The history behind partisan speakers
“The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other officers,” states Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution. “The Senate,” states Article I, Section 4, “shall chuse their officers, and also a President pro tempore in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.”
These are the only references in the main body of the Constitution to specific officials of each house of Congress; each is referred to also in the 25th Amendment, adopted in 1967. And the references are not co-equal.
The Framers’ wording suggests that the president pro tempore of the Senate is not an officer with an independent function, but only a stand-in if needed for the vice-president, who is designated as the Senate’s presiding officer. The words “shall chuse their speaker,” in contrast, suggests that the Framers had a clear idea of what a speaker was, and that the speaker had a working function. The obvious model was the speaker of the British House of Commons.
What is surprising, then, is that the American speaker of the House came, rather quickly, to have a function quite different from the British speaker of the House. In Britain (and in England before the Act of Union joined England and Scotland in 1707), the speaker was, and is still today, regarded as a neutral presiding officer, responsible to the House as a whole.
The House of Commons has had presiding officers since 1258, and they have explicitly been titled speaker since 1376. Initially, speakers were regarded as the monarch’s agent in the House, responsible for the orderly carrying on of parliamentary business. But by the time of the English Civil War, it was established that the speaker was the agent of the House.
In 1642, King Charles I entered the House of Commons and demanded the arrest of five members for treason. The King asked Speaker William Lenthall where these men were. “May it please your Majesty,” the speaker replied. “I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am.” No monarch entered the chamber of the House of Commons again.
By the middle of the 19th century, the tradition was firmly established of the speaker as a nonpartisan servant of the House. Currently, British speakers are selected infrequently, are not necessarily members of the governing party, and after their selection do not vote on any measure (except to break ties) and are typically re-elected in their constituencies without major party opposition.
The American office of speaker has had a different history. From the very first Congress, speakers were identified as pro- or anti-administration — Jonathan Dayton and Theodore Sedgwick as Federalists, Nathaniel Macon and Joseph Varnum as Republicans. Henry Clay was first elected Speaker in 1811, as a Jeffersonian but also as a War Hawk. In contrast to British speakers, American speakers seldom preside over the House.
American speakers also rarely and seldom cast votes (when they do preside or vote, it is taken as an indication they consider the issue very important). American speakers do feel an obligation to represent the whole House on institutional matters, but the position has been largely partisan for more than 200 years.
