Kevin McCarthy has thus far surpassed the low expectations that greeted the rocky beginning of his speakership. Has he been underestimated? With the narrowest and most fractious of majorities, barely elected to the office after humiliatingly abasing himself to his caucus, noticeably lacking in public charisma or a reputation for ferocity, McCarthy was expected to struggle to get much done. Yet look at the record so far. He got a debt-ceiling raise passed before the Senate did, and with enough Republican wish-list items attached that he has a lot of chips to trade away. Joe Biden was so unprepared for McCarthy to do this that his only response has been to pretend it didn’t happen.

Along the way, in the debt-ceiling negotiations, McCarthy got Mitch McConnell to defer to him while McCarthy takes the lead and Donald Trump and Chip Roy play the bad cops. On immigration, McCarthy got a border security package passed ahead of the expiration of Title 42, again putting a proposal on the table while the Senate dithers and the White House blusters. As Matthew Continetti notes, these are not McCarthy’s only wins, either:

Press coverage focuses almost entirely on divisions within the GOP conference, leading to a sense of surprise in the Beltway whenever the House comes together to rescind funding for additional IRS agents, incentivize oil and gas exploration and production, repeal onerous environmental and financial regulations, broaden parental rights in education, and hike the debt limit. . . .

Indeed, on two occasions Speaker McCarthy has outplayed Biden and the Democrats. In February, the House voted 250–173 to overturn D.C.’s incorrigible criminal-justice reform. The next month, the resolution passed the Senate and Biden signed it into law. Also in February, the House voted 229–197 to end the national Covid emergency. And again, the next month, the resolution passed the Senate and Biden signed it into law. House Democrats were outraged that Biden ultimately sided with these House Republican initiatives. But the politics were on McCarthy’s side. And the same was the case last year, when then-minority leader McCarthy forced an end to the military’s Covid vaccine mandate.

How is he doing it? I submit that McCarthy has used his weakness as a strength. Unable to rule his caucus by fear or force of personality, he is compelled to cater to everyone and effectively lead from behind — an approach that plays to his naturally affable and self-effacing character. With a large majority, leaders can afford to be high-handed, and dissidents can cast show votes of protest without alienating the rest of the caucus. But with only a narrow margin, clinging to just one house of Congress, chastened by a disappointing midterm and terrified of their own party’s presidential front-runner, every member of the caucus knows that — as Ben Franklin once quipped — they must all hang together, or they will all hang separately. Just a few no votes on any given bill will sink Republican chances of having a say on that issue, and who wants to be responsible for that? This dynamic forces McCarthy to pander humbly to the lowest common denominator in each faction of his caucus, and promotes realism on their part in getting to “yes” on each proposal rather than grandstanding.

McCarthy will never win the plaudits of a Nancy Pelosi or be the sort of fascinating alchemist that Newt Gingrich was. But he has shown how a weak hand can be a strength.