Alright, Now What?
There’s the old story of the dog who spent his days chasing cars. Then one day, the dog catches the car and realizes he doesn’t know what to do with it. Certain television commercials notwithstanding, he can’t drive. So the dog got what he wanted…but had no plan beyond the initial goal.
That story comes to mind as I think about what happened in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday. A group of lawmakers decided it was a good idea to get rid of the Speaker of the House, and 8 of them joined with all Democrats to kick Kevin McCarthy to the curb.
Mission accomplished…but apparently without a plan of what to do next. One certainly has not surfaced, and while obviously there are things behind the scenes none of us know about, it appears to be resolution of a personal grudge without a broader end game.
To a large degree, the now-former Speaker brought much of this on himself. As I’ve said before in various contexts, it seemed to me that Rep. McCarthy wanted to be Speaker of the House…not because it would help effect specific change or a set of proposals, but because he wanted to be Speaker. That was evident in the list of promises made in last year’s campaign—as opposed to the Contract with America a quarter-century before, this was a list of meaningless platitudes that really told us nothing about specific legislative proposals or plans. As it happened, there were no plans, beyond McCarthy becoming Speaker.
In that way, the dog-chasing-and-catching-a-car story applies again.
Instead of focusing on a budget for the fiscal year already underway, with a clock ticking toward mid-November…now the House is in recess for a week to figure out who should hold the gavel. That’s precious time when the situation was already fully chaotic.
Talk about walking right into your opposition’s hands…the Democrats cannot possibly believe their good fortune politically.
Note that in this vote to remove the Speaker, some of the most far-right Republicans voted in lockstep with some of the most far-left Democrats. Instead of those diametrically-opposed sides agreeing on something they should agree on…like a five-year farm bill with provisions for distributing goods to the food insecure in the country…they bond over a political grudge.
That’s not leadership, and not what we as citizens of the greatest nation on Earth deserve. It’s up to all of us to remind them of that.
