Viewpoints
Opinion

Chaos for the Sake of Chaos Is Not Good Governance

Chaos for the Sake of Chaos Is Not Good Governance
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) talks to reporters, outside his office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Oct. 3, 2023. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Josh Hammer
|Updated:
0:00
Commentary

In early January, as then-future and now-former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was in the midst of the political fight of his life, this column excoriated him as an “empty suit and a quintessential Swamp creature ... whose main lodestar is cutting deals and expending political capital in order to boost his own political fortunes.” This column supported the House conservatives who extracted massive concessions from McCarthy over the course of the 15 agonizing ballots he needed to secure the speakership in January. And this column condemned those veteran commentators who supported McCarthy from the very first ballot, oblivious to the virtuous fight Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and others were leading on behalf of good governance.

Josh Hammer
Josh Hammer
Author
Josh Hammer is opinion editor of Newsweek, a research fellow with the Edmund Burke Foundation, counsel and policy advisor for the Internet Accountability Project, a syndicated columnist through Creators, and a contributing editor for Anchoring Truths. A frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal, and cultural issues, Hammer is a constitutional attorney by training. He hosts “The Josh Hammer Show,” a Newsweek podcast, and co-hosts the Edmund Burke Foundation's “NatCon Squad” podcast. Hammer is a college campus speaker through Intercollegiate Studies Institute and Young America's Foundation, as well as a law school campus speaker through the Federalist Society. Prior to Newsweek and The Daily Wire, where he was an editor, Hammer worked at a large law firm and clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Hammer has also served as a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute and a fellow with the James Wilson Institute. Hammer graduated from Duke University, where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School. He lives in Florida, but remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas.
twitter
Related Topics