The House of Representatives won’t have Kevin Owen McCarthy to kick around anymore. The eight-term Republican congressman from California announced on Wednesday that he would be stepping down from Congress, just over two months since his ouster after 10 months as speaker. Rather than finishing out his now-final term, McCarthy said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, he will be leaving before the end of the year.
I can’t say that I’m surprised that this is the path McCarthy is taking. His 16 years in office, almost all in conference leadership, have been almost solely defined by his opportunism. It was clear after last fall’s midterms that his future in the House was reliant upon a razor-thin majority; his eventual downfall was all but predestined. But rather than continue to serve the people of Bakersfield, California, or work to counter the far-right members who toppled him, he has opted to chase power elsewhere. It is the choice of a coward.
The op-ed is also oddly self-congratulatory for someone leaving office with no real victories to his name.
McCarthy’s op-ed declaring that he will leave office to “serve America in new ways” is a perfect distillation of his congressional ethos: paragraphs of pablum with no substance. The closest thing to a thesis one can draw from the piece is that Congress is pointless, so his failures don’t really matter. “It often seems that the more Washington does, the worse America gets,” he writes, adding that the “challenges we face are more likely to be solved by innovation than legislation.” He doesn’t name these challenges, but he puts solving them squarely on the plate of “everyday men and women who are raising families, showing up for work, volunteering, and pursuing the American Dream with passion and purpose” rather than the officials they elected to handle it for them.
The op-ed is also oddly self-congratulatory for someone leaving office with no real victories to his name. He patted himself on the back for shepherding Republican messaging bills about immigration and “parental rights” through his narrow majority. The two major bills he mentions that actually did become law — his deal with President Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling and a short-term spending bill to avoid a shutdown — barely hit the lowest of bars (and both required mostly Democratic votes to pass).
If this is the lie that McCarthy has to tell himself, that’s fine; it is an unconvincing rewriting of history and will do little to change the legacy he has crafted. He has been a poor steward of the people’s trust; rather than sever ties with former President Donald Trump in 2021, he rehabilitated the biggest threat facing American democracy. He has done nothing to leave Capitol Hill a better place than when he first arrived. If anything, McCarthy’s actions have left Congress weaker both in institutional power and in character. With his departure, he absolves himself of any responsibility to rein in the forces that he has helped unleash with his years of supplication to the far-right wing of his party.
It is the latest ignoble end for a run of Republican speakers. I would be slightly less scathing toward McCarthy if he merely copied the Republican speaker before him, Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan, and announced that he wouldn’t seek another term in next year’s election. After all, it was already clear that McCarthy lacked the same kind of influence among the rank and file held by Democratic former Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California. With his influence collapsed and with no real interest in policymaking, there was little to tether him to office for the long term.
It is the latest ignoble end for a run of Republican speakers.
When former Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, abruptly resigned in 2015, McCarthy was the House majority leader, with an up-close look at the miscalculations and machinations that made his boss realize that he couldn’t control the tea party and the House Freedom Caucus. Rather than attempt to marginalize the far right, though, McCarthy chose appeasement, only lashing out in desperation when he was cornered. He lost, and lacking any remaining principles to fall back on, it sounds like, he intends to focus on the main talent he has honed over the years: raising money.
But Boehner at least left Ryan in charge of a working majority. In choosing to leave early, McCarthy is making life much more difficult for his successor, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and yielding even more influence to the same agents of chaos that drove him from power. The short-term bill keeping the government open is set to expire in two phases, first in January and then in February. McCarthy’s exit comes on the heels of the expulsion of former Rep. George Santos of New York last week, and it may coincide with Rep. Bill Johnson of Ohio’s resignation to become president of Youngstown State University.
With three empty seats, depending on absences across the aisle, the GOP may be able to lose only one vote without a bill failing. That doesn’t bode well for the plan to finish passing annual appropriations bills ahead of a potential rolling shutdown of the federal government. It also places more of a target on Johnson’s back should he once again need to rely on Democrats to save the day.
But that won’t be McCarthy’s problem anymore — not that he ever really saw it as his. Congress was merely a place where Kevin McCarthy showed up to work in the hope of one day becoming manager. There is no courage required in that.