At the dawn of the last century, historian Mary Follett assessed the role of speaker of the House, and the inherent tension between institutional responsibility and party loyalty. The speaker, she wrote in 1902, “is not only allowed, but expected to use his position to advance party interests. It must not be supposed, however, that this implies gross partisanship on the part of our Speakers. They neither attempt to use every inch of power to be conjured out of the rules, nor guide the House entirely from party motives. Their office has on the whole been administered with justness and fairness.”
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Mary Follett, meet Jim Jordan. Justice and fairness are not his stocks in trade. If he manages to win the office, and if past performance is any guide, the 59-year-old Ohio Republican will be an “every inch of power” speaker, wielding the gavel in relentless pursuit of partisan advantage.
Let’s not be naive here. Previous speakers, Democratic and Republican — in Follett’s time and, perhaps even more so, in ours — have been, first and foremost, party animals. But they have understood and, for the most part, behaved in accordance with their simultaneous role as a constitutional officer. For the sake of the country — and, Republicans, for the sake of your party — let us hope that Jordan’s bid for the speakership fails in future votes as it did on Monday and Tuesday.
Because if Jordan becomes the 56th speaker, he would be a bomb-thrower entrusted with dangerous new powers and, while this carries more symbolic than practical significance, second in line for the presidency. His speakership would commence at a moment when the need for bipartisan cooperation — on funding the government, on dealing with international crises in Israel and Ukraine — has rarely been greater and when the capacity to achieve it rarely more elusive.
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To this fraught, even dangerous, moment, Jordan would bring ... Jordan. There is hardly a profile of him that does not use the word “firebrand.” His skill is in shutting things down, not making them work. His legislative record is thin to the point of indiscernible; he hasn’t passed a single bill.
Fellow Ohioan and former House speaker John A. Boehner (R) famously labeled him a “legislative terrorist.” Boehner told CBS News’s John Dickerson, “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart — never building anything, never putting anything together.”
That may be fine when you are chair of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus. The speakership requires something very different. How does a man who professes to believe that President Biden was not legitimately elected to office, who has championed the baseless effort to impeach the president for high crimes unknown — how does such a speaker go to the White House to negotiate with the president?
Jordan’s path in dealing with House Democrats is similarly unimaginable. He was subpoenaed by the House Jan. 6 committee and simply thumbed his nose at the summons. The Jan. 6 committee report called him a “significant player” in President Donald Trump’s efforts to undo the election. Lawmakers should be holding him in contempt of Congress, not electing him to help lead it.
“Jim Jordan was involved in Trump’s conspiracy to steal the election and seize power; he urged that Pence refuse to count lawful electoral votes,” former congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “If Rs nominate Jordan to be Speaker, they will be abandoning the Constitution. They’ll lose the House majority and they’ll deserve to.”
If Jordan has a forerunner in no-holds-barred norm-breaking, it is Newt Gingrich, who served as speaker from 1995 to 1999, years before Jordan was elected to Congress in 2006. “There is a direct line from Newt Gingrich, that goes through the tea party and Donald Trump, to Jim Jordan. Gingrich pioneered the style of no-guardrails, smash-mouth partisanship that defines Jordan’s approach to politics,” Julian Zelizer, a Princeton historian and author of “Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party,” told me by email. “The main difference is that Jordan, several generations later, has just taken things much further than what Gingrich could have ever have imagined, perfecting the takedown, gridlock-creating, crisis-generating partisan style which will now dictate life in the House.”
Zelizer pointed to a significant difference between the two situations: a shift in the media landscape that helps turbocharge the conservative message. “Unlike Gingrich, Jordan enjoys a massive conservative media ecosystem that can help him deploy vitriolic rhetoric, blistering smear and conspiracy theories in ways Gingrich could not,” he said. “Whereas Gingrich still relied on the mainstream press and cable networks like CSPAN, as well as talk radio, Jordan has the behemoth of Fox News, Newsmax, and social media to attack his adversaries.”
It is possible, I suppose, that a Speaker Jordan would turn out to be more accommodating, more practical than his 16 years in the House would suggest. Behind closed doors, he has been discussing the possibility of a continuing resolution that would fund the government through April and has suggested that he’d allow a floor vote on Ukraine funding, which he has previously opposed.
