For three weeks, the House of Representatives has been in uncharted territory. Now we have newly installed Speaker, Mike Johnson, a new pitcher on a very old mound.
The Framers didn’t envision a two-party system when they wrote the Constitution, and they certainly didn’t envision the same politicians remaining leaders of their caucuses for ten or twenty years, as has become common in Congress.
They expected to have leadership votes after every national election. There’s precious little indication that they anticipated dozens and dozens of ballots like we’ve had in this speakership, but then, there’s precious little indication that it would have bothered them.
We now expect Congress to vote on new bills every day. We measure our representatives by how much they have proposed, sponsored, passed, accomplished. They’re always spending money for this, establishing that, auditing this and holding a hearing on that.
They’re always keeping themselves busy – and keeping a massive 4 million-strong federal workforce (some 2.8 million civilian and 1.3 million active duty military) very busy as well.
The Founders did not plan for that.
If they were to see our current government in action, they would probably jump for joy at the thought of a month without a Speaker – a month in which no new spending bills could be proposed. And they might have proposed that we concentrate on finding a way to build in many more such interludes, whenever possible.
But the Framers aren’t here to guide us, so we must figure it out for ourselves. Where do we stand, right now?
Eight months into a new speaker’s two-year term – a speaker, by the way, who only won the office himself after dozens of ballots, and who made tons of promises that he reportedly did not make a serious effort to keep – the caucus decided to recall him, without knowing for certain who would wind up taking his place.
As we try to get our heads around this situation, and determine whether to be happy about it or angry about it – or scared to death about it – perhaps a baseball analogy might be apropos, as the 2023 World Series commences.
It’s the fourth inning of an important baseball game, and the manager decides that the pitcher just doesn’t have the stuff tonight, so he pulls the pitcher.
The fourth inning just ended; there are five more innings to go (at least). Watching from the stands, or in the television audience, we don’t know if the team will put in someone who’ll be better or not. The new pitcher might be terrific, or he might be even worse. All we could tell for sure was that we needed a change on the mound.
For the past couple of weeks, America has been at that brief limbo-like stage in the game, where you know the first pitcher has been pulled, but you don’t know who’s going to be put in for the rest of the game.
Now, finally, after an excruciating delay, we have a partial answer. We know who the pitcher will be, yes… but we don’t recognize him. He’s a rookie with a good but light record; the fans don’t know him yet and his stats are scant.
And the next inning still hasn’t begun yet.
So, this new pitcher could be terrific or he could be lousy. In the final analysis, you never really know for sure – until the end of the ballgame – whether that pitcher change was the right call or not.
Now, back to Washington. We still have fourteen months to go in this term; that’s a lifetime in politics. It’s too soon to tell how this is going to work out, but it does bode well.
The moderate GOP office-holders have been the tail wagging the dog for years; conservatives believe it’s the base’s turn to lead the party in Washington. Mike Johnson appears to be a solid representative from this conservative base. His ACU rating in the US House is 92%, and he’s only been in Washington six years.
The Left can’t stand him, at least in part because he hasn’t been there long enough for the Swamp to get its claws in him. The Right likes him, for the same reason.
But that’s not all there is to being an effective Speaker of the House.
It’s about issues, sure. But it’s also about priorities, and knowing what to go to the mat for, and what not to. It’s about horse-trading. It’s about finding a way to compromise so that the enemy gives up a little more than you do, rather than a little less.
With a razor-thin margin like he has, it’s about keeping the Republican caucus 100% together, while peeling off some Democrats here and there, as often as possible.
It’s about knowing every district in the country, and grabbing every opportunity to protect Republican seats and to put Democrat seats in play, so that 2025-2026 isn’t the narrow nightmare in the House (and Senate!) that 2023-2024 has been.
It’s about fundraising and recruitment. Can he fly around the country and both raise money and convince great potential candidates to run?
And it’s about the bully pulpit. We haven’t really had a Speaker who could eloquently enunciate the Republican message since Newt Gingrich. Without the Senate or the White House, the conservative movement needs a spokesman. Can our new Speaker be that figure?
We just don’t know. He just got the job, and he hasn’t held senior leadership before. It’s fascinating, really; America doesn’t normally take a guy who’s only been in Washington for six years and make him Speaker.
Arguably, Congress hasn’t done its job for generations. Congress establishes agencies and bureaus, then loses interest in managing them as their creations exceed their charters on a daily basis. Congress has the power of the purse but never cuts spending. Congress doesn’t even bother with a budget; it just lives with the “continuing resolution” method that’s enabled an explosion of debt over the past half century.
With no wiggle room in the numbers, we cannot expect Speaker Johnson to solve all these problems in a year.
But maybe – just maybe – he’ll be the first in generations to try.
And even that would be an improvement over what we’ve had for much too long.
Copyright 2023 John F Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available only on Amazon
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“With a razor-thin margin like he has, it’s about keeping the Republican caucus 100% together, while peeling off some Democrats here and there, as often as possible.”
There is the issue. The Democrats goose step like good NAZIs, the GOP loves to cross the aisle. Again, I hope Mr. Johnson will be a pleasant surprise. But that remains to be seen.
He won’t be worse than McCarthy. So at worst, its a break even. Odds are that he is better.
Just don’t expect miracles. He has the same narrow margin and same progressives that were in the House before and we can’t pass anything without almost all of them.