Friday
I see that Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus has cited Macbeth in a piece on Kevin McCarthy’s ambition to become Speaker of the House. Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus might be a better choice, given the way the Republican Congressman appears willing to sell his soul, along with every shred of dignity, to gain the position. Still, it’s always good to remember what Shakespeare has to say about those who will do anything to gain power.
We get the phrase “vaulting ambition” from the passage, which reads,
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
And falls on th’other.
Weighed against Macbeth’s ambition is the fact that Duncan is (1) his king, (2) his guest, (3) a kinsman, and (4) a good and humble man. In fact, Macbeth appears ready to change his mind, only to be egged on by his wife. When he worries, “If we should fail,” she replies, “
We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we’ll not fail.
One wonders if there is someone similar egging McCarthy on.
Meditating on ambition, Marcus reflects that ambition “is a complex force, omnipresent, essential — and treacherous.” And she quotes Stanford law professor Deborah Rhode, who observes, “We see too little as a failing and too much as a sin. We dismiss those who lack it and despise those who misuse it.”
Marcus points to two things that make McCarthy’s craving “especially cringeworthy”:
first, that McCarthy seems to crave power for power’s sake, not for any higher purposes; second, that he is willing to debase himself so completely to obtain it.
But then, this is true of Macbeth as well. What differs is what they do in their quest:
Macbeth must kill and keep killing to slake his ambition. McCarthy must concede and concede even more to slake his own.
In other words, Macbeth at least elevates himself to tragic status through his ambition. McCarthy is just pathetic. One is tempted to say about him what Marx said about Napoleon III following his successful coup:
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.
Come to think of it, one could pair Donald Trump’s coup attempt with the Confederate South’s secession attempt and say the same thing.
Further thought: Pairing McCarthy up with Trump is appropriate since it may well be that what McCarthy is most remembered for is going to Mar-a-Lago after January 6, kissing Trump’s ring, and essentially rehabilitating his political influence when he was on the ropes. The Republican Party had the potential then to jettison Trump and blew it. Rather than comparing him with Macbeth, we should see him more as the political flunky Tiny Duffy in Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men.
As it happens, the hapless Duffy does manage to ascend to the governorship in the novel. And McCarthy may still become House leader. Duffy gains no glory from the achievement, however, and neither would McCarthy.