It may be that the only solution to House chaos is true cooperation between parties

Reasonable voices from both major parties talk often about the need to compromise, to find enough common ground to accomplish difficult goals.

They are unlikely ever to get a better opportunity than they have now to put that philosophy into practice.

Eight Republicans forced the current crisis in the House when they engineered the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Oct. 5. But Democrats, remember, are not blameless.

Any reasonably informed observer could have foreseen that when a small cabal of extremists managed to depose their party's leader with no plan for a successor and no likely option waiting in the wings, trouble lurked for the entire body. The GOP chaos may have provided a few temporary partisan chuckles for Democrats, not one of whom lifted a finger to try to rescue McCarthy, but the situation facing the country now is not at all funny.

Indeed, unless a meeting planned for Monday produces some GOP consensus that was nowhere to be found on Friday, it's hard to imagine a solution that doesn't involve some sort of coalition of centrists from both the Democratic and the Republican sides of the aisle.

From a political point of view, such a coalition sounds barely short of ludicrous. In recent years House speakers have almost invariably been determined by the majority party. As the minority party, Democrats could not possibly appoint a speaker even without a single defection. But Republicans fare only a little better. Holding 221 seats in the chamber, they must find a candidate so overwhelmingly satisfactory that no more than four members withhold their support.

McCarthy managed the trick only by appeasing extremists with the promise that ultimately led to his downfall, allowing a single member to call for a vote seeking his removal. Given McCarthy's experience, any such repeat agreement seems unlikely, if not plainly foolhardy.

So, suddenly, the politically ludicrous could become surprisingly appealing. Neither party is likely ever to find a candidate the other would support unequivocally, of course, and it goes without saying that any candidate with a legitimate chance would have to be Republican. But Democrats - and, for that matter, the country - have good reason to try to help find a speaker with whom they can work, if not agree.

The government faces a potential shutdown in less than a month without a budget agreement. The president has issued a major proposal to address no fewer than three crises with existential implications for America - the wars in Ukraine and the Mideast and the disaster at our southern border.

We need a working Congress that can reach viable compromises with the Senate and president on these critical issues.

Republicans seem unable to provide it. But Democrats and Republicans working together could.

Is it wholly unreasonable to ask pragmatic leaders in both parties to shun tradition and find a functioning, capable leader of the House of Representatives?

Yes, it sounds absurd in the fractured political world in which we find ourselves today. But it may be that the absurd is our only reasonable hope for averting even greater trouble than the decidedly unfunny chaos we now see roiling the House.