For Your Consideration: The Next Speaker of the House of Representatives Should Be a Tiny Baby

With California Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s fart noise-length campaign for Speaker of the House coming to an end today amid wild rumors and speculation of “misdeeds,” many Hill watchers are wondering who could possibly take his place as frontrunner. Please allow me to suggest: a baby.

Right now, you may be smugly crossing your arms over your chest and smiling with the serenity of a person who knows they’re right. “You idiot,” you’re probably thinking, “there aren’t even any babies currently in Congress!”

Way ahead of you. According to the US Constitution, the Speaker of the House doesn’t even have to be a member of Congress. It could be literally any American, as long as 218 members of the House agree on which American it should be. It could be Beyonce. It could be Betty White. But it should be a baby.

As eminent political philosopher Joe Scarborough and many other people who get paid to make sounds on television have noted, Washington needs fresh blood, and it doesn’t get fresher than a baby. (Some have suggested that a gestating fetus would be a perfect candidate for Speaker of the House; that is a bad suggestion on account of the fact that it would mandate an additional woman/fetal incubator to be present in House meetings, which, nah.)

A baby is the ultimate Washington outsider. A baby doesn’t know how to lobby, so would be free from the creeping influence of special-interest groups. A baby doesn’t know how to hold a political theater press conference, so more things would get done. Hell, a baby wouldn’t even know how to lift a gavel. A baby could use John Boehner’s massive gavel for a rocking horse, and maybe fall asleep during a vote. Aww.

But babies aren’t totally useless. They’re excellent at drawing crowds of cooing onlookers, a useful skill for getting Congress to actually show up to vote on the laws it’s supposed to be making. Babies are shameless in pursuing their agenda; like their current Republican House colleagues, they’re willing to shit their pants in public or unleash several minutes of ear-piercing shrieks when things aren’t going the way they want. And even though most of them barely speak English and can’t read or write, they’re able to communicate more effectively than most current members of Congress.

Perhaps most importantly of all, no baby in history has tossed his career in a flaming dumpster by having an extramarital affair with a House colleague. No baby has gotten impeached over testimony regarding an affair with an intern. No baby has abandoned its family to bone his Argentine mistress on Father’s Day weekend. No baby has gotten arrested in a Minneapolis airport bathroom and blamed it on his “wide stance.”

So please, if any members of Congress are reading this, I urge you to think of your favorite baby. And then I urge you to dress that baby up in a tiny double-breasted pantsuit, wheel it to the Capitol, and dare your colleagues not to vote for it.