* The chaos of a protracted House speakership election that has paralyzed the brand new Congress has exposed a series of entrenched defects of the U.S. democratic system, making it difficult to interrupt the country’s political deadlock for some time.
* The Wall Street Journal described in an editorial that the Capitol riot was “a national disgrace” but “almost more dispiriting is the way in which America’s two warring political tribes have responded.”
* The divided Congress with House Republicans aiming at checking the White House, nonetheless, is unlikely to bring any relief to the strong partisanship and deep political polarization that has increasingly choked Washington and the country at large.
by Xinhua writers Yan Liang, Sun Ding
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) — America is embarrassed by a protracted House speakership election that has paralyzed the brand new Congress with scars left by the Capitol riot stinging much more on the second anniversary.
“It’s embarrassing,” U.S. President Joe Biden said earlier this week of the House’s repeated failure to elect a recent speaker while stressing that the country, which has barely recovered from the mayhem on Capitol Hill exactly two years ago, has had “a number of trouble with the attacks on our institutions.”
Such chaos in U.S. politics has exposed a series of entrenched defects of the U.S. democratic system, making it difficult to interrupt the country’s political deadlock for some time, said Chen Wenxin, executive director of the Institute of American Studies, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.
POLITICAL DYSFUNCTION
Republicans flipped the U.S. House of Representatives within the 2022 midterm elections — the most costly of those in history — while Democrats held onto their majority within the Senate. The divided 118th Congress convened for the primary time on Tuesday, however the lower chamber bumped into a stalemate unseen in a century.
U.S. Congressman Kevin McCarthy from California — who served as House Republican leader over the past 4 years — did not be elected the brand new speaker in three days of voting resulting from intra-party division.
McCarthy has the support of most House Republicans and former U.S. President Donald Trump, but a handful of hardliners have opposed his bid to guide the conference by arguing that he’s insufficiently conservative while refusing to decentralize the speaker’s power.
It was the primary time a House speaker — who maintains order, manages its proceedings, and governs the administration of its business on the lower chamber’s floor — hadn’t been elected on the primary ballot in 100 years.
Jemele Hill, a contributing author for The Atlantic, commented that what has been witnessed “in American politics is just one other brutal indictment of this dysfunctional political system.”
“U.S. politicians are vying for power,” said Chen, adding that there may be less and fewer room for various political forces within the country to reconcile, as political polarization has been festering. That makes Washington elites eager to seize the chance of midterm elections to realize the upper hand, in accordance with the expert.
The 435-seat House, “unlike the Senate, will not be a unbroken body,” Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe explained. “It must reassemble itself without full constitutional authority every two years.”
Tribe compared the proceeding to “someone rebuilding a ship on the open seas,” saying that “when the voyage is that this rough, that is an indication of dysfunction.”
Without speaker, incoming House members can’t be sworn in and committees can’t be formed with the remainder of business stalled and Congress not fully functional because the country is faced with several challenges, including stubborn inflation.
U.S. Congressman-elect Kevin Mullin, a California Democrat, brought his children to the Capitol on Tuesday for his swear-in ceremony, however the young kids fell asleep within the seats on the House floor as voting went on and on that day.
“It isn’t good for the Republican Party. It isn’t good for the Congress,” Mullin told The San Francisco Chronicle. “And it is not good for the American people when you’ve this type of disarray on a day one among the 118th Congress.”
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, also seemed to be frustrated, calling out that the “dysfunction in Washington is more evidence that the divide in our party is not about policy or ideology.”
This photo taken on Jan. 3, 2023 shows the U.S. Capitol constructing in Washington, D.C., america. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
“DEMOCRAZY” DAY
The historic deadlock within the House coincided with the two-year mark of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, when a big group of Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol — positioned on the eastern end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. — and disrupted a joint session of Congress to affirm the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election by which Biden won.
A number of the rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” while making their way into the Capitol. The then U.S. vp, who was presiding over the procedure to formally confirm Biden’s victory, was rushed out of the constructing by Secret Service agents to a secure location. Panicked lawmakers took shelter and crouched behind chairs within the House gallery.
Roughly 140 cops were assaulted within the worst attack on the U.S. Capitol in greater than 200 years to which not less than five deaths have been linked. Over 900 individuals have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the landmark complex.
Roger Cohen, Paris bureau chief of The Recent York Times, wrote in a story after the Capitol riot that it’s “a shattering blow to America’s troubled Democratic image.”
Chen said the core design of the U.S. system of checks and balances appear of no avail. Within the system, the separation of power in the federal government is ensured through three independent branches — the manager branch, the judicial branch, and the legislative branch.
Nonetheless, the expert identified the recent political chaos showed that the judicial branch, which must have maintained independence, has played a big part in partisan fights, as each Democrats and Republicans have struggled to rearrange their staff into the federal and state judicial systems through elections.
