What I am trying to say, with apologies to Shirley Jackson, is that something was very wrong in Capitol Hill House.
The October chill had descended, and atop Capitol Hill the figures mingled and loomed. They hovered in cloakrooms and they howled in conference. They were incensed against one another. Madness reigned. I am speaking, of course, of the GOP caucus; the ominous moans and groans seemed to emanate entirely from that region of the House. On the Democratic side, you could still hear birdsong.
Amid it all, Capitol Hill House stood speakerless! There was no one in charge. The votes were cast, yet it did not change. Something sinister wrote “The best lack a quorum and the worst are full of passionate intensity” over the entrance to the Republican cloakroom, yet it did not change.
And the question echoed through its marble halls: Where was the adult who was supposed to come into the room? Where was the promised leadership? But the leadership was a ghost ship, and the figure of the adult remained absent from the chair. There was a bow tie there, but that was all.
We did not know how bad it was, at first. We had been pleased and proud to send representatives there, to pass laws and generally help keep the country running. But after 17 days passed with no sign of leadership, we started to worry. What was going on? Where was the legislation that was ordinarily emitted from this building? What were they doing in there?
When it appeared on C-SPAN, it seemed too terrible to be believed. A ghoulish parody of their appointed work!
They were voting, it appeared. At least, it looked like voting. But they were trying to elect Jim Jordan speaker. Jim Jordan! A man who had never drafted legislation that became law in 16 years in the House; a man who had striven mightily to deny the results of the 2020 election; a man who never wore a jacket! What had happened? And then they voted again, and again. Each time, he won fewer votes.
For days they stood on the House floor, trying again and again to choose a speaker. For a while it seemed likely to continue forever, repeating and repeating and wearing down the caucus with threats and badgering until Jordan might receive no votes at all.
What had brought this nightmare to Capitol Hill House? What had brought this lumbering thing that lurked and cast its shadow over the marble floors? What was this thing that telephoned the members at night? Who had unearthed it and brought it to malignant life? And, oh, who would bottle it again?
Was it Kevin McCarthy who had unleashed the curse? Could it be that McCarthy, signing his devil’s bargain with Matt Gaetz in the woods in the dead of night, had invoked more than a motion to vacate? That in seeking to herd cats he had gambled perhaps too much of his soul?
Or had it long lurked within the Republican caucus, small but intransigent, like a tumor?
It had long been maintained that there was a curse there, on the Hill; some said it was bodied forth in the spectral figure of Matt Gaetz, but too many people could see him. Something was rotten on the Hill. They were all trapped there and the numbers were dwindling.
We had not known the place was cursed, when we sent representatives there! It had seemed goodly enough, a place fit to serve as a cradle for new laws, one where a committee might sit and go about business in good order. We did not suspect it, then! Some said it was haunted, that it was tainted by fumes of the swamp on which it sat — but we did not listen. The House had functioned for 200-odd years — very odd, indeed! — and it would function for as many more. And yet — there is a subtle influence that passes from mind to mind. Enough people were sent to Congress who believed it was not possible to govern … and by their very belief, they made it impossible!
Some said it was the swamp on which the House was built, but most knew better. They said that those who blamed the swamp had brought something with them, something that made it impossible to govern, because they simply did not care to.
And now they were trapped there, headless. Nothing sat in the chair, no one wielded the gavel and no law could be passed, and all the time the shutdown was creeping closer and closer. Some said that there were evil clowns, too, though others said that was only Matt Gaetz. And as they bickered and squabbled the clock ticked down, down.
Yet they did not care. And all the while the chair sat empty and the clock ticked down, and the horror was not what was in the House. It was what would happen outside it.
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