Category Archives: Featured

A Journalist Who Rode the Rails to Professional Respect

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BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  OCT 16, 2025 

There were not a lot of journalists covering Capitol Hill in my 13 years there that I called a close friend. There were many with whom I had friendly, but strictly professional relations. And there were a few from whom I would hide under my desk when I saw them strolling down the narrow corridor to the Republican Leader’s office where I worked.

Among the friends was Don Phillips, the United Press International (UPI) Capitol bureau chief. Don was the quintessential reporter—knowledgeable, probing, thorough, honest, trustworthy, and eminently objective. He was also calm and composed in his work and most importantly, civil in the way he conducted himself. I admired him.

Don was among the journalists on a congressional delegation trip I took to Grenada, just a week or so after the U.S. invaded the island to protect American students there. He got us together with other reporters for a beer—or two—the night before in Barbados, where a military cargo plane had dropped us off. Don was known for bringing reporters and staff together for happy hours to build better relations.

We helicoptered into Grenada the following morning. Continue reading →

Random Thoughts

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BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  OCT 13, 2025 

In September, I read a column by Colbert K. King in the Washington Post that has troubled me ever since. It was his last column in the Post after he announced in June that he was scaling back, in part due to an illness that hospitalized him.

I’ve followed King for many years in Washington because of his tempered insights, reasoned thinking, seasoned by his intolerance for injustice. His character, calmness, and the kind of civic intimacy he expressed for his beloved city gave you the sense that he could be trusted and that his commentaries were an honest and sincere reflection of his experiences and perspective.

King, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize who has an endowed chair in his honor at Howard University, has had a distinguished career in journalism that began and has ended with the Post.

The September column seemed ominous. “My time is passing, and the hour is dark,” he wrote, “but I hold faith that wrong will be righted in the end.” Continue reading →

Ukraine in Crosshairs of a New “Evil Empire”

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  AUG 28, 2025 

There’s a telling and disturbing story about Russian President Vladimir Putin in the new book, The Situation Room, by George Stephanopoulos.

During an interview with former President Joe Biden, Stephanopoulos asked him about reports that as Vice President in a 2011 meeting he told Putin he had no soul.

“I did say that to him, yes…I wasn’t being a wise guy,” Biden confirmed. “I was alone with him in his office. And that-that’s how it came about. It was when President Bush had said, ‘I looked in his eyes and saw his soul’, I said I looked in your eyes and I don’t think you have a soul. And he looked back and he said, ‘We understand each other.’”

As I sort through the reams of news reports on Ukraine, now coming every day, all day, that passage haunts me. Continue reading →

Trump Stumped by Putin, But Wants Nobel Prize

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JULY 15, 2025 

President Donald Trump keeps getting stomped on by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Just in recent days, President Trump said he has had some “pleasant” and “lovely” conversations with Putin who he has called a friend for years. Shortly after those calls, Putin attacked Ukraine again.

With friends like that, who needs enemies.

At the same time, President Trump has publicly and aggressively campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize. He really needs to suspend the campaign until he can fully recognize the delusions he harbors about the Russian President.

In the past couple of weeks there are indications he may be turning a corner. We must hope it doesn’t become a U-turn. He seemed to accept the fact that his Russian friend was not going to “STOP” (Trump’s word) the reign of terror raining down from the skies over Ukraine. He finally decided to open the pipeline for more weapons to Ukraine he says NATO nations will pay for.

When Putin continued the bombardment, Trump came up with a new threat: if Putin doesn’t agree to a truce in 50 days, he would impose severe economic sanctions (called secondary tariffs) on countries that buy oil and other critical products from Russia. Again, good effort, but maybe wasted. Former Russian President and Putin proxy Dmitry Medvedev said the Kremlin “didn’t care” about Trump’s “theatrical ultimatum.” Continue reading →

Let Mikey Do It!

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  MAY 28, 2025 

Some are calling him Magic Mike, but I’m not sure that moniker is fitting since it conjures up images of a male stripper.

Others call him Miracle Mike, but according to Wikipedia, that moniker went to a headless chicken in Colorado that became a national sensation 75 years ago. The chicken set a Guinness world record for surviving 18 months without that very important part of the anatomy.

