Hey, I’d do it too. I’d love to take office as one of the most consequential officers in American federal governance without being at all accountable to voters. Imagine the fun I could have!

Key perq: you get to enter the chain of presidential succession at #3 without having to ask voters for their permission. Cool gig, eh?

That’s not to say that former Rep. Justin Amash doesn’t have a decent platform for the role. Amash laid out his agenda for an outsider speakership on Twitter this morning, just hours before the House comes into its new session and votes for its new speaker:

I’m not a current member of Congress, but I do know what’s at stake. I’d gladly serve as speaker of the House for one term to show people the kind of legislative body we can have if someone at the top actually cares about involving every representative in the work of legislating.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) January 3, 2023

After working through all of Kevin McCarthy’s faults, Amash notes that his former colleagues in the Freedom Caucus opposing McCarthy can’t win either. Why? For one thing, they already lost, a point Amash omits. They challenged McCarthy during the caucus leadership elections and lost badly; McCarthy got 188 votes, while Andy Biggs only got 31. For another, though, Biggs and the rest of them are too far out of the mainstream to get the necessary votes from Democrats to overwhelm their own party’s caucus, as Amash himself admits.

That’s where Amash promotes his value:

That’s why I’m offering myself as an alternative, independent choice for speaker. I’m not a member of either party in the House, and I’ve championed legislative process reforms under both Republican and Democratic leadership. Most important, I can be trusted to stick to my word.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) January 3, 2023

Moreover, my record proves I’m willing to take on Republicans—even some of my closest friends—to stand up for what I believe is right. I’m not beholden to either party, and my primary interest will be reinvigorating the institution to serve the people as a deliberative body.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) January 3, 2023

Ironically, the person who most obviously benefits from my election as speaker is McCarthy. If he can’t secure the speakership himself, then the last thing he wants is another Republican to be chosen. If I’m speaker, he can maintain his position as the highest ranking GOP leader.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) January 3, 2023

We’ll restore the rule that allows any one member—not just a group from the majority party—to move to vacate the chair. The speakership belongs to the institution, not one party. The motion protects the people, and every member should be empowered to hold the speaker accountable.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) January 3, 2023

I’d allow amendments from the floor. I’d give members adequate time to review bills. I’d ask for recorded votes and end proxy voting. We can make the House work as it was meant to work—not as an oligarchy, but as a deliberative body that respects the diversity of its membership.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) January 3, 2023

Sounds great, and I’m serious about that. Congress in both chambers needs a return to regular order and competent governance. Amash’s ideas would take us in that direction, assuming the rest of the members would go along with them. That’s a rather large assumption, given that Amash abandoned his own caucus in his last term as a demonstration of his independence, but we’ll get back to that.

In fact, it sounds so good that one wonders why Amash didn’t run for office to promote that kind of agenda. If he had won a seat from voters, this might be a somewhat more legitimate proposal.

It’s true that nothing in the Constitution prevents the House from electing a non-member as Speaker. (It does prevent non-elected members from casting votes, although traditionally the Speaker refrains from casting votes on legislation anyway, unless necessary to break ties.) That doesn’t make it a good idea, nor one consonant with constitutional order. The Constitution envisions a House that will govern itself, and voters send 435 representatives to the Capitol to do just that. Electing an outsider as Speaker and putting that unelected official two heartbeats from the presidency is contrary to the entire idea of self-governance via representation. It’s not a Republican issue; it’s a republican issue. The House Speaker with its outsize impact on governance should be someone whom voters elected in the first place to Congress and who at least has some nominal accountability to a constituency.

Nor in this case is there much point in Amash’s complaints about McCarthy. His former Freedom Caucus colleagues had their opportunity to choose someone else to lead the GOP caucus, and lost badly behind Biggs. Rather than accept the consequences of that election and the overwhelming support for McCarthy in the GOP caucus, Biggs and roughly half of the people who voted for him reject that election and want a do-over that includes Democrats to elect the Speaker for a Republican-majority House.

Call me crazy, but isn’t that exactly what Freedom Caucus types hated when Lisa Murkowski ran as a write-in after losing her primary in 2016? Didn’t they demand that Murkowski abide by the primary result at the time?

Finally, let’s reflect on how this would work for the next two years, assuming Amash got his wish. Freedom Caucus members would have elected a man who pointedly left the GOP during his last term in the House to affiliate with the Libertarian Party. Amash would then have to govern a body of 435 members with his real support in the range of 15-35 seats. To keep his seat, Amash would have to seek alliances nearly every day with the Democrats, which would do nothing more than make him a puppet of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. Don’t forget that Amash endorses the one-person rule for the motion to vacate the Speaker, so those challenges could come daily without any real base of political support to sustain him.

Put simply, it would turn the House into an even bigger ****show than it is now. Eventually — and likely very quickly — the House would have to hold another vote for Speaker with the same options as now: McCarthy or some unnamed Freedom Caucus option with only marginally more support than Amash would have once operations get underway. All this does is kick the can down the road, and embarrass everyone involved.

As I wrote yesterday, it’s all nothing but performative politics anyway. Republicans only control the House, and only barely at that. They can’t move a conservative agenda in this session to fruition, as the Senate will ignore it under Schumer and Joe Biden would veto it in any case. The true value of this session to the GOP is the ability to investigate incompetence and corruption in the Biden administration, lay out a conservative legislative agenda for 2024, and prove to voters that the GOP can govern the nation. This performative nonsense over the Speaker election pushes that last goal farther and farther from reach.