Democrat floats George W. Bush for House speaker

House Speaker George W. Bush?

One House Democrat pushed that idea Monday as a potential way to break the paralysis created by the vacancy in the chamber’s top position.

Rep. Brad Sherman of California said the Republican former president could be a compromise choice that each party could live with in the closely divided House.

“He could come back,” Mr. Sherman said on Forbes Newsroom. “Obviously, I’m not a real fan of how the Iraq War went, but I would think that any reasonable Republican would be somebody that Democrats could work with.”

Though Mr. Bush is not a member of the House, the speaker does not have to be one and there was talk among Republicans earlier this month of the party’s other living former president — Donald Trump — taking the gavel.

With Republicans only having a five-vote majority, any speaker’s hold would be tenuous, but Mr. Sherman suggested that a “Speaker Bush” might be able to garner enough Democratic support to create “a system where you didn’t have five of the most extreme Republicans blocking important legislation and saying, ‘If you bring that to the floor for a vote, we’ll knock you out of your Speakership.’”

He said one of those “extreme Republicans” might end up being the alternative.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the GOP conference’s choice, would be “among one of the worst speakers that we could have,” Mr. Sherman said though he acknowledged that a “Speaker Jordan” would be such a “disaster” as to aid Democrats politically.