From the magazine

As he prepares for the most important week of his speakership to date, here is a piece from last week’s magazine on Speaker Andrew Scheer.

Herein lies the riddle of civility. Rote partisanship is not against the rules. And even if the House may be somewhat more quiet of late, it is still a place of debate, competition and conflict. Asserting oneself as Speaker is thus a complicated task. “One of the toughest things about being Speaker is it’s never the same. You’re not calling balls and strikes on a definite strike zone. Every day is different. The mood can be different,” Scheer says. “Sometimes the House needs the Speaker to come right in and nip something in the bud. And other days you need to let a little bit of steam out of the valve and it might go away on its own. So I think it’s difficult for any Speaker to say on day one, ‘here’s where all of the lines are,’ because those lines shift. The House is dynamic, it’s constantly changing, the mood is constantly changing. So I’ve kind of got to use my own judgment and my own instinct to get a sense of where that’s going and try to react.”