Sir, – In your recent editorial (“A recipe for chaos in US Congress”, January 10th), you describe the 15 votes over four days which it took to elect a new speaker of the US House of Representatives as “a recipe for chaos” which points to a future of “shutdown and gridlock”, and “permanent disarray”.
Are we in Ireland really in any position to sneer at this?
The closest equivalent we have to the office of speaker is the office of taoiseach, since no real business can be conducted until that office is filled. On the last two occasions that the Dáil convened after an election to elect a taoiseach, in 2016 and 2020, it took four votes over the course of eight weeks on the first occasion, and over four months on the second occasion, before the matter was resolved.
Those experiences make the recent conduct of the US House of Representatives look prompt and businesslike by comparison. On each occasion, the resolution of the stalemate was greeted in your newspaper as a great step forward for democracy and the end of so-called “civil war politics”, not as a descent into “chaos”. Your reaction to developments in the US shows how alien it has become for us in Ireland to witness any kind of real parliamentary deliberation. Our political system has become so used to backbench TDs being treated as lobby-fodder, whipped into doing the bidding of their party leadership, that when elected members of parliaments abroad have the temerity to express a mind of their own – as in the US last week, or as in the London during the parliamentary gridlock over Brexit – we self-righteously describe this as “chaos”.
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Parliamentary deliberation is not “chaos” – it is the very essence of democracy in action. Across Europe and the world, governments with slender majorities – including single-party governments – regularly have to battle to convince their own members to support key elements of their programmes.
So why should we be shocked that the very same should happen in the US? – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Dublin 3.
Sir, – Your editorial states that the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee was under the chairmanship of Joseph McCarthy. Joseph McCarthy was the senator from Wisconsin and never sat in the House of Representatives. He conducted his nefarious campaign from the US Senate. – Yours, etc,
JOHN O’MALLEY,
Ballycastle,
Co Mayo.