He should bring Joe Biden to his knees – and play with fire The mystery of the missing children in the Colombian Amazon

The moment he has been working towards as a politician all his life comes in the middle of the night. Two powerful blows in a row: wood on wood, hammer on desk. cheers, applause. And a big toothpaste smile from Kevin McCarthy, who raises the hammer in a triumphant gesture.

A short time later, a champagne mood emanates from the office on the top floor of the Capitol, above which is engraved a wooden sign with McCarthy’s name, Celebration by Kool & the Gang plays, as in a school disco in the 1980s.

Since those early hours of January 7, the Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has been the third most powerful person in the state.

He bought power in connection with his new office with the votes of his party’s far-right wing, which presented a long list of wishes: “investigations” against Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, possible impeachment proceedings against Interior Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – and a no to another increase in the debt ceiling. So it was clear: McCarthy would drive Biden ahead of him simply because he, too, had let himself be driven.

Four months have passed since then. In two weeks, the United States will be threatened with insolvency. And Kevin McCarthy gives Joe Biden no rest. He tweeted while the president was in Japan at the G7 summit. “Mr. President, stop hiding,” he writes. “Stop running from the mess you made in Washington.” And further, “America needs a president who will take care of America’s problems.” think he already sees himself on this field.

You don’t care about solutions

McCarthy knows all too well that the chaos has less to do with Biden than with the Republicans themselves, who are blackmailing the White House, so to speak. They will only approve a debt ceiling increase if the president is willing to cut spending in other painful areas. For example, with the requirements for benefit recipients or climate and energy policy, more specifically the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s showpiece.

The president, in turn, tried to sit out the situation. He refused to negotiate, hoping that the Republicans would eventually give up their opposition. No association with racketeers, that was the position of the White House.

In the days of Barack Obama, who faced a similar scenario during his presidency, it was the Tea Party radicals who led the Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Today, however, they are Trump fanatics. They are finally no longer concerned with solutions, but with the opposite: they want to sow chaos. Expecting them to finally give in for the sake of common sense and the good of the country borders on wishful thinking.

No one knows that better than McCarthy. About two weeks ago, Republicans pushed a bill through the House of Representatives that would raise the debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts. Until the end, it was unclear whether McCarthy would collect enough votes. Again he made one concession after another. In the end it was just enough. The four missing votes again came from the right winger.

For McCarthy, however, it was a singular triumph. He demonstrated his ability to hold his faction together despite the setbacks. He was able to stand on the steps of Congress and proclaim to the White House, “We’ve done our job.” That is the attitude he has been displaying in Washington ever since, including Tuesday after renewed talks with Biden: we are responsible, not the government.

The fact that McCarthy presents himself as a man of principles should make many smile mockingly. He was precisely the subject of study for actor Kevin Spacey, among others, for his role as the Machiavellian Francis Underwood in House of Cards.

“All Kevin McCarthy cares about is Kevin McCarthy,” the New Yorker quoted a former employee as saying. In 2016, when many in the party wanted nothing to do with Donald Trump, it was McCarthy who was among the first to ingratiate himself with Trump. “My Kevin,” he affectionately called him.

It was McCarthy who stood by Trump after storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and visited him in Florida. A good family man from the California oil industry town of Bakersfield, he has little in common with Trump’s vulgar, pretentious manner. McCarthy is considered a chatterbox, sociable and relatively down-to-earth. But also as someone who always represents what benefits him most without hesitation.

A long way to the top

What some call maximum flexibility in political and moral issues and others call pure opportunism, that has brought him to where he is today: to the top of the House of Representatives. And it was a long road for the 58-year-old to get there. McCarthy wanted to be a spokesperson as early as 2015.

He withdrew his application at the last minute after rumors of an extramarital affair with Republican Representative Renee Ellmers surfaced and his doubts about his ability to garner enough supporters grew. At the time, McCarthy wanted to replace John Boehner, who decided to step down after he was increasingly harassed by his party’s strengthening right wing in the dispute over raising the debt ceiling.

Eight years later, McCarthy could face similar pressures. A situation he is only too happy to tolerate for the power he now has: bringing the President of the United States to his knees.

Painful days lie ahead for Biden. To avert a US insolvency, he must now sit at the negotiating table with the Republicans. He even canceled the second leg of his Pacific trip, which would take him to Australia after the G7 summit in Japan. A disgrace on an international level.

There may also be unrest in our own ranks. Should Biden bring his climate and social policy goals to the negotiating table under pressure from Republicans, he would be bitterly disappointed in his own party.

But McCarthy could also pay a high price. He knows that all too soon he can end up back where the right-wing extremists had him as their spokesman on the evening of his election. “On your knees!” someone in the room shouted during the fifteenth and final ballot, which made even McCarthy, the Californian, nervous.

In the end, he succeeded, but the threat remained that he would soon be impeached in a no-confidence vote — overthrown by the same people who put him in office.

Kevin, we’re saving you

Whatever the outcome of the negotiations with the White House, McCarthy’s biggest problem lies within his own ranks. The party’s far-right wing in the House of Representatives continues to insist that raising the debt ceiling would wreak havoc and could plunge millions into poverty and unemployment.

Even if McCarthy manages to force concessions from Biden and strike a deal that would actually make him proud in his faction, there will be those who see it as a loss, not a win.

In that case, the Democrats are not without taste putting out a message: Kevin, don’t worry – we’ll save you. Should McCarthy face a coup from his own faction, the other party would get enough votes to keep him in office, they say. The humiliation, it also works the other way around.

The next round of negotiations will no longer be led by the president and the chairman, but by specially appointed teams. McCarthy nominated Garret Graves. The Louisiana MP was already a stalwart “assistant coach” when he was elected in January, as McCarthy himself put it. Graves helped with the necessary votes. Among other things, he showed his loyalty with a beard, which he did not want to shave off until the faction rallied behind McCarthy.

But it’s not just because of that loyalty that McCarthy feels it’s important to include Graves in the negotiations. But also because it kind of takes him out of the line of fire. There’s one thing he’s definitely not ready for: retiring like his predecessor Boehner once did. Wood on wood, hammer on desk – Kevin McCarthy will certainly want to enjoy this sound of power for a long time to come.

This article was first published on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed the headings and subheadings. Here’s the original.