The television split screen told the story.
On one side, Republicans in the House of Representatives labored through the fourth of the 15 ballots they needed during four days of gridlock to choose Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker.
On the other side, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell stood beaming with President Joe Biden as they congratulated each other for a bipartisan success: a $1.6 billion deal to replace a crumbling highway bridge across the Ohio River.
On one side, partisan dysfunction. On the other, an old-fashioned deal.
Biden seized the moment to ladle compliments on his longtime sparring partner — and to drive home a lesson.
“We disagree on a lot of things,” he said of McConnell, of Kentucky. “But here’s what matters: He’s a man of his word. … I believe it sends an important message to the entire country: We can work together. We can get things done.”
McConnell wasn’t daring enough to praise Biden, but on the larger issue he responded in kind.
“These are really partisan times,” he said. “But I always feel no matter who gets elected, once it’s all over we ought to look for things we can agree on.”
If there was a winner in the brawl on the House floor last week, it wasn’t McCarthy, of California. McCarthy got the speaker’s job, but gave away so much power along the way that it was probably a Pyrrhic victory. He still faces the challenge of herding an untamable majority with only a handful of votes to spare, amid in-house critics who would gladly see him fail.
The real winner was a man who wasn’t there: McConnell, the phlegmatic leader of the nonanarchic Senate GOP.
At some point in this year of divided government, Congress will steer into a crisis — a standoff over the federal debt limit, perhaps, or gridlock over government spending. Only one person on the Republican side will have the power and skill to avert catastrophe, and it won’t be McCarthy; it will be Biden’s wily, unlovable colleague, McConnell. Thanks to the dysfunction in the House, he is now Congress’ indispensable man.
That’s why Biden was doling out compliments underneath the giant bridge that connects northern Kentucky to southern Ohio. He knows he’s going to need McConnell’s help.
The infrastructure bill that passed Congress in 2021 was a high-water mark for bipartisanship on McConnell’s part; he supported it in large part because it included the bridge, a project he’s worked on for decades.
But Congress still needs to pass spending bills to keep the government running. And in the second half of the year the Treasury expects to hit the debt ceiling, the legal limit on federal government borrowing (currently $31.4 trillion).
At that point, Congress will need to raise the limit to avert a default that could crash the financial markets.
