Voting is over — or is it? Perhaps one of the more significant votes yet to take place is who is going to be the next Speaker of the House. As we all know, this past election Republicans won control of the House of Representatives which would normally give them the votes needed to elect the Speaker of the House. But current Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who desperately wants to be speaker, is still struggling to get all the necessary votes from Republicans recently elected to the House.
According to the United States presidential line of succession, the Speaker of the House is second in line to become president upon an elected president’s death, resignation, removal from office or incapacity. If you think this is unlikely, remember a few decades back, when Speaker of the House Gerald Ford became vice president after Spiro Agnew resigned from that position. Then President Richard Nixon resigned, making Gerald Ford the only person to serve as president who wasn’t elected to that position. Next in the line of succession is the President Pro Tempore of the Senate.
Given the obvious national (not district) importance of the Speaker of the House and to depoliticize a much-divided Congress, maybe the Speaker of the House should be elected by the people, not just by party loyalists. Maybe the Resident Pro Tempore should also be elected by the people instead of a small handful of power brokers who are more committed to parochial interests than national interests.
This couldn’t happen this session of Congress, but if Kevin McCarthy were truly interested in representing all Americans, he could promise to be the bridge toward making these changes. If he did, he might gain more mainstream votes than what he would lose from fringe politicians.
It would be interesting to see the results of a national poll on theoretical candidates for Speaker of the House and President Pro Tempore of the Senate. Pollsters?
— George Matz
Anchorage
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