A few comments on Nancy Pelosi's resignation from leadership

 In the history of the House of Representatives, some Speakers have been particularly important.  We remember Speaker Cannon primarily for having provoked so much ire that the House voted to strip him of authority.  There was Reed.  A few others before we get to the modern era, but I can make the case, as some other scholars do, that whether by modern, or even historic standards, few have been as politically adept or influential as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).  Not all Speakers get their due, and I believe that Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was also among the more politically talented Speakers, yet he was saddled with a particularly difficult situation, so he is not seen as favorably as Pelosi by many observers.  Yet Boehner, like Pelosi, was a brilliant and civic-minded servant of the public good.  He just did not leave as much of a mark on public policy, nor the institution.

Times and her caucus, though, gave Pelosi the opportunity to leave as important a mark as any Speaker.  Machiavelli wrote of the importance of virtu, which was not only skill, but fortune and the ability to recognize it, and the best way to take advantage of it.  Boehner, for all his skill, was Henry Bemis from the Twilight Zone episode, "Time Enough At Last."  Bemis wanted nothing more than time alone to read.  He crawled into a bank vault on his lunch break to read, and a neutron bomb killed everyone around him.  He began stacking all of his books in preparation to enjoy his time, and then he broke his glasses.  Boehner spent years trying to become Speaker, going so far as to try to lead a coup to take down Gingrich in 1997.  When that failed, he had to start at the bottom again.  When he finally reached the top and got the gavel, it was with the craziest caucus the institution had seen.  Yet.  Darned glasses!

Pelosi was more fortunate.  While the Democratic Party is in the process of a slide towards wackadoodle-do, her caucus was not controlled by The Squad.  They were busy not doing their homework when Pelosi ran the House from '07 through '10, and they had not yet reached critical mass by 2021.  To be sure, there was agitation during her tenure about a change in leadership... 'cuz, but while Nancy Pelosi did stuff, none of the spoiled, narcissistic children around her ever did anything but post pictures of themselves on social media and tweet.  Like Donald Fucking Trump.

Is there such a thing as a time to go?  Well, here's the thing.  Keb'Mc will be the weakest, most incompetent Speaker in modern memory.  Let's see if he can beat Bob Livingston's record of being ousted before being seated.  If the Democrats have someone with a brain in charge, they can exploit the divisions in a narrow and feuding majority caucus.  Pelosi would have known how.

Will Hakeem Jeffries?  This is about managing coalitions and vote counting.  Jeffries doesn't have a record on this.  This is a skill that few have.  McConnell has it.  Boehner had it.  The great legislators in the history of either chamber have had it, but Pelosi has been doing the Democrats' heavy lifting, because nobody else could.  What now?  I don't know.  Will Jeffries rise to the challenge?  I don't know.  His opponent is not amongst the great strategic thinkers of our era, so at the very least, he gets to practice against someone who is not, shall we say, Mitch McConnell.  The Democrats have that going for them.

But between Pelosi and Hoyer stepping down, the Democrats are losing all of their institutional skills at the same time at a juncture at which it could come in handy.

Then again, all McCarthy is going to do is run half-assed "investigations" of Hunter Biden, so really, does it matter?

Since it's Friday, let's have some appropriate jazz.  Brad Mehldau, "Resignation."  Brad has done several versions of this, but I like the live version on Art of the Trio, Vol. 5.