Writer: The Greatest Geopolitical Crisis Is Arguably in DC

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Now, amid the heightening conflict in the Middle East, the U.S. legislative branch remains practically paralyzed. There is still no house speaker. Representative Jim Jordan is trying to rally support to replace Kevin McCarthy who was ousted by a handful of far-right members of his own party two weeks ago. But getting the votes appears to be a challenge. Susan Glasser, a writer for “The New Yorker,” joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss what this chaos means for the Republican Party itself.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Susan Glasser, thanks so much for joining us. Last week you wrote in “The New Yorker,” the chaos party on the Hill keeps on chaosing. That’s describing the Republican Party. Why the word chaos and explain to our audience.

SUSAN GLASSER, GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: You know, we’re about to hit the two-week mark since Republicans have had a functioning speaker of the house in place, and it’s essentially become a sort of a revolution eats its own situation up on Capitol Hill, where basically they don’t have a majority that’s large enough to actually govern the House in a meaningful way.

They’re too divided as a party. They can only afford to lose four Republicans at any given moment. And so, basically, what they did is they took one of the weakest speakers that I can ever remember, Kevin McCarthy. Remember, it took him 15 rounds of voting back in January to get the job. And they finally said, forget it. We don’t want him. Eight members of the Republican conference only were enough to throw him out. And ever since then, they’ve been unable to find a new speaker that they can agree upon.

SREENIVASAN: Last week, Steve Scalise bowed out because he couldn’t secure the votes. And then, Jim Jordan could be the sort of front runner now. But, you know, Liz Cheney, for example, was saying on the social media platform X that if Jim Jordan was to be elected the representative by the Republicans, it would cost them the house majority.

GLASSER: Well, you know, Jim Jordan is a very polarizing figure, even within the Republican Party. The former House Speaker, John Boehner, once called him and his allies legislative terrorists. They have been sort of key members of the Burn It Down caucus for quite some time, fostering things like government shutdowns, attacks on their own leadership.

Now, in the last couple of years, Jordan has sort of sought to become a key envoy to leadership, but his makeover hasn’t been enough for many of what we might consider the remaining establishment Republicans in the House of Representatives. They’re still not on board with Jordan. And to the point about, you know, is he now going to be the favored candidate? I’m just struck by how much the Republicans have become the party of sore losers. Remember, in effect, right, this is a party that’s — especially the Republicans in the House of Representatives, they are the Trumpest wing, the most Trumpest wing of the elected Republicans. Jim Jordan being one of their main leaders and sort of envoys to Donald Trump.

What is their protest about 2020 all about? It’s all about. Sore loser to him, right? Being — in uniting behind a presidential candidate who refused to accept the overwhelming evidence as his own advisers gave it to him of his own defeat. Well, now Jim Jordan was defeated. He was defeated in the House speaker race by Steve Scalise, the number two House Republican, the other day in the Republican conference. But Scalise found that although he beat Jordan quite easily, that he wasn’t able to secure essentially the unanimity of the conference. So, he bowed out. So, now, we have a situation where the loser, Jim Jordan, is trying to muscle his way to victory by telling other Republicans they need to get in line with him. I’m just — it’s a remarkable kind of psychology that’s now prevailing among House Republicans.

SREENIVASAN: Speaking of psychology, I wonder — this morning, I’m waking up to headlines about how maybe is there some potential for some sort of a bipartisan speaker deal? And I wonder how fantastical that is, and I wonder how much of that is just sort of posturing to say to the more conservative wing of the Republican Party, hey, listen, you know, if you don’t get in line and vote for somebody that we can agree on, we might have to go across the aisle and get somebody you really don’t like.

GLASSER: Yes. No, I think that’s right. It’s always useful to sort of rally Republicans together to offer the threat that, you know, watch out or the Democrats will somehow take advantage of the situation.

Now, I have been observing Capitol Hill in Congress for a long time. My first job out of college for eight years was working at “Roll Call Newspaper.” And one thing I will tell you is that every time there is a crisis on Capitol Hill, whether it’s a threatened government shutdown or a leadership fight, there’s always the specter of these mythical sort of centrist, the — you know, the bipartisan coalition that’s going to come and rise to the rescue and save the day. And in my experience, that almost never — basically, never happens. In fact, there’s a reason that the middle of the road members are in the middle of the road. Generally speaking, we’ve become in a situation where that is even more true in our politics, that the highly mobilized extremes in either party have tended to dominate outcomes in recent years. They have the television advantage, right? You know, they’re promoted in say right- wing media. They have a fundraising advantage by playing to and arousing the sympathies of the party’s base.

