After much ado and several weeks of nothing but drama, the House of Representatives once again has a Speaker of the House. Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana received the unanimous consent of the majority Republican Party and now takes the gavel in the People’s House.
After the predictable deposing of Kevin McCarthy, the House GOP conference saw Steve Scalise falling short, Jim Jordan not taking no for an answer a few times, Tom Emmer’s public emasculation by Donald Trump and allies without even getting a floor vote, and various other machinations before elevating Speaker Johnson. In what had become a weekly tradition of Rep. Elise Stefanik nominating a Speaker candidate, the New York Republican invoked the Biblical David in showering Johnson with praise, changing it up a bit from breaking out the Biblical Esther for Jim Jordan’s nominating speech the week prior.
What a journey it has been.
While the made-for-TV news bombast of Jim Jordan was on full display in his failed bid, Mike Johnson strikes an altogether different public persona. He’s soft spoken, described by everyone as polite and cordial, and indeed won the gavel by being in no small part the Republican in the room with the least enemies. Johnson has none of the usual experience that leads one to the Speaker of the House role, having not even chaired a committee or been in high party leadership. Compared to the walking ATM Kevin McCarthy has been for over a decade now, his fundraising is miniscule, his staff and operation small, and he will be living the “outhouse to the penthouse” saying by moving from his current basement office to arguably the best office space on Capitol Hill.
This personality difference, however, needs to be noted and paid attention to. On any matter that matters to the folks to whom it matters in the Republican Party, Mike Johnson is not appreciably different on policy or politics from the men who failed before him. He’s a Trump supporter through and through. He not only is an active culture warrior, but a happy and committed one at that. He’s a true believer and, as Jake Tapper recounted remembering his initial meetings with Johnson long before he was in congress, a smooth operator in person.
Unlike Trump, Jordan, and others, Mike Johnson has figured out that it’s best to be the smartest person in the room without trying to tell everyone about it. The new Speaker has shown, with his sweeping victory seemingly out of nowhere for the public but predicted by astute reporters covering the Republican conference, that the real operators do so while no one really notices. The Louisiana Republican has the bearing and demeanor where he can hard right with anyone but does it with a smile and folksy anecdotes to make the crafted messaging more receivable.
The oft-hand remarks by Democrats as reported by Heather Caygle that Mike Johnson is “(Jim)Jordan in a coat” and “different waiter, same menu” have truth to them. The men are ideologically in lockstep. But it is in their approach where folks should pay heed and take notice. It’s the quiet ones you always have to watch out for, and all the pundits and commentators, me included, who did not see the Mike Johnson Speakership coming need to pause for a moment of reflection. Just two days ago, almost everyone was convinced, with resounding public evidence, that the GOP House caucus was ungovernable. Quietly, over the last several days at least and probably weeks, Mike Johnson not only herded the cats but picked his moment, getting unanimous consent from a group that was yelling and cursing at each other in meetings only a day before. In his speech in front of the house before taking the gavel, Mike Johnson set the tone of saying all the right things the right way in public with just the right kind of verbal acuity to make most of it unobjectionable.
Believe what folks’ actions tell you about themselves. We will see if the inexperienced Mike Johnson can scale up and wield the immense potential power that comes with inhabiting the Speaker’s lobby in the House of Representatives. Speaker Johnson still has a thin majority, a still-smarting under the public unity caucus, and a united opponent in Democrats across the aisle. The US Senate isn’t going to bend over backwards to help, and President Biden still holds the White House and veto power should the two halves of our legislative branch actually pass anything. The shutdown looms, as do appropriations fights, Ukraine and Israel aid packages, and dozens of other things. But everything we know about Mike Johnson, and what we have just learned in the last few days, should tell us not to underestimate him.
The folks that have speculated for years now that a Trumpism that could behave better in public and actually engage the levers of power would be a much more formidable force than the Trump chaos circus so far are about to get a real-world test of the theory. That test will be in the form of a Speaker Mike Johnson, sitting in the chair in the front of the People’s House, right under the “In God We Trust” engraving.
Got to watch out for those quiet ones. All the sudden, you look up from going “who’s that” and they are in charge by the time you Google them.
Its not completely true he has no leadership experience – he was Vice Chair of the House Republican Conference, which made him Elise Stefaniak’s deputy. It is true that he is a better spoken not so bombastic Jim Jordan, who was just a less slick Kevin McCarthy. So I don’t expect any change in policy orientation of the House.
And I noticed something he said in his acceptance speech – that he intends to foster “Regular Order” which is GOP code for running each appropriation by itself. The more i think about it, the more I think its a play to jam democrats – by running regular order appropriations, the House GOP can load individual bills with poison pill clauses that Senate Democrats would likely reject. That creates the possibility of individual agencies being shut down, and the GOP being able to hang the millstones for that around Democrats necks.
We shall see I suppose . . .Report
Promising regular order is probably a necessary step for Johnson. It gets a bunch of committee chairs on his side. It gives him an excuse to ask for an extension of the current CR. It gives him time to work out a bunch of staffing changes in the Speaker’s Office.Report
Six hours before you posted this, you were complaining that Congress didn’t follow the appropriations rules. Are you just assuming bad will from your opponents, or did you change your mind on the issue?Report
Congress still isn’t following their own rules – its almost November and we don’t have full year appropriations.