House Speaker Mike Johnson may be flattered, but I expect not comfortable with adulation. He seems like a humble soul, who has a good sense of self, his surroundings, and the job he fell into a year ago when House Republicans fired his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy. Speaker Johnson is not a miracle-worker or the greatest magician since Merlin. He is a good leader who inspires others to both lead and follow. He bows to no one in the practice of dealmaking.

The Speaker would be more appropriately cast as a maestro who transposes the discordant sounds of discontent and division into a harmonious symphony, at least long enough to accomplish what he seeks to do in the House.

Continue reading →

Ukraine: Battleground for Democratic Rule

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  MAY 5, 2025 

When I was a young journalist, I wrote newspaper columns. In one I lamented the fact that through most of my life the US had been involved in one military action after another, from Asia to the Caribbean. I wrote it during those days and weeks we were ingloriously taking our leave from South Vietnam, 50 years ago this month.

It was an era when many Americans, especially the younger generations, were tired of war and longed for lasting peace. Music of the time reflected that, especially the reincarnation of an ageless Civil War era African-American spiritual, Down by the Riverside. Among the lyrics: “I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside. I ain’t gonna study war no more.” Pete Seger recorded a new version in 1963 and it became a Vietnam protest ballad.

So here we are again. More than a half-century later, while global war has been averted, military conflicts are widespread, from the South Pacific to the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean.

You would think that the young journalist today would side with President Trump’s car-lot dealmaking style to end the war in Ukraine at any cost as long as it benefited the dealership. No thanks.

The United States must stand behind Ukraine, aggressively. Continue reading →

Random Thoughts: A Study in Randomity

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  APR 28, 2025 

Pondering the gravity and sometimes depravity of political events over the past four months has been exhausting. They have been too discombobulating to dwell on for very long.

To protect your sanity, sometimes it is better to just let the mind wander to things a little lighter that don’t require much cognitive activity. Let your mind flow freely through the randomness of life around you.

For example, this spring, as in every spring, I think about why nature produces so much pollen, why it is yellowish green, and why certain pollen affects some people more than others? Isn’t it odd that someone named Johnson is allergic to johnsongrass? I am.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Continue reading →

It’s Time to Make Civics Great Again

BY Louise Dube’ and Shawn Healy, Ripon Society Forum  |  APR 19, 2025 

The Founders would be appropriately bewildered by many facets of modern life in year 250 of the American experiment, but they’d probably be downright shocked by how far we have let our approach to educating young people stray from their original vision.

They believed unequivocally that the point of education in America should be to impart knowledge to young people that would help them be responsible citizens, contributing members of their communities, and ultimately, defenders of constitutional democracy. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison extolled civic learning as a bulwark against tyranny. And President George Washington, in his final Annual Address to Congress in 1796, said that the “education of our Youth in the science of Government” would prepare them to be “future guardians of the liberties of the Country.” Continue reading →

What Does DOGE Do? What We Need to Know

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  APR 2, 2025 

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) says it has saved American taxpayers $130 billion, or $807 per taxpayer, since it started rummaging through Federal agencies for “waste, fraud, and abuse” two months ago.

I heard those numbers and much more during an interview with Elon Musk and his seven-member cabinet on Bret Baier’s Fox News program on March 27th. The DOGE cabinet is a group of experienced former senior executives with expertise in business, technology, and general entrepreneurship. This was the first time—at least for me—to hear Musk and his senior people explain what they are doing and what they expect to accomplish.

It was long overdue.

Baier didn’t conduct the kind of interview that most journalists and Musk antagonists would be happy with. There were no ‘gotcha’ questions or tense exchanges. Baier let his subjects speak their mind for nearly an hour. Continue reading →

Education on the Brink. Transparency Too.

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  MAR 17, 2025 

Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, who reigned during much of the period from 1940-1961, famously said that, “Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.”

There are other pithy Rayburnisms: “Drudgery, darkness, and muddy roads are not conducive to anything that is good.”

