The Curse of Absolute Power
New House Speaker Kyle Hilbert is now likely feeling the full weight of the curse of having absolute power. It didn't have to be this way.
Jim Shaw could have been to Hilbert as Elon Musk has been to Trump.
Those who are in the orbit of Oklahoma's Speaker of The House these days would be rightly tempted to have sympathy for one of, if not Oklahoma’s most powerful politicians.
One gets the sense that Kyle Hilbert might be giving into the temptation to fascinate on the never-ending social media chatter.
Living in the social media world is ill-advisable for most—very unhealthy on one's mental processes—but especially so when one is a government leader in the predicament Hilbert finds himself:
Social media has filled with posts and memes bringing transparency to the Speakership's role in bottling up conservative legislation desired by the people, while exposing the liberal legislation that's been greenlighted by those in the Speaker's coalition who have campaigned as "conservatives." The most engaged voters now have the means and methods to fight through the grift, the smoke and mirrors, and to know who it is that is most responsible for this: Hilbert;
the House of Representatives is now two weeks behind the normal schedule, due in large part to Hilbert’s new rules and committee scheme. The system is under so much pressure to quickly move bills, that Hilbert has been known to unilaterally suspend the important rule that ensures the public has 48 hours of notice of the bills to be heard, meaning that legislation is being heard and even approved with little advance notice to the public of the hearing, a subject for an upcoming article from The Capital; and
Hilbert is locked in the first high profile of what will likely be many unnecessary and pointless disputes with other state government leaders—with that state leader, Governor Kevin Stitt, accusing Hilbert of abusing his power.
This all adds to what is already a constant sensation in the corner office of the House: the walls have started closing in—a sensation that's likely more apt this year than in most—captured by the mid-season run of the Capitol Conformity Index, which shows that Republican representatives are voting less with Hilbert than with the imperial speakership of Charles McCall in McCall's final session last year, and by a not-insignificant difference.
But, before offering up just too much sympathy, it's important to realize that it didn't have to be this way.
Time and again, the now snowballing weight of the speakership has mounted on the new speaker due to his bad decisions.
Exhibit A: the principled people of House 32 both gifted Hilbert an amazing resource, while simultaneously relieving him of a heavy albatross.
Last year's open budget hearings, which are unfortunately now a thing of the past, publicly exposed how much of a drain the House Appropriations Chairman Kevin Wallace was on the system, with Senate Pro Tempore Greg Treat using the occasion to reportedly gig Wallace on his pork appropriations. A pork-heavy appropriations chairman places tremendous liability on the speaker’s office due to having to account for the wants of the pork-heavy appropriations official; it's not easy to do.
In an era when Doge would become the public's new raison d'être, being free of Wallace's pork-dispensing ways was a tremendous blessing. But not just that—it was Wallace's replacement, the successful businessman Jim Shaw, whose performance in the pre-session budget hearing should have immediately caught the attention of any unbiased observer: Shaw had an eye for exposing inefficiency and the business-class knowledge to deliver results—first by exposing government inefficiencies such as the state government’s eye-poppingly bad span of control ratio, i.e., the ratio of supervisor positions to employee positions, and then the credibility, based on his private industry experience, to enact reform.
It was clear that though a freshman, Shaw possessed a skill set and an ability to understand the logistics of efficiency pretty much unlike just about any other member of the legislature. And best still, unlike the vast majority of the other caucus members, Shaw hadn't yet developed the sense of fatalism, pessimism, and learned helplessness that prevents even those who haven't yet been co-opted by the system from being able to propose the type of reform that could actually result in real savings.
Had Hilbert been paying attention to that hearing—or in possession of a modicum of true leadership skills—he would have immediately recognized his great opportunity: Shaw could have been to Hilbert as Elon Musk has been to Trump.
Instead, Hilbert clearly made the fatal decision to keep Shaw at arm’s length, substantially excluding his best Doge-era point person.
Instead of promoting the talented, Hilbert promoted the politicians. For example, he chose to make Chris Kannady his special counsel. Kannady, is as many readers know, the controversial king-maker who has financed so many of the establishment politicians and who is best known for defeating conservatives—who were the most principled, the most conscientious and thoughtful of the House caucus members—through the dark art of dark money skullduggery that has rightly shocked the senses of many Republican voters to this day.
