There are few questions this year, so there will also be few “Answer” posts, too. Of course, anyone can still ask new questions, but that seldom happens at this point in the process, which is why I expect it to be a short series this year.
Today’s questions are from my pal Roger Green, and are all related. Here’s the first one:
what you think is the legacy of Nancy Pelosi's tenure as Speaker and minority leader?
I have two thoughts upfront. The first is that it’s almost impossible to know a famous person’s true legacy in the moment, because time and distance are usually vital to gain some perspective. The other thing is that, generally speaking, people’s perceptions of her legacy will depend on which side of the USA’s partisan divide they live on, and even which end of the Democratic Party one resides in. Nevertheless, I definitely have my own view.
I think that Nancy Pelosi was the most important Speaker of the US House since Tip O’Neill. Like him, she could (usually…) keep the Democratic caucus in line, and so, she was able to get the House to pass all sorts of hugely important legislation. The other speakers surrounding her terms Underscore why I say that.
Her predecessor as Speaker, prior to the 2006 midterm elections, was Illinois Republican Dennis Hastert, whose reputation was destroyed by a sexual abuse scandal, and the resulting financial fraud because of it, all of which came to light some eight years after he left Congress. His Congressional legacy is now limited to a grudging acknowledgement that his 8 year term was the longest of any Republican Speaker of the House.
When Democrats lost control of the US House following the teabagger midterm election of 2010, John Boehner of Ohio became Speaker. This was a turning point, and a foreshadowing of what was to come: Teabaggers elected to the House, like those allied to the Republican presidential candidate of 2016 and 2020, were opposed to comprise of any kind, especially bipartisanship. Boehner struggled to maintain control of the Republicans’ agenda, and so, cannot be seen as having been a successful Speaker. Things got so bad that he resigned from the House in 2015, and Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan succeeded him.
Just like Boehner, Ryan was plagued with a combative, restive, and hard-right Republican caucus. Making matters worse for him was that he was Speaker after the orange Republican got into the White House in 2016, and they clearly didn’t get along (which wasn’t unusual for the orange Republican, of course, whose only concern was that everyone worship him). Ryan’s only significant “accomplishments” in his two terms as speaker was to pass Republicans’ massive tax cut for the rich (which added $7.8 trillion to the USA’s national debt) and the gutting of the Dodd-Frank Act, which had been passed in 2010 to try to fix the loopholes in the law that allowed the Great Recession to happen in 2008 (corporations and Wall Street banksters hated the act).
Republicans’ attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act only passed the House by a narrow vote, but then famously failed in the US Senate when Republican senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain all joined Democrats in voting against it (and McCain received most of the venom and fury of hard right Republicans and their orange partyleader). Ryan didn’t get to privatise social security and Medicare as he wanted to, nor gut Medicaid. He cannot be considered to have been a successful Speaker, and he finally just gave up and didn’t run for re-election in the 2018 midterms, after which Nancy Pelosi became Speaker for the second time.
In between Tip O'Neill and Dennis Hastert was the vile Newt Gingrich, the person who we can all thank for giving birth to Republicans' "slash and burn" hyper-partisanship and the partisan gridlock that Congress is now known for. Gingrich was such an arrogant, aggressive,and aggressively negative Speaker that even his own caucus grew to loathe him, and he’s become only more and more and more contemptible since he—thankfully—quit the House ending the four-year long nightmare of him as Speaker.
What all of that history shows us is that none of the Republican speakers since Tip O'Neill were even partly as effective as he was, though one could argue that through longevity alone, Hastert was at least the least infective of the Republican speakers. By sheer comparison, then, Nancy Pelosi was a far more successful speaker than any of the Republicans I mentioned in this recap.
Another indication of her success was the depth of hatred for her among Republicans, a reaction that became more fetid the farther right a Republican was. However, Progressive Democrats also didn’t like Pelosi—though “hate” is far too strong a word for their reaction. They felt that she wasn’t progressive enough (which was probably a fair assessment, in my opinion), and they resented her unwillingness to take the caucus to the Left. One can ague whether she was right or wrong about keeping the caucus more moderate (in the modern sense), and one can be suspicious of progressives’ claims that the electorate is actually progressive, not centrist, but it is inarguable that they didn’t want her as Speaker. However, it’s also true that they were realistic that they didn’t have the numbers to stop her, and so, their best option was to work with her to get legislation passed that was at least somewhat more progressive than it otherwise might have been. The arrangement worked, and Speaker Pelosi made sure it did.
Which leads naturally to Roger’s next question:
What kind of Speaker will Kevin McCarthy be? Will he be able to keep the "Freedom Caucus" in check?
He will be a terrible speaker—if he actually wins the role, of course. People on the centre and, of course, the left, but also sane conservatives, don’t trust him—at all. He coddled seditious conspirators and when he had the chance to stand up and do the right thing about the orange guy’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election—and the constitution—to steal another four years as president, Kevin repeatedly failed the country—and the Constitution and his oath to defend it.
If he becomes Speaker, he'll be utterly beholden to that same Treason Caucus among Republicans in the House—and they don’t even like him. The first time he even micro-pauses before bowing and scraping to the Republicans’ lunatic fringe, they’ll try to dump him. It could well be a major miracle if he manages to serve out the entire two-year term, but there’s also this: If the lunatic fringe pushes too hard, Democrats and sane Republicans may well join forces to install a sane conservative as Speaker. Likely? Probably not. The old saying about Republicans falling in line may still prove true, and the seditious lunatics' posturing now may just be to make sure Kevin is fully under their thumb. I certainly wouldn’t place a bet on him still being Speaker at the end of 2024.
And this actually leads to Roger’s last question for today:
Will anything get done in the federal government in the next two years, or will we fuss over the debt limit and federal budget twice a year?.
Nope: Nothing good or useful to anyone will get out of the House for the next two years. Most of the Republicans in Congress—the House in particular—don’t believe in governing, and their record over the past decade and a half or so underscores that reality. We know the radicals’ agenda consists of launching 2,083 different investigations of Hunter Biden’s laptop, of attempting to impeach Joe Biden for the crime of being a Democrat, and they’ll also focus on hurting the American people every chance they get, including by shutting down the US Government. Everything terrible about the Republican Party that voters rejected in the midterm elections? They’ll double and triple down on that extremism, and pile more on top of it.
However, just as Kevin’s hold the speakership, if he actually gets it, will be highly fragile and tenuous, so, too, is the power of the Treason Caucus. All it will take is a few of the sane conservatives to vote with Democrats to kneecap the radicals, however, the counter to that is the fact that the majority caucus sets the House agenda through the Speaker, so it will be hard for the sane majority in Congress to do an end run around the radicals—difficult, but not impossible. The House doesn’t have a filibuster, after all. Progressive legislation is definitely dead for two years, but centrist legislation might manage to get through with the help of sane conservatives. Maybe.
Thanks to Roger for today’s questions!
It’s not too late to ask a question: Simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom de question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. To avoid being public there, you can send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page..
All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-21”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.
Previously:
”A decade-long inquisition” – The first post in this year’s series.
1 comment:
GREAT answers! Thank you!
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