OPINION:
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy prevented Republicans in the chamber from turning politics into a Zen puzzle.
Make that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
On Tuesday, in a historic vote brought on by the furthest fringes of his conference, the House of Representatives, for the first time, expelled a speaker from the chair. Alas, no good deed goes unpunished.
Does a falling tree make a sound in an empty forest? This is the age-old Zen puzzle intended to make the listener contemplate existential questions. Among House Republicans, a small faction sought to turn the broader conference into a Zen dojo by recasting this riddle into politics and shutting down the federal government — just as Democrats are falling around them. Theirs, too, was an existential question.
By allowing his broad conference of political practitioners to avoid disaster, Mr. McCarthy lost his job, as the Zen philosophers sought to reincarnate the speaker into someone more to their liking.
The puzzle of the falling tree in the empty forest asks the listener to contemplate whether a sound is made if no one is there to hear it. At its core is the question of our existence’s importance. Does sound exist if it is unheard, or does sound exist only in the hearing?
House Republicans are in their own forest, and all around them, Democratic trees are falling.
America’s southern border, long in chaos, has become a national disaster that cannot be ignored. Our economy remains tepid while inflation runs hot. The administration seems determined to take a regulatory wrecking ball to America’s homes — raising prices in its quixotic climate quest on ceiling fans, basement furnaces and appliances.
At the same time, the government continues to overspend, and deficits are rising again.
President Biden’s approval ratings are in the tank, and the president’s son is in the dock, under increasing — and increasingly serious — investigation.
Many U.S. cities resemble a “derelict zombie apocalypse,” as Elon Musk has dubbed San Francisco.
The nation’s schools are failing as they seem more intent on indoctrinating and sexualizing students than educating them.
And to top it all, a Democratic senator has recently come under indictment on salacious charges of unethical behavior, while a House Democrat pulls a fire alarm.
As the Democrats crash around them, all House Republicans need do is not muffle America’s ears from the sounds of the crashing.
Amazingly, this seems too much to ask of House Republicans’ Zen philosophers, who wish to transform the old Zen puzzle into politics: Does a political opportunity exist if there is no one there to take advantage of it?
While Zen is existentially hard, politics is comparatively easy: The answer to the political puzzle is a resounding no. In politics, unleveraged opportunities never existed.
Politics is about the practical — power, votes — not the theoretical. Of course, it is not seen as such by a handful of theorizing navel-gazers and sound-bite makers in former Speaker McCarthy’s corner of the forest.
So, Kevin McCarthy did early what he otherwise would have had to do late: Pass legislation to keep the government running and focus on the imploding Democrats. This primarily came not from frustration (though Buddha himself would be vexed) but the realization that the only way to capitalize on the Democrats’ struggles was to not drown them out with the sound of House Republicans’ own crash.
Democrats are offering Republicans what could be a generational chance to win enough seats in both bodies of Congress to sweep into irrelevance those Zen-full few who today are deaf to the sound of opportunity.
After this administration’s three years of roaring incompetence in virtually every aspect of its consciousness, Americans are looking for basic competence: secure our borders, make us safe in our homes and on our streets, bring federal spending down from the stratosphere, and stabilize the value of the dollars we earn.
In short, Americans are looking for a credible alternative to what they increasingly view as Democrats’ incomprehensible performance.
To return from Zen to politics: What happens when a whole forest of opportunities falls? All House Republicans need to do is be there and hear the crash. But to hear, they must first be willing to listen.
Fortunately for House Republicans, Mr. McCarthy did. Now, he must pay for not being deaf.
• J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987 to 2000, served in the Department of the Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004 to 2023.
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