And generally speaking, it’s not a situation where you can have the kind of middle of the rotors and the moderates, if you will, come and ride to the rescue. But they do have the numbers. This is a very close call and it’s unprecedented. I think people may not realize it’s not just another example of kind of dysfunction on Capitol Hill, this is actually never happened before in the entire history of the United States. That the House of Representatives has gone without a speaker after deposing a speaker. That’s just never happened.

SREENIVASAN: You know, I wonder how the events of the last week between Israel and Hamas complicate matters on the Hill. I mean, the president has agreed to send — and he has sent some armaments and he wants a wider bill, wants more appropriations for that. When the House can’t pass anything, what are we talking about here?

GLASSER: Yes. No, I mean, it’s going to very quickly become not just a sort of example of internal dysfunction, but a sort of national security crisis, the fact that the United States of America does not have a functioning House of Representatives, their basic duty is to appropriate funds. That’s their constitutional responsibility.

And so, if the United States wants to send urgently needed national security aid to Israel, to Ukraine, to other places, it can’t do so while the House is in this internal disarray. And so, I think you’re going to hear more and more about that. I was very struck to hear a senior Republican, Michael McCaul, who’s the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he was making that point very openly last week to reporters on Capitol Hill saying, like, essentially, we can’t get our act together and this is a huge problem for us. And I think that, you know, he understands the message that goes out to not only America’s allies, but it’s adversaries as well when we are so internally divided that we can’t perform basic functions.

One emerging fight you’ll see on this question of a funding bill whenever the House is able to act on things is whether they’re going to bundle that very popular, I would say, bipartisan aid for Israel into a measure that also includes more emergency funding for Ukraine, that money has run out, and the Biden administration had asked over the summer for $24 billion in additional monies to be sent for assistance to Ukraine. Congress has so far failed to act on that. There’s a movement afoot to put those things together along with possibly some other priorities.

I do think that chairman McCall had an important point. And certainly, I think the message has gotten through even to many allies of the United States around the world who are increasingly concerned about U.S. leadership in the world and whether we really have the staying power at a time when we’re so internally divided.

I have thought for a number of years, really going back to the beginning of the Trump presidency, that, you know, the greatest geopolitical crisis in the world arguably is not in the Middle East, it’s not in Europe, but it’s right here in Washington in a country that is a leader in the world and yet so internally divided that it can’t really do — perform that function. And I think this turmoil in the House of Representatives is another powerful example of that.

And for right now, honestly, there’s no real evidence to suggest that Republicans care that much about how — what a bad look this is for the United States around the world. They’re consumed with their internal fight. It’s a real civil war among the Republicans.

SREENIVASAN: You know, in the Senate, Senator Tuberville has made it a point of blocking military leadership appointments. And, I guess, first for our audience, what’s his concern and what’s the status of whether that complicates matters when President Biden says we’re essentially sending another aircraft carrier into the Middle East region to support Israel?

GLASSER: Yes. This — I’m glad you brought up this this sort of one-man blockade of senior military appointments by Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, especially because he was asked about this in the wake of the Hamas attack in Israel, and he said, basically, even that isn’t going to change my mind.

And, you know, it’s kind of the Senate analog to eight members in the House being able to get rid of a speaker, even though the vast majority of Republicans wanted Kevin McCarthy to remain a speaker now in this in the Senate, talk about minority rule, one senator has been able to stop senior appointments from getting through.

I mean, so senior, the leaders of the Armed Services, the different branches. The Armed Services have been caught up in this blockade. Many generals have been caught up in this blockade. Commanders in key regions have been caught up. And essentially, it’s a one-man protest that is somewhat obscure. He says that he is against the Pentagon and the Defense Department reimbursing service members who need to travel to a different state to obtain an abortion.

Now, the Pentagon does not pay for the abortions of service members. So, it’s not even that they would be paying for abortions. This is a policy that would apply really to very few people that would involve simply reimbursing the travel for service members, and that’s what this blockade is about. There’s a big finger pointing in the Senate between the different leaders. Basically, Democrats run the Senate. They have the majority, but they say it’s up to the Republican minority, it’s up to Mitch McConnell to get his own members in line. There’s a reluctance in both parties to change the rules. Of course, they could do that, and simply ram through these nominations anyways. They don’t want to do that because the individual senators, of course, want to maintain their own ability in the future to have this kind of protest. So, the results, again, is a kind of government dysfunction that I think is shocking to many international observers of the United States.

