If he could rewind the day, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., probably would not have had his belongings moved into the U.S. Capitol’s ornate speaker’s office or had his website proclaim him speaker-elect on Monday.
At this writing, I’m guessing he’ll be confirmed as House speaker — eventually — but the optics of him physically assuming such an outcome before even the first votes were cast on Tuesday morning were damaging.
Lesson No. 1: People don’t like presumptuousness.
