American politics is not only messy, it is in trouble

At last, after a week of high political drama, the House of Representatives on Saturday elected a speaker in a 15th ballot, setting a new historic precedent and beating the previous record from 100 years ago. This came two years after the US Capitol attack by right-wing supporters of President Donald Trump, who were angry at the results of the presidential election. The Capitol was once again put under siege, politically this time. The post of speaker of the House of Representatives was being held hostage in a political drama that culminated in a tense and chaotic late-night vote, which almost ended with a fist fight on the House floor.
After failing 14 times to elect a speaker, the process was Exhibit A of America’s dysfunction and disarray for the country and the world to see. The Republican Party, which won a slim majority in the House in last year’s midterm elections, was branded the party of gridlock, not able to elect a leader or to govern.
The mess was created by the same people who denied the results of the previous presidential election and are staunch supporters of former President Trump.
This minority group of 20 Republican members of Congress, mostly affiliated with the conservative Freedom Caucus and referred to as the “Never Kevin,” succeeded for a whole week in preventing Kevin McCarthy, their Republican Party leader and nominee, from being elected speaker. Because the Republicans’ majority in the House of Representatives is very small, McCarthy struggled to get the 218 votes needed to win the speaker’s post.
The gridlock left Congress paralyzed, with political and even national security implications for the country. For example, the speaker’s post being vacant meant that members of Congress could not be sworn in to start their work and even the powerful and sensitive House Intelligence Committee could not function and members could not be briefed on intelligence issues. The chairs of the three powerful committees, Armed Services, Foreign Affairs and the Intelligence Committee, issued a statement about the dangers of the standoff, saying it could “place the safety and security of the United States at risk.”
But the most important impact the chaos in the House of Representative was having fell on American democracy itself, which looked like it was in disarray and had been hijacked by a small group of conservatives. Almost everyone interviewed in Congress on the issue tried to explain what was happening by saying “democracy is messy.” True, it is messy, but what was happening threatened to undermine the very essence of American democracy.

The gridlock over the speaker’s election left Congress paralyzed, with political and even national security implications for the country.

Dr. Amal Mudallali

Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th-century French historian and diplomat who famously wrote “Democracy in America,” warned of the tyranny of the majority. But what we saw in the House of Representatives this week was the tyranny of the minority. A small group of extremist members who were elected under the Republican Party banner revolted against their leader, the one who led the party to victory, albeit a narrow one.
In the early hours of Saturday, it was down to one member of the group holding the House of Representatives and its future leader hostage by refusing to back down. Rep. Matt Gaetz sat in the chamber as a kingmaker, as members descended on him and tried to convince him to flip his vote. He dug his heels in and tensions led the upcoming chair of the Armed Services Committee, Mike Rogers of Alabama, to angrily lunge at Gaetz. He had to be restrained. Rogers was reportedly angry over reports that Gaetz had demanded and was promised the chairmanship of an Armed Services subcommittee as the price for changing his vote.
In his effort to negotiate a compromise with his opponents, McCarthy reportedly made many concessions to the rebels in his party and negotiated terms that would essentially strip away the powers of the speakership.
According to media reports of the deal, McCarthy accepted what he had always rejected in the past: A demand to lower the “threshold” and give one member, instead of five, the power to bring a motion to remove the speaker. This puts the speaker at the mercy of each one of the 435 members and weakens the office and its power. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: “What we’re seeing is the incredibly shrinking speakership, and that’s most unfortunate for Congress.”
The Republican leader was also reported to have accepted granting the Freedom Caucus three seats on the House Rules Committee, which debates all legislation before it goes to the floor. This gives these members a de facto veto and the power to prevent any legislation or amendments that they oppose from reaching the wider membership.
He also reportedly accepted allowing a vote on term limits for members of Congress. Other reported concessions deal with spending and the debt limit.
These concessions, if true, will have a wide-ranging impact on the office of the speaker, on the power of the speaker to govern, on the functioning of Congress and bipartisanship, increasing paralysis and gridlock, and on democracy itself.
The group of 20, which have been labeled as “Taliban” and “terrorists” by some of their colleagues, do not trust McCarthy. They do not believe that he is tough enough to stand up to the Democrats, that he is not a financial conservative and that he is not willing to shut the government out. They see him as an obstacle to their agenda in Congress. They hold him responsible for the Republicans’ failure to deliver the promised huge victory — the “red wave” — in the midterms.
This means that letting McCarthy win is not the end of the battle; it might be the beginning of a very fractious and difficult 118th Congress, with daily confrontations among the Republicans themselves, as well as with their Democratic opponents. During the week-long battle over the election of the speaker, Democrats watched the Republican disarray with glee, but also with dread: If this is what the Republicans are doing to each other, what will they do to them, to their agenda in Congress and to bipartisanship?
The new speaker told the House in his inaugural speech: “Now the hard work begins.” He is right, it is going to be uphill from now on, judging by how his colleagues in the conservative caucus of the Republican Party do business — by arm-twisting and gridlock.
American democracy is not only messy, it is in trouble.

• Dr. Amal Mudallali is a consultant on global issues. She is a former Lebanese ambassador to the UN.