They are apropos today, while President Donald Trump and his liquidator, Elon Musk, dismantle or downsize Federal agencies. They are not using a magnifying glass to assess the damage. They are not using a surgical scalpel to operate, careful to not fix what is not broken. They have even abandoned the meat-axe approach. They’ve revved up the bulldozer, without defining or explaining what they are doing. Continue reading →

The US and Ukraine and A Blow to Democratic Rule

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  FEB 24, 2025 

I have this rule.

When something is said or done that hurts or angers, I hold off any response for 24 hours, knowing full well that I probably don’t have enough information or the placidity to make a reasoned judgment. It’s tough. In this day and age, it is a rule that begs to be broken.

I invoked the rule last week when President Donald Trump let loose on Ukraine and looked like he was gift-wrapping the country for his friend Russian President Vladimir Putin’s birthday. I couldn’t believe my ears, so I waited not 24 hours but 48. In the meantime, I read a variety of perspectives from right to left. I researched Ukrainian history and slowly replaced emotion with reason. But it didn’t change my mind.

Trump’s actions on Ukraine are unnerving and to some extent just plain scary, made more so by the disturbing trends taking place on the domestic front in just the first weeks of the second Trump term.

A case in point: Trump recently said that his swordsman, Elon Musk, isn’t aggressive enough. I hope that was in jest.

It is often hard to discern if the President’s bluster is just a bluff or his real intent, damn the consequences. He doesn’t seem to be bluffing or engaging in his brand of transaction diplomacy with Ukraine. Continue reading →

Trump vs Congress Showdown

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  FEB 3, 2025 (Updated 2/19/25)

“The Founders knew they were creating something different and, hopefully lasting. They were visionary. No constitutional democratic republic has survived as long as ours. Maybe our longevity is to the credit of (John) Adams and other Founders who were smart enough not to create a pure democracy or a monarchy, as some preferred, but a democratic republic with three branches of government, each serving as a check and balance of the other.” — Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People, (Chapter 15, Pg 265)

The separation of powers and the checks and balances that make our government functional are part of the genius of our Constitution and a reason for its historic longevity.

President Donald Trump’s early actions tell us he rejects the premise of checks and balances and with an unorthodox view of the separation of powers and believes he can muscle his way past them.

The alarm bells are ringing.

The checks and balances are embedded in Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution, along with separation of powers among the branches of government, each of which is distinct, function separately but answer to each other and hopefully function as one. I will try to connect my dots here with the disclaimer that I’m not an historian, nor a constitutional scholar. What I do know is that Mr. Trump’s autocratic view of the first three Articles has him speeding along an unfamiliar road without political or ideological GPS.

I’ve always found it helpful to take a step back before leaping forward, so back to history. Continue reading →

Introducing A Civic State of Mind

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JAN 30, 2025

A new year has dawned and so will a new opportunity to reshape the way we are governed and clean up the way we conduct our politics.

There is hope among many Americans that the new Congress will be better than the one just concluded, which had among the worst records in history.

The reason for the optimism may be grounded in pessimism: How can it get any worse? Public trust in government is in the tank.

The governing crisis we are in is not new, of course. The crisis has been creeping up on us like nasty vines that wind their way around the tree, in this our body politic, grown from roots dating back almost a half century. Continue reading →

Restoring Civic Education, Civic Engagement, and Civil Discourse

“Knowledge about the ideas embodied in the Constitution and the ways in which it shapes our lives is not passed down from generation to generation through the gene pool; it must be learned anew by each generation.”
–The late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, founder of iCivics

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  NOV 13, 2024

Emily Brubaker, a middle school student from Alaska, thin framed in her dark suit and wire glasses, strode onto a stage in the nation’s capital. She had to wait for the microphone to be lowered for her to reach. She was there to make her case for legislation mandating insurance coverage for people with a serious medical condition that does harm to both eyes and teeth.

Emily was confident and convincing and, combined with other demonstrated skills, she emerged the victor in the first annual National Civics Bee Championship held in Washington, D.C. and hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

Close behind in second place was Michael O’Mara from Iowa, and in third, Keith Lee representing New Mexico, both 14. They were among the finalists competing for the honor.

While they didn’t get the attention of the elections a week prior, the students were tested in a competition that metaphorically was similarly consequential, not just for the students but for a nation of citizens young and old lacking the civics education needed to fulfill their role as future leaders and responsible citizens. Continue reading →

Random Thoughts

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  AUG 1, 2024

I find famous quotations therapeutic. Some make you smile. Some become an aha moment. Some make you wish you had said that. A couple of examples with more later.

