Episode Details

The election of California Rep. Kevin McCarthy as House speaker after five days and 15 ballots exposed divisions within the Republican Party that may not portend well for the immediate future of his party, the chamber, or the country. With one exception (1923), no speakership election since the Civil War needed more than one ballot. And in the antebellum U.S. is where we might find parallels to today's political turmoil. Before the Civil War, speakership fights were often acrimonious, extended affairs reflecting the nation's violent, deep political divisions over slavery. The 1855-56 speakership election took 133 ballots! In this episode, historian Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy, discusses which lessons from those long-ago fights apply to today's crisis of democracy.