Newswise — With the U.S. speaker of the House job up for grabs, the University of Georgia’s John Barrow, a former politician and U.S. representative says both parties have created “Dr. Frankenstein leaving Igor in charge of the monster.”
Barrow, who currently teaches at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs, served in the U.S. House of Representatives where he represented portions of eastern Georgia from 2004-2015. He has a degree in political science from UGA and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
“Dissidents who will vote to fire a leader who doesn’t agree with them are not new,” he said. “What is new is the extremism of today’s dissidents—what they’re willing to fire their speaker over, and how willing they are to do so.”
Barrow cited extreme partisanship for some of today’s political woes.
“It’s time we realize that both parties have created this problem by insisting on having things their own way whenever they’re in power, and by reviving the office of the Super Speaker as the means of getting their way on everything,” he said. “Both parties have played the role of Dr. Frankenstein in re-creating this monster of an office, only now Igor is in charge of the monster.
“The generation that created this monster finally decided they had to kill it. In the process, they actually made the House stronger by making the office of the Speaker weaker. That’s a hugely valuable lesson for today, but one we’re totally missing in the current focus on who will be the next person to try to ride the tiger. The sport is in watching the person who rides the tiger and wondering when it’ll be his turn to get eaten, and so it’s news when poor Kevin gets eaten before he could even climb aboard. But what we really need to do is turn that tiger into a horse – a horse can be hard enough to ride, but it’s a much better animal to work with.”
Barrow said the problems started when an abusive speaker began to push around a moderate minority in his own party. “Only now the system is breaking down because an abusive minority has learned how to push around a more moderate speaker in their own party,” he said. “We no longer have the tyranny of the majority, which first appeared over a century ago. Or even a tyranny of the majority of the majority. We now have the tyranny of a minority of the majority.”
Barrow was the first Democrat to represent his part of the country in a decade, and the first Democrat to defeat an incumbent Republican in the Deep South in a quarter of a century. He served for eight years on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, including the Subcommittee on Health; the Subcommittee on Telecommunications; the Subcommittee on Energy and Power; and the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Manufacturing. Along the way, Barrow also served on the Committee on Agriculture, the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, the Committee on Small Business, and the Committee on Veterans Affairs.
As a leader of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, he earned a reputation for working with Republicans and Democrats. He pushed for smaller government and spending reforms at the federal level, and he consistently introduced legislation to make responsible cuts in federal spending while fighting for regulatory reform to help businesses grow and succeed.
While in Congress, he was recognized for his work and earned the endorsements of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Rifle Association, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, and the National Association of Manufacturers. And in 2014, the National Journal named Barrow the most bipartisan member of Congress running for re-election that year.
To contact Barrow for his expertise or an editorial, email him at [email protected].
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