SREENIVASAN: There are also diplomatic positions that are unfilled. Right now, we don’t have an ambassador to Israel, Kuwait, Egypt, Oman, several countries in the region that might become important or more important if this war between Israel and Hamas drives on.

GLASSER: Yes. Well, one thing that has certainly happened is faster tracking of the nomination of Jack Lew, the former OMB director and White House chief of staff for President Obama. He’s now the nominee of President Biden to become the ambassador to Israel, they’re going to have a hearing this week, and I assume that his confirmation will be fast tracked very quickly. He’ll be in the region. But again, it puts a spotlight, as all crises do on, you know, just the weaknesses in our system that we were sort of ignoring or looking past before the crisis hit.

SREENIVASAN: You know, besides the impending shutdown again, what are the consequences to the American public when Congress is at such a stalemate and cannot perform its tasks?

GLASSER: Look, you know, for many, many years, the American people have consistently shown preferences for divided government. That is, they want to have a president of one party and constraints by having majorities of another party in at least one branch of Congress. So, we have a lot of experience with divided rule. Combine that, however, with the increasing polarization and dysfunction inside our political system, and the incentives for deal making have not been what they used to be. And so, I think part of the crisis that people are now seeing evident when we have something like this brewing in the Middle East is that the incentives for the two parties, even with divided government to work together are less and less than they used to be, because we have a politics of outrage, we have a politics of hyper empowered extremes. And in effect, that’s what you’re seeing in the House. Of course, that’s really going to be very evident in the 2024 presidential election that is already well underway, the politics of extremes where parties are essentially unwilling and unable to elect people who can work together.

SREENIVASAN: What’s the role of former President Trump in this? Is he backing anybody in particular?

GLASSER: Oh, I’m glad you brought up this question about Donald Trump, because normally, of course, you wouldn’t see outsiders playing a big role in an internal House leadership election. In fact, it used to be, back in my day, when I was covering Capitol Hill, they didn’t want outside interference, even from leaders of their own party.

But actually, what you’re seeing is the increasing nationalization of our politics. Donald Trump made a very controversial decision to jump in and to endorse the candidacy of Jim Jordan for speaker. Jordan, as I mentioned before, has become — Jordan has been one of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies internally on Capitol Hill for years, going back to when Trump was president. There was always Jordan there. When it came to Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and his effort to overturn that election on January 6, 2021, Jim Jordan was one of his closest lieutenants on Capitol Hill, intimately involved in strategy with then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and Donald Trump talking about how to raise the objections to Joe Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021. So, Jordan this — in a way, was payback for his loyalty to Donald Trump over the years, but it’s very controversial. And what did it say about Trump’s power and popularity as a would-be presidential nominee that the majority of House Republicans did not vote for Donald Trump’s candidate when they had the election last week, they voted for Steve Scalise over Jim Jordan. And yes, once again, you find this party sort of taken hostage by hyper empowered Trumpist minorities. The Trump faction in the House of Representatives is not the majority of the House of Representatives in the sense that they were willing to vote against Trump’s choice for speaker.  And yet, somehow, Jordan has sort of taken a page from Donald Trump’s playbook and is sort of doing the sore loser thing and turning that into you ought to vote for me because I’m willing to keep going when the others are not.

SREENIVASAN: Where to the Democrats stand in all this? I mean, they are a slim minority, but I don’t know what their strategy is or tactics are in watching this unfold, letting it unfold, offering to do something.

GLASSER: Yes. You know, I mean, one of the things that’s striking is that Democrats, certainly, they must see some electoral advantage in this. It’s bad for the country. It’s arguably bad for the world. But at the same time, it certainly is a vivid display of what Democrats have been saying for a number of years, which is Republicans are not a governing party. They’re not serious about doing the business of government. They are essentially engaged in a kind of performative race to the extremes.

And it would — it seems to me that this ongoing fight over the speakership, their willingness literally to leave the speakership open is an example of the kind of dysfunction and Republican disarray that Democrats have been talking about for a number of years, and combine that with their critique of Donald Trump who is running away, it appears, with the 2024 Republican presidential nomination despite, you know, the chaos of the time when he was president, despite the four different pending criminal indictments against him. And so, I think this becomes just yet another example for Democrats of their election season argument about why Republicans are not a serious governing party.

SREENIVASAN: Susan Glasser of “The New Yorker,” thanks so much for joining us.

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