Representative Patrick McHenry, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who briefly served as the acting House speaker earlier this fall, announced on Tuesday that he will be retiring from Congress at the end of this term, his tenth in the House. His departure will be a terrible loss not only for Republicans but for Congress as an institution, and it offers some lessons about the state of the first branch at this point.
McHenry’s trajectory is a classic example of institutional formation: He entered Congress in 2004, at the age of 29, as something of a partisan performer and bomb thrower — as he is the first to acknowledge. He had little interest in the legislative process but was always willing to get into a verbal brawl on cable news.
Comments