Trump, who refused to concede to Biden and to push the unsubstantiated claim that their 2020 face-off was rigged, was impeached by the Democratic-led House for incitement of riot a historic second time before he left office on Jan. 20, 2021. The Senate, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans at the moment, acquitted him later.
A House special committee led by Democrats launched an 18-month investigation into the Jan. 6 attack and issued a “final report” last month, alleging and detailing a “multistep effort” devised and driven by Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of power.
The panel, poised to be dissolved by House Republicans, accused Trump of inciting an riot, conspiracy to defraud america, conspiracy to make a false statement, and obstruction of an official proceeding, and made criminal referrals to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The criminal referrals usually are not legally binding, and it’s as much as the DOJ to choose whether to pursue charges. Federal prosecutors are running a separate probe into the Capitol riot.
Trump, who launched a 3rd bid for the White House after the 2022 midterms, has strongly slammed the House investigators and their report, stating that they “didn’t produce a single shred of evidence that I in any way intended or wanted violence at our Capitol” and that the events of Jan. 6 “weren’t an riot” but “a protest that got tragically uncontrolled.”
The Wall Street Journal described in an editorial that the Capitol riot was “a national disgrace” but “almost more dispiriting is the way in which America’s two warring political tribes have responded.”
This photo taken on Jan. 5, 2023 shows the empty chair of the Speaker of the House on the Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., america. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
DEEP POLARIZATION
U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona announced last month that she was leaving the Democrat Party and had registered as an independent, declaring “independence from the broken partisan system in Washington.”
“There is a disconnect between what on a regular basis Americans want and deserve from our politics, and what political parties are offering,” Sinema wrote in an op-ed. “When politicians are more focused on denying the opposition party a victory than they’re on improving Americans’ lives, the individuals who lose are on a regular basis Americans.”
“On a regular basis Americans are increasingly left behind by national parties’ rigid partisanship, which has hardened lately,” she continued. “Bipartisan compromise is seen as a rarely acceptable last resort, reasonably than the most effective approach to achieve lasting progress. Payback against the opposition party has replaced thoughtful legislating.”
The divided Congress with House Republicans aiming at checking the White House, nonetheless, is unlikely to bring any relief to the strong partisanship and deep political polarization that has increasingly choked Washington and the country at large.
Political risk consultancy Eurasia Group listed “Divided States of America” as one among the highest risks for 2023 in a recent report, saying america “stays one of the politically polarized and dysfunctional of the world’s advanced industrial democracies.”
“The growing partisan polarization of the American electorate is continuous to erode the legitimacy of core federal institutions: the three branches of presidency and the peaceful transfer of power through free and fair elections,” the report cautioned.
America will proceed to go further along the trail of political polarization, Chen said, adding that this 12 months, each parties will make things difficult for one another on many issues and always point fingers at one another, as their political stance will progressively serve the final election in 2024.
McCarthy has previously vowed that House Republicans will seek to secure the southern U.S. border, reduce on government spending, and launch rigorous investigations into the Biden administration. Besides, he didn’t rule out impeachment, which pro-Trump Republicans have been talking about.
Photo taken on Oct. 13, 2022 shows a public hearing of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January sixth Attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., america. (Alex Wong/Pool via Xinhua)
The Capitol riot also stays a source of partisan discord as House Republicans are preparing to review the Jan. 6 select committee’s findings and allegations.
The DOJ has yet to announce whether to press criminal charges against Trump, a high-stakes move that might have a consequential impact because the 2024 presidential election is lower than two years away. No U.S. president has ever been charged with against the law after leaving office.
Biden acknowledged the polarization of U.S. politics as a part of his Christmas remarks at the top of last 12 months, saying that “our politics has gotten so indignant, so mean, so partisan” while urging efforts to “drain the poison that has infected our politics and set us against each other.”
“Too often we see one another as enemies, not as neighbors; as Democrats or Republicans, not as fellow Americans,” he lamented. “We have change into too divided.”
As to the Republican quest to counter his agenda, Biden said in November last 12 months, “I believe the American public want us to maneuver on and get things done for them.”
“They don’t desire every single day going forward to be a relentless political battle,” he added, warning america against being “trapped in an limitless political warfare.”
In accordance with a Gallup survey conducted between Nov. 9-Dec. 2 last 12 months, Biden’s approval rating stands at 40 percent, with 55 percent disapproving of the way in which he’s handling his job. Meanwhile, Americans’ approval of Congress stays largely negative, with 73 percent of adults expressing disapproval.
(Video reporters: Hu Yousong, Ma Qian; video editors: Wang Haiyan, Cao Ying, Wang Houyuan, Peng Ying, Liu Ruoshi)â–
