A House divided

On Jan. 7, 2023, Kevin McCarthy was elected as House Speaker after 15 rounds of voting. Not since the Civil War had it taken that many rounds to vote for a speaker. The voting commenced when 216 members voted for McCarthy, 212 members voted for Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, and six members voted present. This was good news for McCarthy, but it was not good news for pretty much everyone else in Congress.

McCarthy had to make many concessions to finally have some of the Republican party’s right-wing faction switch their vote to present. This makes McCarthy a less powerful speaker, and he now has far less power than his predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, had. With McCarthy’s limited power, the majority of the Republican party should not be pleased since their party will have a harder time passing legislation. The Democrats are not pleased because the other party is in power. The only members of Congress pleased by the concessions and story that came out of the vote are the Republicans who voted against McCarthy. The Republicans who voted against McCarthy are the right-wing faction of the Republican party led by Matt Gaetz and Majorie Taylor Greene, who now have the party right where they want it to be in order to push more and more extremely conservative candidates into Congress.

Fighting within parties, partisan disagreements, and refusal to work across the aisle are all things that Americans are used to having in Congress. What Americans are not used to having in the chambers of Congress, though, is the partisan conflicts that were taken to the extreme to make a statement, which became the problem with this vote for House Speaker. This vote for House Speaker showed the issues within the system of our elected officials and our democracy as a whole.

When it takes 15 rounds of voting to elect a speaker, it is not just a pain and a bad look for America, but it also shows that there are structural problems with our democracy. It proves that democracy is not the best form of government—it is just the safest because it is the will of the people, which in theory leads to less corruption and less of a threat that an authoritarian dictator will end up making all of the decisions. In this safety, though, there are factions that go against the ideals of our democracy, and, for democracy to work, there must be recognition of the danger of these factions to put an end to them. To do this, either the process needs to be restructured, or the members of the right-wing factions that pose a threat to democracy need to be voted out. Either way, it is up to the voters to decide. The voters who have the power to vote for new members of Congress to replace the right-wing faction are at the root of this problem, or the voters can vote for members that will ensure that there will be a change in the structure of our democracy. No matter the solution, it must involve a strategy that will end the embarrassment that the House of Representatives became over this vote. If the U.S. wants to be taken seriously, Congress cannot have members like Mike Rogers lunging in the direction of Gaetz and having to be restrained by other members of Congress. That is not what the U.S. has ever been about, and that is not what the U.S. should look like. The message that this sends to the world is one of failure. If the U.S. wants to look like a crumbling nation, it can go right ahead and keep having infights like the vote for House Speaker, but if the U.S. wants to be taken seriously as the top world power they are, then its citizens must act now.