Opinion | Was It Worth It, Kevin?

Of course, a shape-shifting, flip-flopping, over-promising, self-serving politician is nothing new. Where Mr. McCarthy truly distinguished himself was in his willingness and ability to debase himself in the service of Donald Trump — even as he occasionally pretended to still have a spine. “My Kevin,” as Mr. Trump so delighted in calling him, certainly did his part to aid Mr. Trump’s political revival after the Jan. 6 sacking of the Capitol. In a turnaround so dramatic it must have given him whiplash, Mr. McCarthy went from saying that Mr. Trump needed to “accept his share of responsibility” for his role in the attack to, some weeks later, slinking down to Mar-a-Lago for a grotesque photo op with the former president.

What could be more pathetic than this little field trip? Mr. McCarthy’s attempts to justify it. In “Oath and Honor,” the new book by Liz Cheney, the former congresswoman and Trump scourge, Ms. Cheney dishes some dirt about confronting him.

“Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?” she asked, according to CNN, which obtained an advance copy.

“They’re really worried,” McCarthy offered. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.”

Betraying democracy because the MAGA king’s appetite was off? Wow. Just, wow.

Give Mr. McCarthy his due: All that butt-smooching worked, kind of, allowing him to wheedle his way into his dream job for 11 not-so-glorious months. But having handed his leash to the right-wingers, he had no room left to do his job leading the House. And the moment he dared to cross them, using his deal-cutting, coalition-building skills to hammer out a bipartisan debt limit agreement and avoid crashing the global economy, he was a marked man. The extremists were on the prowl for any excuse to take him down, and, come late September, the stopgap funding deal he cut to prevent a government shutdown fit the bill. A few days later, they snatched the gavel back from him, along with the last remaining shreds of his dignity.

It’s hard to dispute that this is the ending that Mr. McCarthy deserved. By contrast, the American people don’t deserve the damage that he has done to the House — and, really, the nation — that will linger long after he is gone. By empowering the most extreme elements of the Republican conference, he made an already fractured, fractious chamber even more dysfunctional. Worse, by shoring up Mr. Trump after Jan. 6, he helped put America back on a crash course with a dangerous, antidemocratic demagogue looking for political revenge.