How Long Before This Wears Off, Doc?

Some history and knowledge about the House by Weldon @ Bad Crow Review. Known Weldon for a while now. He writes some good words. And this topic fits right in his wheelhouse of knowledge. Enjoy . . .

“How Long Before This Wears Off, Doc?” Weldon Berger, Bad Crow Review, “Could be a year, could be a lifetime . . .”

Links are at the end.

I’m pretty sure some of the fireworks which look white to me are actually some feeble shade of green. Taking matters into my own hands.

Nothing is unacceptable, for most people, in the sense that they’ll throw their brain and body into overcoming whatever it is. “This is unacceptable!” should be retired.

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Elect Someone From Outside the House, Like Me, William Cohen

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William F. Cohen was Teddy Roosevelt’s first secretary of war, and Alton Frye was Senator Preston Brooks’s chief of staff. The two recently penned an op-ed in the New York Times calling for the House to select someone outside the institution as Speaker, from the ranks of Wise Men—and they are all men.¹

(Cohen is doing whatever he does now, and Frye is a retired ambassador to the League of Nations now doubly retired from the Council on Foreign Relations.)

It may come as a surprise to many Americans to learn that the Constitution does not require the House speaker to be a member of the House. The Constitution provides for election of a speaker but does not require House membership to serve in that position. That’s because the office was not conceived as a partisan agent, but rather as one serving the whole House and, in that role, the entire nation. The Constitution anticipated a leader respected across the broadest possible spectrum of the American people, much as George Washington had presided over the convention that drafted our governing charter in 1787.

The time has come to exercise that constitutional flexibility and choose a House speaker from outside the House.

The scheme isn’t complicated, requiring only cooperation from Democrats and a few Republicans to come up with nominations, and then a secret ballot for the election, allowing skeered Republicans to vote for an alleged moderate.

The candidates suggested by these two remaining witnesses to the American centennial are former House member, former Ohio governor and anti-abortion zealot John Kasich, former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, and retired Republican Congressman Fred Upton, who is adored by Joe Biden.

Hakeem Jeffries, they say, “will surely identify other prospects for this unique chance to reinforce the American political center.”

Jeffries won’t do any such thing, because this is not happening, but it’s probably true that a sizable chunk of rotten Democrats would vote for a Republican speaker on a secret ballot. Among the long list of last things we need is to reinforce the American political center — by which these two remaining Grover Cleveland supporters mean the Congressional center — as it exists now; we should instead be stomping it into unconsciousness and replacing it with something less like a watered down version of William Buckley’s ideal conservative.

Choosing a Republican makes sense, with them now holding the majority, but perhaps a dead one would be better than any of the ones elected during the past 30 years. I’d nominate Jacob Javits, so that members could consider WWJD when addressing a bill or a motion from the floor.

One can and ought to forgive the gentle dreams of men who cheered on the first flight of the Wright Brothers, but I do think maybe they’ve been partaking of that ketamine-by-mail regimen we mentioned last year.²

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Music to which we were writing

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Fruit Bats, “Siamese Dream;”³ The Shins, “The Worm’s Heart;”⁴ Rogue Wave, “Delusions of Grand Fur;”⁵ Parquet Courts, “Sympathy for Life.”⁶ The albums were all new to me but two of the bands aren’t.

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That, Comrades, is all I got.

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