Johnson is among our most consequential speakers
In a matter of six months, Mike Johnson has gone from accidental House speaker to one of the most consequential House speakers in a generation.
That’s not hyperbole. Despite presiding over one of the smallest and most restive House majorities in history, he has managed to navigate the warring factions of his party to pass a raft of critical legislation, including a government funding bill that averted a catastrophic shutdown; reauthorization of a foreign surveillance law critical to disrupting terrorist attacks; a lethalaid package for Ukraine that staved off imminent defeat, plus vital military assistance for Israel and Taiwan; legislation that allows the United States to seize Russian assets and use them to aid Ukraine; bipartisan legislation to ban TikTok in the United States if it is not sold to a new parent company that is not Chinese within about a year; and new sanctions against China, Iran and Russia.
And in the wake of those legislative victories, accomplished with bipartisan support, he defeated an effort by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to oust him, which was rejected by a 359-43 vote amid a cacophony of boos from her GOP colleagues.
Name another speaker who has accomplished so much, in so short a time, against such overwhelming odds.
He wasn’t even supposed to be in the job. Johnson was chosen only after a three-week standoff in which three other nominees failed. When he ascended to the speaker’s post, few in Washington had even heard of him. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told CNN she planned to do a Google search to learn who he was. Johnson had never even chaired a congressional committee and went from serving as vice chairman of the House Republican Conference (the No. 6 leadership position) to second in the line to the presidency virtually overnight.
From the moment Johnson assumed the speakership, many assumed his job was doomed. Just weeks after he was elected, Politico reported that Republicans were “already asking behind closed doors whether Johnson might meet the same fate as the deposed (former speaker Kevin) McCarthy.” Later, he was described as a “leader in name only” whose “grip on his fractious conference appears to be slipping” and who was having a “bad, very, very bad, awful time leading the House Republican conference,” which had become a “hot mess, devoid of ideas and accomplishments.”
No one is saying that today.
Getting there was not easy. After Johnson took office, his already historically small majority narrowed further because of GOP resignations, leaving him little room for error in steering his party to pass controversial legislation. He moved deliberately and sequentially from bill to bill, tackling government spending first, then foreign-surveillance reauthorization, before finally moving forward on Ukraine aid.
The Biden administration has sought to claim credit for getting Johnson on board with Ukraine aid. But while Johnson had voted against previous aid packages, he had been clear from the beginning of his speakership on his intention to pass aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. In his speech accepting the gavel (which he wrote himself ), he declared, “We stand at a very dangerous time. … Turmoil and violence have rocked the Middle East and Eastern Europe. We all know tensions continue to build in the Indo-Pacific. The country demands strong leadership of this body, and we must not waver.” The next day, he told Sean Hannity, “We can’t allow Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine, because I don’t believe it would stop there, and it would probably encourage and empower China to perhaps make a move on Taiwan. … We’re not going to abandon them.”
“I never aspired to be speaker of the House,” Johnson recently said. “This was not on my bucket list.”
Though he might not have aspired to it, he has become one of the most courageous and effective leaders to hold it.
Not bad for an accidental speaker.