By a strange coincidence, Canada and the United States both lost their House Speaker in the same week. But with the instructive difference that here it was a combination of buffoonery and attempts to blame-shift, whereas there it was buffoonery plus attempts to make politics less futile. Which alas probably won’t work but at least they tried.
In case you missed it, what happened in Canada was… just kidding. For once the entire world did notice us, as MPs rose as one to applaud someone who fought for the SS, with their sole genuine excuse being such ignorance of history that it didn’t dawn on them what they were doing. Instead, the excuse they actually presented was that it was all the fault of the Speaker who, they also forgot, is the agent of the House in our system, as in its Westminster parent.
Speaker Anthony Rota did bungle by introducing and lauding the visitor. But the House whose servant he was applauded, then threw him under the bus. Which would be quite bad enough without the gleeful competitive race to replace him.
In case you missed it, for centuries the Speaker’s job was so unattractive that in reality, then by tradition, the Speaker was dragged reluctantly into his post. Since our MPs apparently don’t know who fought whom in World War II they are unlikely to know that the British House of Commons has been choosing its own Speaker since at least 1376, before it even had a regular meeting place. Or that the one person who never participates in debate is called the “Speaker” because he, and lately she, has the duty of speaking for the House to the other branches of government and the other branch of the legislature.
Sadly, as prime ministers standing in for monarchs subtly but persistently rolled back the “Whig” triumphs of the 18th and early 19th centuries, it created an increasing tendency for a House under prime ministerial control to choose Speakers for their procedural and even ideological subservience to the Executive program, rather than their willingness to defy it. That the prime minister and leader of the Opposition used theatrically to drag a new Speaker to the chair spoke to a lingering sense that he or she was taking on a difficult and dangerous job, not slithering up the greasy pole of Executive power and perks like almost everyone else. Now, the prime minister winks and sticks his tongue out at the new Speaker.
So after winning the Revolutionary War, the “colonists” were determined to create a system where the legislature was more formally protected against Executive encroachment. For instance, the president and even cabinet members cannot be legislators there, whereas here by convention they must be. And the role of House Speaker was different. Not burdened with fending off direct attacks or seduction from the Executive, he (or again, lately she) was much more a procedural agent of the majority faction in the House.
In case you missed it, as Canadians may well have while mocking the buffoonery of American politics secure in the knowledge that… uh… um… Anyway, what brought down Speaker Kevin McCarthy wasn’t some outburst of know-nothing MAGAism. It was that his own party objected to the increasing use of omnibus bills that bypassed proper legislative scrutiny, which he had promised to abandon only to turn to the other party to ram one through. So his fellows dumped him on principle, for violating his compact with them in order to weaken constitutional self-government.
Given the size and momentum of the American welfare state, and the growing dysfunction in U.S. politics, it probably won’t work. And the effort to replace him has been protracted, messy, and ill-timed. But at least it was about principles.
In our case, well, not so much. We’ve kind of forgotten those, and where they came from.
