(14 Nov update) I got this badly wrong. Johnson followed the same path that doomed McCarthy, passing a short-term fix with Democratic votes. It’s hard to see why the Republicans went through all these contortions to end up where they started.
Government shutdowns, and threats of shutdown, have become routine in the US, with the result that no one much worries about them any more. Typically some kind of compromise is reached just as the deadline approaches, and government returns to quasi-normality.. Occasionally, bluffs are called and a ‘shutdown’ actually happens. Civil servants are sent home, public facilities are closed and so on. But the armed forces operate as normal, Social Security checks go out, and IOUs take the place of actual spending for various essential purposes. After a few weeks at the most, that produces enough pressure to deliver some kind of resolution. As far as I can see, that’s what most political commentators think will happen in November, when the next deadline is reached.
I foresee something more drastic and dangerous. It’s hard to imagine the Republicans in the House of Representatives agreeing on any set of demands for a spending bill, short of requiring Biden and Harris to resign and install Johnson as President* . But if they do come up with a program, it will be so extreme as to be totally unacceptable to Biden and the Democrats. And, the long history of blackmail efforts like this seems to have stiffened spines on the Democratic side.
Earthquakes: Facts, Definition, Types, Causes and Effects of Earthquake …
So, there will probably be a shutdown. But how will it end? Leaving aside the fact that Johnson is a far-right extremist dedicated to the overthrow of US democracy, cutting any kind of deal with Biden would be signing his own resignation (but see below). On the other side, capitulation would doom Biden’s presidency.
That means the shutdown has to continue past the symbolic stage of closing national parks and so on, to the point where it is doing serious damage to the US economy and society, with debt downgrades, personal and corporate bankruptcies and so on. That will still not be enough to shift the Republican extreme right, so no deal will be achieved with Republicans alone. What are the remaining possibilities? Here are a few I’ve thought about, roughly in order of probability
- Johnson cuts a deal with the Democrats, passing a continuing resolution in return for the promise of some abstentions, or even active support, when the Freedom Caucus try to vote him out. This seems the most likely option to me, but it will be very painful on both sides
- Biden capitulates. I still see this as unlikely, but the pressure to do so will be immense.
- A handful of Republicans remember that they are supposed to care about the country they govern, and cross the floor, knowing they will lose their seats and face the obloquy of most of their (former) friends and supporters.
- Biden invokes emergency powers to reopen the government and defies the Supreme Court to stop him. I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know what these powers might be, but the issue is essentially political. Unless he is impeached or otherwise prevented from acting, emergency powers are what the President says they are, a point made by Abraham Lincoln at the beginning of the Civil War (a relevant precedent in the current state of the US).
I haven’t seen anyone else predicting such a crisis, so maybe I’m over-estimating the difficulty of reaching a resolution. IIRC, I was among the first to predict a crisis like this when the Republicans retook the House in 2010**, but I couldn’t see a resolution then either, and one was reached in the end.
- Joking, but not really – I can imagine at least some of them demanding this, with the proviso that Johnson would then resign in favour of Trump.
** There was a debt limit crisis in 2011 and a 16-day shutdown in 2013.
Crossposted from my substack https://johnquigginblog.substack.com/p/the-big-one
John Quiggin 
The world would be in serious trouble if Trump were to become president again, especially if Netanyahu (+/- Hezbollah & Iran) and Putin are still waging war.
It’s hard to see how Johnson, an extremist dimwit whose only strength is his affable manner, can survive long, so a new Speaker is likely to be needed. Can anyone explain why nobody in Congress or the punditocracy has considered the obvious option of a neutral presiding officer, as in many parliaments in the Westminster tradition (Australia, Canada, India, Scotland…)? SFIK there isn’t even a constitutional requirement that
they have to be an elected member, or even a US citizen, so the recruitment pool is quite large.
James Wimberley
In the United Kingdom, Speakers of the House of Commons always withdraw from their party membership on becoming Speaker; this example has not been followed in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or any other country I know of.
That second anonymous comment above is me.
J-D
J-D: And? The Speakers in the parliaments mentioned are still expected to be impartial. Tie-breaking votes follow Denison’s Rule of preserving the status quo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_Denison%27s_rule
Those elected Speaker are MPs. They were previously elected to parliament under some party label. Nobody, in London or Canberra, expects them to abandon their general political orientation, the question is how they carry out the job. Those elected by their colleagues to it will normally be likeable centrists (the abrasive John Bercow is an exception). My suggestion that the polarised US House of Representatives look outside its own rank dos not follow any Westminster model. It will have the same success as my even better suggestion that the Pope appoint some women cardinals. (Feasible, look up cardinal deacons.)
In Westminster system, the government by definition holds a parliamentary majority. This will translate into substantial control of the agenda. But this is exercised through somebody else, in the UK the Leader of the House, a member of the government.
