This Is How Congress Is Supposed to Be

The press wants to portray the ongoing speakership election as chaos. What political observers are actually experiencing is a rare vote in Congress where the outcome is not already known in advance. More votes should be this way.

Adding to the purported chaos is the fact that the members of the House are actually in the Capitol, together, at the same time. This, too, is a welcome reprieve from legislative life under the proxy-voting rules Democrats used when they controlled the chamber, supposedly over Covid concerns. It’s also welcome because the House has not been accustomed to assembling all at once for years, pandemic or not.