Given that the events of the day, and the fact that social media is going to be a fact-optional landfill for the foreseeable future (Thanks, Elmo), we should open the shebeen this week with a little levity. So let's talk gavels, shall we? After Kevin McCarthy was dispatched as Speaker last week, a lot of people remarked on how Rep. Patrick McHenry, currently the interim Speaker, ended that day's session by banging his gavel with surprising vehemence. The gavel did not break. Either that says McHenry needs to work on his upper body strength, or it says that we're making stronger gavels these days. Thanks to the invaluable historian of the House of Representatives, we learn that destroying gavels has a fairly long history with frustrated Speakers of the People's House, and that McHenry should count himself lucky that he didn't join their company.
In a remarkable example of history's rhyming, the most famous episode of gavel destruction comes courtesy of Speaker Joseph (Uncle Joe) Cannon, the only other Speaker to face a motion to vacate the chair. On June 22, 1906, presiding over a debate in the House that was devolving into chaos. Cannon tried to restore order and hammered away at his podium until the head of the gavel went flying off in the general direction of the House clerks.
Other epic moments were provided by Speaker Champ Clark, who went through two gavels just opening the House session in 1911, and by the legendary Speaker Sam Rayburn who, having already broken three gavels, ordered the House carpenter to make him an "unbreakable" one out of black walnut and cured with some sort of special potion. (I suspect bourbon may well have been an ingredient, but I can't confirm that.) Mister Sam was very fond of gavels; he even had one made out of timbers that allegedly had survived the burning of the White House in 1814.
But the all-time champion of the form, the mighty Thor of congressional Mjollnirs, was Thomas Brackett Reed of Maine, a bald and burly chap who presided over the House at the end of the 19th Century, and who once said that the best way to run the House was to have one party govern and the other party watch. (Bipartisanship!) Reed is notable in history for his long and successful fight against the "silent quorum," a tactic by which the House could be paralyzed because members could deny a quorum by refusing to answer at a roll call, whether or not they were in the chamber. When Reed broke that strategy after a five-day congressional brawl that included members running through the chamber on top of desks and one congressman kicking down a locked door to avoid being counted, he increased the power of the House in the government forever, and made him one of the most consequential American politicians you probably never heard of.
(As a student at Bowdoin College, Reed had taken courses from Professor Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, later to help save the Union at Gettysburg. While Reed was in Congress, Chamberlain was serving as governor of Maine.)
For our purposes, however, Reed is notable for once hammering the gavel so enthusiastically that he shattered the podium in front of him. (Reed was 6'3" and well over 300 pounds.) People later sold the splinters from the podium as souvenirs. So, as you see, Rep. Patrick McHenry lost his chance to be part of legislative history last week. Time for some free weights, congressman. T.B. Reed is watching.
Related Story
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pr%2FQrqCrnV6YvK57zZ6urGWgpLmqwMicqmion6G2tbXCrGaabGVphXaAlnFmoJmmmrm0eceiqq2noq56tLzEmqKeql2ks27Ax55koaelqLJw