PS: I have no idea why the blog software recognises my identity and not yours. I am currently using Edge. Worth a try.
To answer your question – which is maybe on the other page by accident? – perhaps they might not have thought of this as a possibility. (I hadn’t – and I didn’t know that other countries had these arrangements.)
I need to think about it, too. In an ideal world, one of the regular clowns ought to be able to do the darned job. It should not be this difficult to run a country which isn’t presently under any special duress (just our regular self-created duress…)
I kind of don’t see either side handing this kind of power over to someone who can’t be controlled. But I should learn more about it, first.
Just to see if the attribution is working – I just put in my email and username – N We’ll see if it works.
Oopsie, no, there was your question right up there ^ – apologies.
I did want to thank you for the use of “boob” as a verb (on the other page). It made me think of birds. The poor boobies. Maybe there are a few hiding somewhere.
There isn’t enough fun in life, I think – and I found this verb to be diverting, so thank you.
Well, which is it, then? And, in either case, has it escaped your attention that people do not always behave the way they are supposed to behave? Do you know how frequently Australian Speakers suspend Opposition members and how often they suspend Government members? Do you know how scrupulously impartial they are (or are not) in enforcing the requirement of Standing Orders under which it is ‘expected’ that answers be relevant to questions? Are you familiar with the records of Sol Rosevear and Archie Cameron?
Perfect impartiality is an unattainable Platonic ideal. The question is whether actual Westminster-model Speakers, politicians carrying out a political office for political assemblies, do this in a way that is good enough for government work. Of course there will be controversies about their decisions and accusations of bias, some possibly justified. Can you point me to recent cases where these routine controversies have developed into broad and sustained pressure for structural reform? A priori, the spectacle of complete dysfunction offered by the US House of Representatives for half a year is not likely to stimulate demands for swapping a system that, imperfectly, works for one that does not.
The Oxford dictionary empire lists “boob” as a verb. English has an amazing capacity for shape-shifting matched only by the plasmodium parasite that causes malaria. “Verb” can be a verb, as in “Shakespeare even verbed proper nouns, in “he out-Herods Herod”.
I’m not recommending the US system. All systems certainly have faults and could do with improvement, but some are certainly worse than others. The recent dysfunction of the US House of Representatives is certainly worse than found in many other systems; it’s also substantially worse than the US House of Representatives itself used to be, and the reason it got worse is not structural change affecting the Speakership, it’s that Republicans have got worse. The main requirement for making the US House of Representatives work better is not structural change, it’s electing fewer Republicans.
This point is thrown into clearer relief by the contrast with the US Senate. The US Senate would also be improved by electing fewer Republicans, but its recent dysfunction (also an increase over past years) is significantly affected by structural features, specifically the particular form now taken by the practice of filibustering and also the practice of Senate holds. If both of those were eliminated, the structural change would make the US Senate work much better, independently of partisan change (although the main requirement for achieving those structural changes is still electing fewer Republicans).
Tommy Tuberville’s single-handed blockade of military appointments and promotions within the entire military apparatus is the more insidious case, for unlike a very public demonstration of a failure to continue funding the government services, the blockade escapes the attention or the focus of the American public. It is a risk that has become exponential in growth, and when the dam breaks on it, there’ll be no human solution possible. With people who are park rangers, or cleaners, or such jobs, it is at least conceivable you can put a person in place on a very temporary basis to hold the fort, so to speak, even if they cannot possibly be across all of the issues that a properly trained person would be. When it comes to running a few trillion dollars of military assets, the men and women in uniform, the quiet diplomacy with their military counterparts in foreign countries; well, that’s something that is not easily replenishable, either for a short term or a longer term. That one person can stall all this in the largest democracy on Earth is awesome, but in a very bad way.
I much prefer verbing to gifting, although I have reluctantly accepted that the latter is (apparently) proper. I just don’t happen to like it! (What was wrong with just “giving” something to someone?)
I also dislike the words bespoke and suss. And I hated it when people began “switching out” things, instead of just changing them.
I probably have other pet peeves with language but those are the ones that come up most often. A good friend is in a hopeless battle against “entitling” of documents. Ha, good luck.
Still, boobing makes up for all of it. : )
Merriam-Webster points out that a sentence like ‘I gifted them the book’ means something more specific than a sentence like ‘I gave them the book’ (and also that ‘gift’ has been used as a verb for at least four hundred years):
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/gift-as-a-verb
Of course you can say ‘I gave them the book as a present’ to communicate the same meaning as ‘I gifted them the book’, but it’s still true that using ‘gift’ as a verb adds to the language’s communicative resources.
J-D, what you say is quite true – and I should probably try to be less cranky.
I very much doubt you have ever been as cranky about your pedantry as I, in my day, have been about mine. Sometimes I still am. It’s something I struggle with, with varying degrees of success. I may die as the last person in the world who still pronounces harass to rhyme with embarrass.