麦卡锡的莎士比亚悲剧
2023-01-10 07:43阅读：
麦卡锡在这场不合时宜的政治勒索中作出让步，这种绥靖政策只会让极端主义势力更加强大。显然，强硬保守派从麦卡锡和共和党占多数的众议院中榨取了不止“一磅肉”（语出莎士比亚戏剧《威尼斯商人》，代指用心险恶的契约条款），这将让治理变得极其困难。
The Shakespearean Tragedy of Kevin McCarthy, Prince of
Washington
Warring factions, a man possessed by naked ambition, a tragic fall
from grace. Where have we seen this play before?
By Jesús Rodríguez
To be or not to be Speaker of the House. To be it today, or
tomorrow night, or next week, or not at all.
That was doubtless the question gnawing at Kevin McCarthy’s mind
this week as the Republican Party he worked so hard to woo denied
him the speaker’s chair he believed he’d earned again and again and
again. For eight terms, he’d waited, dutifully crafting a script
that would allow him
to seize power over the lower chamber, only for a rebellious band
of Republicans to conveniently forget the lines he’d asked them to
memorize. The performance turned chaotic, humiliating, positively
Elizabethan.
And that was just Act One.
So often in the universe of official Washington’s backroom deals
and slippery allegiances, fair is foul, and foul is fair. But the
intraparty drama that unfolded here this week was near without
precedent in modern history: A speaker election had not stretched
on for this many ballots since 1859, when the nation careened into
a civil war. To make sense of the nonsensical, Washington’s
chattering class — not to mention the thousands of Americans who
turned to C-SPAN to follow the tragedy on the Hill — found
themselves falling back on William Shakespeare’s timeless
works.
“If I were McCarthy,” tweeted Robin Young, the co-host of NPR’s
“Here and Now,” “I’d check my tea for hemlock,” a reference to the
poisonous herb used to make the witch’s brew that sets in motion
Macbeth’s tragic downfall. Added Ruth Marcus of the Washington
Post: “Macbeth must kill and keep killing to slake his ambition.
McCarthy must concede and concede even more to slake his
own.”
Like the Scottish protagonist, McCarthy’s preferred method of
consolidating power was to keep the characters in his caucus happy.
He did that by bowing to the pressures of its most boisterous
members, even if their demands weren’t exactly in the best interest
of the party — or the country.
Other Shakespearean parallels abound. Although Young and Marcus
opted for Macbeth, it was also hard not to think of Julius Caesar,
Shakespeare’s recounting of the most famous betrayal of all
time.
We watched as the same 20 legislators (later down to six and then
just one) stabbed a stoic McCarthy on the House floor, consumed by
the belief that a protracted, four-day vote was the only possible
way to prevent the 57-year-old GOP leader from becoming a
tyrant.
We wondered whether a trusted right-hand man like Steve Scalise
would suddenly provide a made-for-theater “et tu, Brute?” moment,
announcing his own bid for the speakership. (Jim Jordan of Ohio did
sing McCarthy’s praises as he nominated him for speaker on the
second ballot, only to become a contender for the gavel when Matt
Gaetz nominated him in short order.)
Then there was the comic relief — much like the tension breaker in
Julius Caesar — of Democrats bringing out the popcorn machine as
the hours and days yawned on. As they lugged popcorn bags through
the halls of Congress, they reminded the audience of that play’s
punny cobbler, that “mender of bad soles.”
It may be an exercise in futility to attempt to find a one-to-one
comparison between real life and the page. No one Shakespearean
play can best capture the bedlam of this week. There is a bit of
the Bard in all of it.
Shakespeare’s works may be most instructive because of his tragic
heroes, figures possessed by naked ambition who, by the final act,
have fallen from grace in more ways than one. Is McCarthy King
Lear, who trusted the empty words of those who quickly turned their
backs on him, eventually leading to his untimely and lonely demise?
Is he instead Hamlet, staring into the eyes of a skull at arm’s
length, trying to avenge the ghost of Donald Trump? Or do we return
to Macbeth, the ambitious and charismatic court insider who
couldn’t see the daggers in men’s smiles?
Amid all these theatrics, it’s easy to forget that offstage, the
House’s failure to elect a leader has real-life consequences. On it
depends the swearing in of all 435 members of the House (without
whom there is indeed no House of Representatives), the sharing of
intelligence information between the White House and the speaker
(who’d become president if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were
incapacitated) and the steady flow of casework that Hill staffers
manage for everyday constituents. No bills passed by the local D.C.
Council can become law. “The rest of the world is looking” to see
if we can “get our act together,” Biden told reporters, calling the
saga “embarrassing.”
But if Shakespeare’s hard-to-decipher iambic pentameter has endured
for more than 400 years, it’s also because his words reckon with
the one constant that has bedeviled humanity at every turn of
history: power.
And it was power that McCarthy wanted and power that a tenth of the
House GOP caucus wanted to wrest from him. The 20 mutineers, who
included some members of the Tea Party movement along with
obstreperous newcomers, put forth very little discussion of policy
issues, homing in on securing procedural maneuvers instead. Among
the reported concessions: the rabble-rousers could trigger a
no-confidence vote to dethrone McCarthy with the say-so of only one
Republican; debt-ceiling hikes would have to be paired with
austerity measures; and arch-conservatives would be guaranteed
three seats on the powerful House Rules Committee. The compromises
mean that McCarthy will begin his term having drunk from a poisoned
chalice.
As Henry IV knew, uneasy lies the head that wears a crown — or in
this case, the hand that holds the gavel.
Going into Jan. 3, when Congress was supposed to have resumed the
business of governing, lengthy profiles of Kevin McCarthy in the
national press variously described him as “outgoing and
personable,” “affable” and broadcasting a “sunny disposition.”
