WASHINGTON — Once upon a time, politics was a great spectator sport or theater, with characters carved in marble for the ages. The marble just cracked in the Capitol.

Thanks, Republicans.

The Senate prides itself on debate and decorum “across the aisle.” The People’s House was circuslike and lively, fun when Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wielded the gavel.

Not that I loved the House of Representatives less, but I loved the Senate more.

Yet in February’s drear days, we saw farces play out in both chambers — farces that border on tragic.

The House has a rookie Republican speaker, Mike Johnson from Shreveport, Louisiana.

Johnson looks the part, but a “Moses” complex blinds him to hard reality.

In a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera, an incompetent leader who often confuses himself with Moses as a lawgiver would be hilarious.

Not so much now.

Johnson presided over an absurd impeachment vote, targeting Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary. Republicans lost by one, a source of glee for House Democrats.

Pelosi never went to the floor without the votes in her “pocket.”

Three Republicans voted against impeachment. One Wisconsin Republican, Mike Gallagher, was swarmed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and others, shouting. A young shining star on his side, Gallagher abruptly decided to quit the House: a profile in courage.

At the same time, Democrat Al Green of Texas appeared from his hospital bed to come to his party’s aid. In a circle of fate, Green first shouted into the wind that Donald Trump deserved impeachment as president.

Much was wrong with that wild scene.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the worst troublemaker in the House, instigated the impeachment vote. Where she goes nobody should follow. There were no “high crimes,” as Gallagher said. The debacle took up floor time when House work for the nation is undone.

The House succeeded on a second try Tuesday night, 214-213.

The backstory made for a dark subplot involving the master puppeteer of his party, Trump. The candidate plays an offstage role in leading Johnson (not Moses) into the wilderness.

Meanwhile, on the Senate side, party leaders reached for an overarching deal on military aid for Ukraine and Israel, combined with a bipartisan border deal and humanitarian assistance for Gaza.

True to Trump, Johnson flatly told Mitch McConnell, the old-school Senate Republican leader, that a border bill would be “DOA,” dead on arrival in the House.

That takes gall, to be blunt when you’re so new. McConnell, to his credit, tried hard to link foreign aid to Ukraine with a border bill.

But House Republicans also fiercely opposed helping Ukraine fight Russian president Vladimir Putin, along with a new border law. Why? Trump ordered them to kill a border bill.

Worse, he praised Russia’s attacking a NATO ally.

“I would encourage them (Russia) to do whatever the hell they want,” Trump said.

Trump’s tongue, lately even more unleashed, is taking us into dangerous times.

“Democracy is under siege,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said.

To meet Senate Republican demands, Schumer and McConnell named three younger senators — Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; James Lankford, R-Okla.; and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz. — to write law to govern the overflowing southern border. That task took months, but they met in the middle, as senators once did.

But then Senate Republicans also got the memo from Trump to sink the border deal, and they did — a betrayal of the good faith, word-is-your-bond way things worked.

Murphy, frustrated, said Republican senators think they’re loftier and above the House Republican rabble.

“Now we know there is no difference,” he said. A low blow, not quite right.

To his credit, Schumer kept the Senate in a rare weekend session to take up a Ukraine-Israel-Taiwan military aid bill — until the job got done. It passed with 22 Republican votes.

Its fate may meet with murder in the House.

This is a failed Congress. Thanks, House Republicans. They took weeks to elect — and oust — and find a new speaker. Little good got done.

Finally, a Trump appointee, a special counsel, called President Joe Biden “elderly,” with a poor memory. Commenting on closed investigations for political hay is unfair play.

Fleeing tragic farce, I went to the symphony at the Kennedy Center.

Beethoven’s “Eroica” melodies flew above the fray.

The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com.

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