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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is a mild-mannered fellow. He never raises his voice, and usually wears an expression somewhere between satisfaction and resignation.
But the calm exterior belies the truth: Johnson’s speakership is a story of chaos and failure at a time when he and his party should be racking up wins.
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Johnson has barely had a good moment since becoming speaker two years ago, and things are getting worse by the day. His majority hangs by a thread, with a series of retirements steadily diminishing the margin he has to pass any legislation. President Trump treats him less like a partner and more like a sad and irritating underling; in private, Trump reportedly jokes, “I’m the speaker and the president.”
In public, Johnson’s low-key manner easily reads as weakness, especially when he tries to spin the indefensible, as he so often does.
Though he insists that everything is fine in the House and all the Republicans get along, Johnson increasingly finds himself in personal, embarrassing feuds with his own members.
In a recent softball interview with former White House aide Katie Miller, the speaker lamented all the phone calls he has to answer and sounded like all he wants to do is curl up into a ball and cry. (“Even when you think the work of the day is done and you put the phone down, it can be 11:30 at night — ‘ring ring,’ another crisis,” he whined.) The man who was supposed to bring a fractious caucus together seems to be miserable and flailing.
Managing the House is a tough job, without question. But Mike Johnson seems particularly bad at it. How did this happen?
Fraught from the start
Johnson became speaker in a moment of vicious infighting among Republicans.
In October 2023, they ousted Kevin McCarthy in a vote of no confidence, then went searching for a replacement. One candidate after another won support from a majority of the caucus, but couldn’t win the vote in the whole House: first Steve Scalise, then Jim Jordan, then Tom Emmer. Johnson finally emerged as the one all the party’s factions could live with.
As Johnson explained soon after, he had help from above.
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