Idealism

2001-2023 | 22 years

In this episode, President Bartlet vetoes a bill, and his staff is trying to make sure that they have enough votes in the House to keep the veto from being overridden. In trying to do this, Sam and Toby keep having to make more and more concessions to members of their own party. Eventually, after conceding on grazing fees, farm nets, and milk subsidies, and the Democrats are still not satisfied, they realize that these concessions are the same things that farm district Republicans would want. Instead of making more concessions to their own party, the staff offers this deal to Republicans, and are able to get enough votes to keep the veto from being overridden.

Republican Representative McCarthy was ousted as Speaker of the House on October 3rd. The Speaker of the House, although the job is not outlined in the Constitution, plays a very important role in the function of our government. Besides being second in the Presidential line of succession, the Speaker of the House sets the House's legislative agenda, controls committee assignments, and sets the vote and work calendar. This makes it difficult for Congress to get work done without a speaker. Given that there are multiple international conflicts going on at the moment, the United States, the world’s policeman, being unable to govern sends a troubling message.

The House has been unable to get a new speaker for two weeks because the Republicans have been trying to get a speaker elected with only Republican votes. But the party can’t afford to lose more than 4 of their members in a vote and haven’t been able to find a candidate that could get past their small majority. This has caused many to wonder if the House could come to a “West Wing” like solution, where moderate Republicans work with Democrats to get a new speaker elected. Tuesday morning House Democrats tweeted that they are “ready to move forward with a bipartisan governing coalition”. Later that day Republican Jim Jordan failed to win the speakership on the first ballot. Now some Democrat Representatives are talking about Nominating former Republican Representative Liz Cheney to be speaker.

The reason people keep referring to a bipartisan solution to the speakership problem as something West Wing Esque is because it is idealistic. Many simply believe that in our political climate it is unrealistic to think that Democrats and Republicans would come together to resolve an issue; it seems like the type of thing that would only happen in a television show. We’ll see whether that sentiment rings true as the balloting to fill the speakership continues.