In one of the first sessions of the House, Kannady, through a barrage of gaslighting attacks, established himself as Shaw's foremost foil. One can't help but sense Kannady's fear of Shaw: Shaw, by beating Kannady's political ally Wallace, showed that legislators can't rely on Kannady to keep them in office. Kannady's control over the caucus is clearly waning—as it would seem, is Kannady's interest in the process. The mid-year run of the Capitol Conformity Index shows that Kannady leads the Republican legislators in terms of missed votes, with 197 votes missed—approximately 40% of all votes.
Kannady, now a lame duck due to term limits, is more than likely already checking out. But the grassroots support for Shaw is still growing, and any number of those grassroots are in Hilbert's own district—and that's a problem for what could be the first House Speaker to ever face defeat in his own district's primary.
That, right there, is some serious stress.
Imagine an alternate reality, where instead of appointing Kannady as a special counselor, Hilbert had turned to the member of the legislature who has proven to be right—right about just about everything—even when he was one of the few willing to speak out.
That person is of course Tom Gann. Gann is under no special interests influence, because he declines their money and doesn't live the lobbyist-funded lifestyle in Oklahoma City.
This would have allowed Hilbert to trust Gann's advice; it wouldn't be manipulated by the forces who are constantly gaming the system of big government to their own benefit.
Gann would have likely and wisely advised Hilbert to include Shaw at the highest level of leadership, allowing Shaw's experience and new blood to offset the staid, old, co-opted, dead-eyed yes-men and politicos that rose to power during McCall's imperial speakership.
But a foolish Hilbert completely excluded Gann, one of the legislature’s wisest voices from the leadership room, leaving what is likely a pointless echo chamber of the co-opted, the yes-men, the intemperate, and the less-than-imaginative who are absolutely incapable of government reform.
But, all of that aside, Gann was still willing and ready to save Hilbert.
In January as Hilbert gaveled the House to order, Gann took to the House floor to give Hilbert a lifeline. He asked Hilbert to allow a vote on The Gann Plan—Gann's House Resolution 1001, the plan to devolve the power of the speaker to the House—and in so doing, give Hilbert the opportunity to leave the speakership more popular than when he entered it. Gann likely knows that the concentrated power of the speaker isn't something to be treasured, but rather it is a curse—something that must be devolved.
But as Gann sought recognition, Hilbert ignored him, choosing instead to move his own poorly designed rules resolution, House Resolution 1002. True reform, it would seem, would have to wait until Hilbert leaves the building.
It can't happen soon enough.
Real reform is in the lobby, just waiting for the doors to open.
Had Gann's plan been enacted, Hilbert would have been relieved of much the overwhelming pressure that now haunts him. Each legislator would have been able to move their own legislation without being filtered through the power of the speaker and his close lieutenants, and a member-driven budget process would have been well underway, built by the members of the House.
The Governor wouldn't be accusing Hilbert of abusing power, because there would be little power to abuse, and the grassroots wouldn't be holding Hilbert responsible for killing their ideas and bills and pointlessly retaliating against Shaw, because Hilbert wouldn't have been able to do those things even had he wanted to. His near-absolute power would have been shared with the people's elected representatives, not merely confined to the corner office of one single politician. Shaw and other of the freshmen would have been allowed to bring new, exciting reforms forward for an honest up-or-down vote by which the legislators could be held accountable to the people, instead of Hilbert's old-fashioned smoke-and-mirrors game that currently keeps true deliberation behind closed doors.
There would be no late nights for Hilbert, who is likely cruising Facebook and X with a paranoid fear, trying to come up with just the right response to stave off a feared and imminent deposal.
And that's the exciting part of the new era. In McCall's time, the Imperial Speaker didn't have to realistically face accountability back home in his district, because the idea that the people would defeat a speaker in his own district was so outside the norm that it wasn't considered realistic. This allowed a totalitarian speaker—with all power—to wield and abuse his power.
Not so much anymore. It's now possible imagine that a speaker could be defeated, and this change of dynamic means that—though still endowed with the powers of the totalitarian—that person might just have a day of accountability after all.
Unlike ever before, an uncensored and open social media has allowed the people to stay engaged in monitoring their government like never before possible, and this has made antiquated the old-fashioned smoke and mirrors that Hilbert has fought to preserve.
They don't work anymore.
So, why is all of this important to analyze and make public?
Because one or more future speakers of the House are likely reading this article—possibly including the speaker who will become one of the first to be more popular at the end of his speakership than at the beginning, due to the learned wisdom of de-concentrating and giving away his vast power—vast power which is in reality, a curse.
And that's the point: learning from the mistakes of those speakers past.
Of course to learn these lessons, someone has to step up to make the mistakes in the first place, and in the way of providing this valuable service, we will likely find few others who have been more generous than Hilbert.