Rep. Kevin McCarthy listens during the second day of elections for House speaker in Washington, Jan. 4.
Photo:
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
It’s hard not to see the predicament of Rep.
Kevin McCarthy
as a tragedy. A man who was heralded 15 years ago as a new brand of conservative leader, who set records for fundraising, and who helped get candidates elected all over the country now has had to suffer through successive failures to become speaker of the House.
Mr. McCarthy was a co-author, with future Speaker
Paul Ryan
and Majority Leader
Eric Cantor,
of “Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders” (2010), which criticized earlier Republicans, particularly on matters of the federal budget. They wrote that Republicans were “arrogant and out of touch” and suffered “failures from high-profile ethics lapses to the inability to rein in spending or even slow the growth of government.”
Yet as a lawmaker, and in four years as minority leader, Mr. McCarthy showed no particular legislative interests and had no signature achievements. He would have been the perfect Republican National Committee chairman, a job that’s concerned only with building the party and winning elections. As a leader in Congress, he needed to demonstrate that he could effectively legislate and govern as well.
Winning elections is the first step to good governance. Effective policy and legislation is the next. Too many politicians have forgotten over the past decade that good policy is good politics. An effective lawmaker or statesman has to focus on more than the X’s and O’s of elections.
Mr. McCarthy repeatedly tried to placate bomb throwers in his own party, who were never going to be happy with anything less than complete capitulation. He bent over backward to please a vocal minority while taking for granted that the reasonable majority of his party would remain loyal. He even…
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