Equally well-liked was Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s most-reprised
protagonists, before he decided to murder King Duncan. These
profiles also made the additional point that the 57-year-old former
Young Gun would stop at nothing to fulfill his black and deep
desires. “Stars,” Macbeth once said as he cowered in shame over his
own zealous designs, “hide your fires.” At least that guy was
self-aware.
Since McCarthy’s arrival in the House in 2007, his Republican
colleagues watched with a certain measure of astonishment as he
shape-shifted. He used to be the adult in the room — someone who
was willing to bow out of a race for speaker back in 2015 when it
became clear that he had no path forward. He’d memorize the names
of his colleagues’ children, ever the deft salesman. And he was a
deal-maker who enjoyed a healthy flirt with the other side just
enough to earn him the praise of some California Democrats.
Then came Trump, and McCarthy opted to travel a less bipartisan
road on the way to the speaker’s gavel, courting the more
boisterous, reactionary elements within his party instead. Soon
enough, Trump was calling him “my Kevin” and presenting him with
only the best Starburst candy Air Force One had to offer. After
Trump voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election on Jan. 6,
2021, McCarthy privately wanted him to resign, reportedly telling
other Republican leaders, “I’ve had it with this guy.” On Jan. 28,
though, he visited Mar-a-Lago to make amends. And he continued that
dance last February, too, when he endorsed Harriet Hageman, Liz
Cheney’s primary opponent in Wyoming, in a display of fealty to the
former president.
The morning of Jan. 3, as the caucus sat in a closed-door meeting
that preceded the first ballot, McCarthy grew more and more
convinced that he was the rightful heir to the speakership,
thundering, “I’ve earned this goddamn job!” But as he led his foot
soldiers into battle, akin to many a Shakespearean commander, his
once-loyal subjects broke rank. The House Freedom Caucus insurgents
knew that as long as they could thrive in the anarchy of a House
without rules, they could thwart McCarthy’s prospects.
“I don’t care if we go to plurality and elect Hakeem Jeffries,”
Gaetz declared in the meeting, according to McCarthy. They then
marched upstairs to the House floor, where another act was about to
begin.
One wonders: Isn’t this all a bit reductive, to compare some suits
voting from the comfort of their seats to literal soldiers waging
war on a monarch? Some seasoned theater critics certainly think so,
urging Washington’s commentators to turn the page on the
Shakespeare references and quit stretching the metaphors. (In 2017,
when Shakespeare in the Park depicted Trump as Caesar the same week
that Scalise was shot at a Virginia baseball field, conservative
commentators and Donald Trump Jr. groused that the liberal arts had
gone too far.)
But reader, lend me your ears. We turn to the whole of
Shakespeare’s works so we can understand the themes that rhyme with
each other, the blocks on which rulers stumble, and the tides in
the affairs of men. (And women.) The Bardologists agree. Aaron
Posner, a theater professor at American University, says that the
plays occupy such a treasured place in our collective imagination
because they hold broader lessons on power: “what will you do to
get it, what will you do to hold it, and [how] the only bad thing
is the losing of it.”
There’s a bit of Romeo’s fawning balcony monologue in Elise
Stefanik’s first nomination speech. “Seasoned legislator, an
experienced leader, a friend to so many of us, a proud conservative
with a tireless work ethic, Kevin McCarthy has earned the
speakership of the People’s House,” she said, echoing his
words.
There’s a bit of Julius Caesar in this saga, too, but not in the
way you might expect, says Samantha Wyer Bello, the creative
director of the D.C.-based Shakespeare Theatre Company. As we
spoke, she broke out the script and read from a scene in which
Caesar had just left the Senate and Casca and Brutus were each
calculating whether the other was safe to conspire with.
It may have been Matt Gaetz, pulling his colleague aside on the
House floor, who said, “You pull’d me by the cloak; would you speak
with me?”
It may have been Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, standing improbably next
to him, who replied, “tell us what hath chanced to-day, that Caesar
looks so sad.” (Ocasio-Cortez later revealed that she was
reassuring Gaetz that Dem leaders weren’t plotting a side deal to
buoy McCarthy.)
Or are we really talking about Othello? Lauren Boebert’s behavior
showed a dash of Iago, the thorn in Othello’s side. “I rise to cast
my vote for a member not of the Freedom Caucus, but for Kevin,” she
taunted during one of the votes on Thursday. Two members to her
left shot incredulous looks.
“… Kevin Hern of Oklahoma,” she finished, as the House exploded
into sound and fury and points of order.
Friday became Saturday, past the stroke of midnight, and all the
House seemed a stage. Its players found their places, as Gaetz went
along with a personal plea from McCarthy, in the well, to please,
please stick to the script. At 12:37 a.m., after 15 intermissions
and 1,482 minutes of acting and at least one moment of physical
restraint to prevent possible fisticuffs, McCarthy became the 55th
speaker of the House.
But if one outcome is certain in Shakespeare’s tragedies, it’s that
the tragic hero always meets his demise. Indeed, some insiders
worry that McCarthy will be a “weaker speaker,” having relinquished
so much procedural power — and his political principles — for a
title.
At the Shakespeare Theatre, Wyer Bello suggests one possible
comparison in Richard III, whereupon the king, finding himself in
the battlefield surrounded by a throng of enemies, bemoans his
impending doom.
“My House, my House, my kingdom for the House!”
Nothing may be enough to undo the fact that, in cajoling so many of
his opponents — and so many losses — McCarthy may have indeed
gulped from that tainted chalice, each gavel, on a Friday evening,
a death knell.
