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The Economist

20 Apr 2024

Checks and Balance newsletter: Thanks for the hope, Mike Johnson

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/04/20/checks-and-balance-newsletter-thanks-for-the-hope-mike-johnson

United States | Newsletter

Checks and Balance newsletter: Thanks for the hope, Mike Johnson

Apr 20th 2024

This is the introduction to Checks and Balance, a weekly, subscriber-only newsletter bringing exclusive insight from our correspondents in America.

Sign up for Checks and Balance.

“We can’t play politics on this. We have to do the right thing.” So said Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, in declaring on Wednesday that he would press ahead with a bill to send more military aid to Ukraine despite warnings from fellow Republicans that they might try to eject him from his post. He shrugged the threats aside. “History judges us for what we do,” he said.

What an encouraging sentiment, particularly coming at the same time that a former and maybe future president went on trial over charges that he paid hush money to a porn star and Gallup reported that Americans, having had among the highest confidence in their key institutions of the citizens of G7 nations 20 years ago, now had the lowest.

Maybe Mr Johnson, who hesitated a dangerously long time before stepping up to Ukraine’s defence, will lose his nerve, or maybe that notable defendant (and social-media mogul), Donald Trump, will undercut him. But if the speaker holds firm, his act of leadership should be inspiring not only because he is facing down bullies such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. It is also an encouraging demonstration of moral seriousness because he has changed his mind, and not for reasons of domestic politics.

Before becoming speaker Mr Johnson, a conservative from Louisiana with a parson’s manner, was a sceptic of aid to Ukraine: he opposed bills in 2022 and 2023 to provide it. But he told reporters that he was alarmed by the intelligence briefings he had received. “I believe Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed,” he said. Better to send aid than troops to Europe, he argued. He has a son about to start at the Naval Academy, Mr Johnson noted, so for his family “this is a live-fire exercise.”

Here’s a third hopeful inference from Mr Johnson’s stand: the resurgent isolationist impulse has not yet taken full command of the Republican Party. Mr Johnson said that support for a country like Ukraine was important not just for Americans but for free people around the world.

And a fourth: bipartisanship in the cause of common sense is not dead. Once Mr Johnson assumed the speakership he seemed anxious to curry favour with Mr Trump’s base, refusing to bring a bipartisan Senate border-security bill up for a vote after Mr Trump suggested he would prefer to have the problem to campaign on. But he has turned to Democrats to pass spending bills, and he will need their help again now. He takes the heretical view that, to make progress, Republicans must compromise since they control only one branch of government, and barely that. President Joe Biden said he “strongly” supports Mr Johnson’s approach.

Mr Johnson has taken a bill passed by the Senate with a bipartisan majority and broken it into pieces, to finance aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. A fourth bill would include other Republican priorities. He wants to pass all these bills by Saturday evening. Whether or not he succeeds, he could well face a vote by his caucus to remove him as speaker. Ms Greene has already taken the first step towards that. But Mr Johnson said that if he operated out of fear of such threats, he would not be able to do his job properly—words that I wish leaders atop America’s other beleaguered institutions would take to heart.