Put me down as skeptical. Leopards don’t change spots. Bomb-throwers don’t suddenly start defusing them. Jordan will be Jordan, gavel or no gavel — which is the best reason for not handing it to him.
Make sense of the news fast with Opinions' daily newsletterMary Follett, meet Jim Jordan. Justice and fairness are not his stocks in trade. If he manages to win the office, and if past performance is any guide, the 59-year-old Ohio Republican will be an “every inch of power” speaker, wielding the gavel in relentless pursuit of partisan advantage.
Let’s not be naive here. Previous speakers, Democratic and Republican — in Follett’s time and, perhaps even more so, in ours — have been, first and foremost, party animals. But they have understood and, for the most part, behaved in accordance with their simultaneous role as a constitutional officer. For the sake of the country — and, Republicans, for the sake of your party — let us hope that Jordan’s bid for the speakership fails in future votes as it did on Monday and Tuesday.
Because if Jordan becomes the 56th speaker, he would be a bomb-thrower entrusted with dangerous new powers and, while this carries more symbolic than practical significance, second in line for the presidency. His speakership would commence at a moment when the need for bipartisan cooperation — on funding the government, on dealing with international crises in Israel and Ukraine — has rarely been greater and when the capacity to achieve it rarely more elusive.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
To this fraught, even dangerous, moment, Jordan would bring ... Jordan. There is hardly a profile of him that does not use the word “firebrand.” His skill is in shutting things down, not making them work. His legislative record is thin to the point of indiscernible; he hasn’t passed a single bill.
Fellow Ohioan and former House speaker John A. Boehner (R) famously labeled him a “legislative terrorist.” Boehner told CBS News’s John Dickerson, “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart — never building anything, never putting anything together.”
That may be fine when you are chair of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus. The speakership requires something very different. How does a man who professes to believe that President Biden was not legitimately elected to office, who has championed the baseless effort to impeach the president for high crimes unknown — how does such a speaker go to the White House to negotiate with the president?
Jordan’s path in dealing with House Democrats is similarly unimaginable. He was subpoenaed by the House Jan. 6 committee and simply thumbed his nose at the summons. The Jan. 6 committee report called him a “significant player” in President Donald Trump’s efforts to undo the election. Lawmakers should be holding him in contempt of Congress, not electing him to help lead it.
“Jim Jordan was involved in Trump’s conspiracy to steal the election and seize power; he urged that Pence refuse to count lawful electoral votes,” former congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “If Rs nominate Jordan to be Speaker, they will be abandoning the Constitution. They’ll lose the House majority and they’ll deserve to.”
If Jordan has a forerunner in no-holds-barred norm-breaking, it is Newt Gingrich, who served as speaker from 1995 to 1999, years before Jordan was elected to Congress in 2006. “There is a direct line from Newt Gingrich, that goes through the tea party and Donald Trump, to Jim Jordan. Gingrich pioneered the style of no-guardrails, smash-mouth partisanship that defines Jordan’s approach to politics,” Julian Zelizer, a Princeton historian and author of “Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party,” told me by email. “The main difference is that Jordan, several generations later, has just taken things much further than what Gingrich could have ever have imagined, perfecting the takedown, gridlock-creating, crisis-generating partisan style which will now dictate life in the House.”
Zelizer pointed to a significant difference between the two situations: a shift in the media landscape that helps turbocharge the conservative message. “Unlike Gingrich, Jordan enjoys a massive conservative media ecosystem that can help him deploy vitriolic rhetoric, blistering smear and conspiracy theories in ways Gingrich could not,” he said. “Whereas Gingrich still relied on the mainstream press and cable networks like CSPAN, as well as talk radio, Jordan has the behemoth of Fox News, Newsmax, and social media to attack his adversaries.”
It is possible, I suppose, that a Speaker Jordan would turn out to be more accommodating, more practical than his 16 years in the House would suggest. Behind closed doors, he has been discussing the possibility of a continuing resolution that would fund the government through April and has suggested that he’d allow a floor vote on Ukraine funding, which he has previously opposed.
Put me down as skeptical. Leopards don’t change spots. Bomb-throwers don’t suddenly start defusing them. Jordan will be Jordan, gavel or no gavel — which is the best reason for not handing it to him.
