st-century efforts to vacate the chair never materialized.
The current possibility that Mr. McCarthy will be ousted dates to the concessions he made to win his office in the first place. In those negotiations, the rebels insisted, and won, the right to call for a vote on the speaker’s tenure if a single lawmaker insisted upon it. Such a resolution is termed “privileged” because other House business must be set aside and the matter taken up immediately.
In a sense, Mr. McCarthy brought this crisis upon himself, first in January and again on Saturday.
By consorting with Democrats, he asserted himself as, in his phrase, the “adult in the room.” But he also courted the enmity of rebels such as Mr. Gaetz. He knew the peril.
“It’s all right that Republicans and Democrats joined to do what is right,” he said Saturday. “If someone wants to make a motion, bring it,” he added, referring to his potential removal as speaker.
Mr. Gaetz now will bring it.
The Speaker can afford only three other Republican defections besides Mr. Gaetz to survive – unless Mr. McCarthy, desperate again, doffs his hat of pity again and appeals (begs, really) Democrats to save him.
The unanswered question, one among many as the new month begins, is whether a slim survival will strengthen him – or weaken him even more.