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.  — James Bovard, Libertarian author, lecturer

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free! — P. J. O’Rourke, author and political satirist

It’s good to have a little comic relief now and then, particularly now. There’s not much to smile about when it comes to the national debt crisis just around the corner. Continue reading →

Biden Stands Down; Will the Real Donald Trump Please Stand Up?

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JULY 22, 2024

President Biden, for the “good of the country and his party” ended his campaign for the Presidency over the weekend and endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris.

The media have been consumed by the immediacy of this wild and crazy time in America, as you’d expect. But as difficult as it seems there are more long-term issues at stake. More coming.

Popular opinion has it that Harris is the heir apparent and recent events would bear that out. But her nomination is not a done deal. The convention outcome is still subject to the whims of the kingmakers (superdelegates) and influencers, and the unbound convention delegates. More will depend on her polling numbers, which have not been much better than Biden’s, although they should experience a bump up. Continue reading →

The Biden Predicament: Public Peril

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JULY 9, 2024

“Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.”  — Dr. Kerr L. White, famous physician and author, native of Winnipeg, citizen of the world.

The early years of my life’s journey were replete with questionable—okay, bad—judgment. But along the road, through seven decades, most of my experiences afforded me better judgment.
The most valuable experience has been just growing old; maturing and appreciating that on any given day I am not the person I was the previous day. Change is constant and inevitable. If you are open to it, with it comes enlightenment and ultimately the wisdom and humility to know how much you don’t know.

President Joe Biden, just a few years my senior, seems to be still in denial about aging. His spirit is robust but his mind and body are not. His reasoning is stunted.

I am among those on the aging side of aging who believe the President has not reached a reality: he cannot do justice to the immense job and grave responsibilities he holds, certainly not for another four years. He has lost the battle between wisdom and wishful thinking. You have a choice at our age: you embrace aging gracefully or grudgingly. He seems to be captive of the latter. Continue reading →

The First of July, the Second, the Third, and the Fourth

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JULY 4, 2024

This week we celebrate national independence. By “we” I mean both Canadians and Americans. So let’s start at the first of July and trace the unique moments we share on days in July.

Canadians got their crack at tearing off the British yoke on July 1. On that day in 1867, the Constitution Act was adopted by the British parliament essentially creating the Dominion of Canada, still under the authority of the British Crown but essentially free to form its own national parliament and provincial governments. It is marked 157 years later with celebrations replete with picnics, hot dogs, and fireworks.

Oh and a day off. It was twelve years later in 1879 that a federal law was enacted making July 1 a statutory holiday as the anniversary of confederation. It later became “Dominion Day” and still later “Canada Day.”

The celebration moves back across the border the next day, July 2. It was on that day in 1776 that the Continental Congress actually voted to declare our independence from Britain, not July 4th.

Continue reading →

The Real Mike Johnson Did Stand Up

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  MAY 17, 2024

It has been written and rewritten that six months ago Rep. Mike Johnson was a backbencher, unknown to much of the public outside his home state of Louisiana. So, when he became Speaker of the House, he faced a tough crowd all too anxious to pass judgement on him before there was any judgment to pass.

The media mostly concluded within days that only six years into his congressional career he was still a wet-behind-the-ears apprentice, wore a MAGA hat to bed at night, and was too captive to his religious beliefs to lead a secular Congress.

Even members of his Republican conference told the media, anonymously of course, that he was a “leader in name only,” and was having a “bad, very, very bad awful time leading the House Republican conference,” according to columnist Marc Theissen writing in the Washington Post.
What a difference six months make, eh, as my relatives north of the border would say.

In short order, Speaker Johnson planted his feet on tremoring ground and acted like a Speaker. He rose like the mythical phoenix from the ashes of chaos and total dysfunction in Congress (hyperbole is not for the timid). He prevented a government shutdown, won reauthorization of the Security Surveillance Act, got the appropriations process back on track, and won approval of critical aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Johnson also reopened the passageway between House Democrats and Republicans so that governing could actually take place. Continue reading →