What I’m pointing out is there is an additional political move to be had here that the GOP is surely contemplating. Because they have made it plain through numerous speeches and interviews they want to jam up democrats heading into the election next year. As they have been trying to do for over 40 years . . . .Report
I hope he’s good at his job and I have no reason to doubt him, but I wouldn’t assume he’s a brilliant tactician. The House GOP was getting frustrated and embarrassed, and there was going to be an agreement soon.Report
He’s certainly stupid enough to take the job.Report
If, through some unintentional miracle I was elected to the House, the first thing I’d be looking for for my staff is an expert on procedure. The second thing I’d be looking for is a really good tactician. Then a spymaster. Then constituent service. Then I’d worry about policy expertise.Report
I agree about the value of a parliamentarian. And actually, any one of those offices you listed can benefit from someone with institutional knowledge. We underrate it and assume that it’s the same as swampy corruption or knowing where the bodies are buried, but man is it handy to have someone who knows what to do.Report
It’s part of the reason Joe has gotten so much done.Report
The House has a professional parliamentarian on staff. Always has. Ditto the Senate.Report
Not procedure at that level. What forms do I have to fill out when? Reserve a conference room for Friday morning. Keep me straight on what kinds of business I can use my office phone for. Are my personal idiosyncrasies about e-mail breaking any rules?
I watched new incoming members of the Colorado legislature consistently get tripped up by the daily routine, and the Colorado system is way simpler than Congress.Report
There’s an old story of when Howard Baker became Senate Majority Leader and Robert Byrd moved to Senate Minority Leader. Baker approached him and said, “here’s the deal, I’m never going to know the rules as well as you do, so how about we agree that I’ll never surprise you if you never surprise me?”. Byrd took the deal and continued to exercise a great deal of power.
Always respect the rules guy.Report
The Hill has a professional staff independent of the Committees who handle most of that. Both the female reading clerks you have seen on TV are more then 20 year veterans of the Hill. While they could be let go by a new Speaker, they are federal civil servants, not political appointees. Ditto most of the rest of the faceless staff who sit below the speaker’s rostrum.
And outgoing Congressional staff are often (but not always) rehired by incoming members of the same party. One of my congressional mentors was a guy who had worked Committee permanent staff for 30 years by the time he retired, and the member who hired him for personal staff wasn’t on that committee for a decade.
The form stuff is done in a new member and new staff bootcamp in December before the new Congress is seated. I won’t say it always runs well all the time, but they have systems in place for this.Report
So the only thing that can unite the GOP is a religious right fundamentalist crank.
Good to know.Report
A backbencher with no leadership experience who is part of the right wing media bubble and has never, ever in his life had to work with anyone outside that bubble is, I suspect, someone who is going to embody the Peter Principle as Speaker.Report
I remain skeptical that Johnson is more Frank Underwood than Condor from By The Dawn’s Early Light, the last guy left who’s not ready for prime time. Whether it was Crenshaw’s threat of moving to plurality vote or – as I’ve heard and believe less likely – McCarthy threatening to go to the Democrats, the caucus had arrived at the time to #### or get off the pot and handed the gavel to the most least threatening guy they could find. Time will tell if he’s up to the job or not.Report
He only appears most least threatening. His legislative priorities and support of the Big Lie betray his easy demeaner.Report
Watching the House proceedings today and my suspicions about “regular order” appropriations are being confirmed. Amendments so far approved for the 2024 Energy & Water Spending Bill (which provides $57.958 billion in total funding for the Department of Energy, Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, and independent agencies) are all designed to defund Biden Administration programs and priorities previously funded in 2023 and before. These are the poison pills that will doom the bill in the Senate.Report
The fundamental problem of the situation hasn’t been resolved. There is a speaker now but as I understand it he is still subject to another vote based on the motion of a single Republican, which means he has no room to negotiate with the Senate or the White House. There will either be a shut down or he will be forced to rely on Democratic votes for a clean, short term extension and lose the speakership, just like McCarthy did.Report
What’s interesting to me is they didn’t bring up Congressional Operations as their first approps bill. That would seem to me to be the no brainer.Report
The first bill was one that got everybody but 10 people to vote Aye.
I could see why a symbolic gesture like that would be important.Report
And also of note the Amendment to cut the US Army Corps of Engineers funding back to FY 22 levels failed 335 to 76 with 28 abstentions. SO it’s definitely NOT about being fiscally conservative.Report
Who was brave enough to put up an amendment to cut back on all the construction and maintenance the Corps does on flood and river control in red states? Drought has dropped levels in parts of the Mississippi River to the point where it’s approaching impassible.Report
I’m suddenly reminded of the dig by Bobby Jindal against ‘something called volcano monitoring’ a while back, that caused the entire American population to say ‘Oh yeah, sometimes the molten rocks erupts from the ground and destroys everything in its path, we completely forgot that was even a thing that could really happen outside of disaster movies. Good thing the US government is monitoring _that_ situation, apparently. I have literally never thought of volcano monitoring before, but I hope they’re doing it well?’
Unlike volcano control, however, there are enough red states that depend on the Corp of Engineers to not want cutbacks.Report
Mr. Rosendale of Montana.Report
Someone’s got to make cat calendars.
https://usace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16021coll11/id/5869/rec/1Report
If the government did more stuff like this, there’d be fewer people complaining about the government doing too much stuff.Report
You’re only saying that because they used one of your cats as a model.Report
I didn’t even know Portland District had done that. Cool. I sailed on that dredge and her sister the Yaquina several times while working out west. Great galley staff.Report