I recently had a conversation with a psychotherapist who practices in Washington, DC. They see a lot of clients who, inevitably, given the location, work in the political system. They told me about a client they once had who was a member of Congress. After a few sessions and some throat-clearing, the therapist asked, “why have you come to see me?” The member responded: “I can’t stop lying. I lie to my wife, my girlfriend, my colleagues, my constituents, everyone.”
The froth, dysfunctionality, and distance from the truth in American democracy today is amply on display this week in Washington, DC. Of course, it warms the heart of a Democrat, like me, to see the Republican Party in disarray. The wave of the Trump juggernaut we all feared seems to have crested, as ambitious politicos disinterested in program and policy tear at each other’s throats in the struggle for power. But the Trumpian Frankenstein monster lurks in wait and the tide still swamps the House of Representatives.
The lies, authoritarian risk, naked ambitions have bubbled to the surface. It is a crisis. In the House. And it is also an opportunity.
As I argued some time back in this space, it is the Republican Party that has its work cut out for it. It is a lie to say that the crisis of American democracy is binary, that both parties are to blame. It is a lie to say that the Democrats look like the Republicans, but with a dominant left wing.
The Democratic Party is not controlled by its progressive wing, vocal as that wing is. The new Democratic leadership in the House is not from the left of the party. Hakeem Jeffries is not from the left; he is more a machine Democrat from Brooklyn. Chuck Schumer is not from the left. Joe Biden is not from the left. They are all centrists. Whatever the right extremist rhetoric and lies about the Democrats, the progressive movement is not destroying the party or the Congress, even when it contests more moderate members and their policy views. They support democracy. But they cannot save it.
The Republican Party, by contrast, has morphed into a scattered, increasingly dysfunctional cult, as the McCarthy episode exposes. The extreme right is driving the traffic, not the moderates (such as are left in the GOP). I have absolutely no sympathy for McCarthy, but his capacity to get his party to work together is at the other end of the spectrum from the disciplined leadership of Nancy Pelosi.
Many Republicans are now prepared to bring down all the institutions and processes themselves; prepared to “destroy democracy to save it,” the ultimate in untruth.
As unified and capable the Democrats are, they will not be able to restore democracy. Strange as it may sound to say it, Republicans have to save democracy by saving their party. I don’t just mean moderate Republicans, an almost extinct species (Larry Hogan rises above the rest). I mean the conservative Republicans who are still capable of coherent rationality. The Liz Cheney’s and Adam Kinsingers and Ben Sasse’s. Many have been trounced or walked away from the GOP with their heads up. They could still make a difference.
They have an opportunity to save democracy, but in a very different way. Not through bi-partisanship. That can happen, as long as two political parties want to talk about legislation. I am talking about “coalition-building” at the structural level. Thinking Republicans have to leave the bipartisan world to save their own party and American democracy.
To end the tyranny of the extreme right of the Republican members of Congress, the thinking conservatives and moderates need to join with the Democrats, joint rule, if you will. A joint arrangement where the Speaker emerges from an agreement of thinking Republicans and the Democrats, or as many Democrats who agree to participate.
Parliamentary systems are familiar with this, but coalition-building is something with which the American system is unfamiliar. Parliamentary systems, with multiple parties, are set up to produce coalitions that can actually govern. Germany and France know it well. Germany is often governed by a coalition of the center-right, or, as it now is, center-left (with even a fairly libertarian piece).
The American chief executive does not emerge from the legislature. So, this coalition would be a kind of structural hybrid. It would be hard to do. After some experience of coalition before the Civil War, money and rule-writing have created this implacably binary system we live with; a binary now where one of the parties is both authoritarian in orientation and dominated by partisans who want nothing to do with the other party or, for that matter, democracy itself.
Today, there is an opening for coalition-building, a small one, to be sure, but more real than I have seen in my lifetime. By the time this column appears, that window may have closed in the Speakership election. But it was an opportunity to do something different – for thinking conservatives and moderates in the Republican Party to cut a deal with Democrats to elect a Speaker acceptable to both that would command a majority.
It has just happened in Ohio, where a Republican became Speaker of the legislature with both Republican and Democratic votes. Oddly, because of the federal system, the opportunities for joint structural coalitions can and should be pursued in every state where the authoritarian right threatens democracy.
The fact that such opportunities are emerging is a promising sign. It is about cutting deals to save the system itself. It is about Democrats putting democracy first. It is about thinking Republicans and conservatives doing the same, condemning their authoritarian right to the margin, which is where it should remain until the flame of authoritarianism have flickered out and the lying has stopped.
And now it is done. McCarthy made a deal with the devil, even giving them the power to get rid of him. But just to cover his scrawny behind he said in the end " Noone gets promised anything." This is going to be a blood bath.
Spot on analysis, Gordon. thank you.