The spectacle in the House of Representatives continues. On Tuesday, the Republican majority turned to its fourth option to lead the chamber as speaker. After the removal of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), we have seen the candidacies of Reps. Steve Scalise (R-LA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Tom Emmer (R-MN) crash against the rocks of the GOP’s fractious caucus. Next up: Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), who finally secured the necessary 217 votes.

Republicans certainly face the difficulty of a small majority. A mere four votes against a nominee spells doom. But both parties have had similarly slim margins over the past 25 years. This year’s is tied for the fifth smallest in history, but that tie includes the 107th Congress, also Republican, between 2001 and 2002.

Yet the blowups of the past month are unparalleled for the House in this century, requiring us to look back to the tumultuous 1850s to find a reasonable equivalent.

The real problems continue to consist more in the composition of the House GOP rather than the actual number. The first problem concerns character. It certainly seems fair to argue that the Republican majority is not able, much less interested, in governing.

I noted at the start of this sad farce this same problem but through a different angle. We cannot critique the House GOP’s disinterest in such a general way and learn what we need to know. Governing involves all political power, including that exercised by the president and the judiciary.

Instead, we must pinpoint the function through which the Constitution makes Congress part of governing. That function is lawmaking. Congress receives its constitutional identity from its vested task of creating the rules and regulations by which our government operates. The House (and the Senate to a lesser degree) has devolved into its present mess in large part because it has stopped fulfilling this role and, as a result, is suffering an identity crisis. Either out of ignorance or willful rejection, the House no longer engages in meaningful legislation as a normal part of its sessions.

What replaces this identity crisis is twofold. The House as an institution now drifts from non-legislative task to non-legislative task. It seems to oversee bureaucrats to whom they gave most of their legislative power. In so doing, they act like they are the president, though without the legitimate constitutional power or the needed constitutional structure to act effectively.

The other identity crisis results in grandstanding. Too many members use the constitutional prestige of the House as a springboard to their personal fame and glory. This fame and glory, far from the lofty goals of great legislators in the past, mostly consists of creating fodder for a viral video or a lucrative fundraising email. Its higher goal, if one can call it such, involves the desire for some other office — usually, the presidency or a governorship or a well-connected place in a Washington think tank after leaving office.

This crisis of character then leads to the second problem: a dearth of principle and policy. Our politics have become dominated by tribal and personal allegiances. Such markers have always existed and are not entirely damaging when part of the political ecosystem. But they must be tempered by policy and those policies’ underlying principles. Principle forces tribal and personal allegiances to have an objective standard of justice and good. Policy forces lawmakers to seek achievable and, thus, realistic goals, not the mere scoring of political points.

The House, in particular, should be a place where policy thrives. The art of legislation is the art of crafting the most principled laws possible amid diverse and contesting coalitions. Legislation thus demands more than tribal or personal allegiance. It holds those affiliations to the standard of result.

Even with the GOP finally selecting a speaker, these underlying problems remain. The real reform must combine a restoration by the people and their representatives. Both must demand the House return to its sense and that the Republican Party, if it wants to be a majority, do so in particular. And the core of that return is a restoration of the House’s true identity as one-half of the people’s lawmaking branch.

Adam Carrington is an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.