Kevin McCarthy went far in his fealty to Donald Trump. He fed him tasty Skittles candy on Air Force One, like a political Pavlov.
The tragicomic farce of former Young Gun and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s codependent career is that it wasn’t supposed to end in a nuclear fireball, then a tiny whelp.
As a young man, using lottery winnings, McCarthy started a little deli counter in Bakersfield behind his uncle’s yogurt shop, got interested in politics and went on to work in Rep. Bill Thomas’ office from 1987 until 2002.
When McCarthy was in the California Assembly from 2002 to 2006, he was generally liked by Republicans and Democrats and was viewed as a solid glad-hander with potential. Sacramento’s Capitol Journal named him Legislative Rookie of the Year in 2004. You’d hear from one journalist and Sacramento politico after another: “affable guy” and, unanimously, “very ambitious.”
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I once spoke recently with a current California Assembly member who likes McCarthy personally. He said of the former speaker, essentially, “He’s not really like the way he is in public.” Another major Sacramento operative said of McCarthy’s time in the Assembly: “Kevin provided a level of leadership of Republicans that had really been unmatched.”
No one says that in Washington now.
Not everyone in Sacramento liked him, though. One former elected official noted that “Kevin is all about Kevin. All ego. All self-gratification. No guiding principles. No morals.”
Being a solid schmooze hound works well in Sacramento, and not so much in Washington, D.C., where guys like McCarthy, if they’re not deft, get their heads served up like the submarine sandwiches he used to make.
Until a few weeks ago, McCarthy was second-in-line for the presidency of the United States. In Sacramento, there isn’t a nuclear war component to your mistakes. D.C. is not as forgiving, and McCarthy crossed people. The only thing one should believe from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is that he said McCarthy lied to him.
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Craven, codependent flip-flopping isn’t fine, and McCarthy became a master of that in D.C., a fatal skill. Of course, denial of objective reality is the No. 1 plank in what’s left of the Republican platform. Former President Donald Trump set the table for that, and McCarthy was one of Trump’s early victims.
McCarthy went far in his fealty to Trump. He fed him tasty Skittles candy on Air Force One, like a political Pavlov, hoping these small gestures that worked so well with dumb GOP congressmen would assuage a narcissistic sociopath.
“My Kevin” is what Trump called him, as if he were a drooling labrador retriever. You’d never hear Barack Obama call former Speaker John Boehner “My John,” let alone Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
Kevin McCarthy isn’t self-respecting anymore. But for a brief, shining moment on Jan. 6, 2021, after Trump’s tactical gear-wearing thugs, antler-hatted maniacs, zip-tie carriers, Q Anon loons and potential assassins of his own vice president mobbed the Capitol, McCarthy got on the floor of the House Chamber and actually said and did the right thing.
“The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters … he should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding,” McCarthy said, finally showing actual character in the last spasms of the putrid Trump regime.
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Then, McCarthy did what he always did in Washington. He caved.
Instead, the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives slithered down to the Berchtesgaden, Mar-a-Lago, and fell on the floor to prostrate himself in the presence of the Jan. 6 coup plotter and instigator himself. According to former Rep. Liz Cheney, McCarthy had heard Trump wasn’t eating and wanted to buck him up.
What he did was far more than bucking him up; he should have not gone at all and continued to denounce Trump publicly. This might have gone a long way toward making sure that President Donald J. Vampire’s stake was firmly in his chest, never to rise again. Nope. He made Trump a thing again, and, potentially, our nation’s first fascist dictator.
More Skittles, mein fuhrer?
Of course, McCarthy’s former boss, former Rep. Thomas, who once thought very highly of Kevin as his successor in 2007, now thinks that McCarthy is a “hypocrite,” an understatement.
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Thomas said this about his former protege: “It was as though they went to an extended lunch and came back and resumed their mission: reinforce, by your votes, the lies of the president.” Yup. But wait, there’s more. He also said, “Kevin basically is whatever you want him to be. He lies. He’ll change the lie if necessary. How can anyone trust his word?”
That’s about right. But why would McCarthy want unity and national healing when he could have his name painted on a wooden sign above a fancy office?
That sign lasted 10 months. A motion to vacate the speakership, needing a single vote, a rule McCarthy agreed to get his precious sign, led to McCarthy’s ouster after needing 15 embarrassing ballots to win the job.
After weeks of chaotic wrangling, a silly little religious-right captive no one had really heard of, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., became speaker, not to mention two heartbeats from the Oval Office. McCarthy as president would be silly but survivable; Johnson as president should horrify any sensible person, and “My Kevin’s” weakness led directly to that.
But, hey. “My Kev” got his title and his sign.
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Now McCarthy says he’s going to leave Congress by the end of December to “serve America in new ways.”
The “Twilight Zone” episode “To Serve Man” comes immediately to mind, where the alien invaders turn out to be cannibals.
Here’s an idea for you to serve again, Rep. McCarthy. Go back to serving submarine sandwiches in Bakersfield.
At least you were good at that.
Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and writer. He can be reached at jackohman.net, on Instagram at @jackohman60 and Threads at @jackohman60.
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