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.

Johnson has done it time and time again. This past week he was able to eke out a one-vote victory for an enormous Rube-Goldberg budget reconciliation bill giving instructions to authorizing committees for trillions of dollars (over 10 years) of tax reductions, exemptions, and increases. The instructions also called for major spending cuts, some that reflected major shifts in public policy, large spending increases, and regulatory changes. It contained a whole lot more needed to win over legislators who just weren’t going to let a crisis go by without some benefit to their districts.

The legislation was and is highly contentious. It brought the far left and the right together in opposition, one opposed to changes in social programs, such as food stamp work requirements, and the other to what they considered paltry reductions in the debt. It was an unfathomable, seemingly unpassable piece of legislation. It was not a “big beautiful bill.” It was just big. Johnson described the work it required over months of wrangling, cajoling, and arm twisting like crossing the Grand Canyon balancing on dental floss.

There’s a lot to complain about for sure, but there is also a lot of good that may come of it, including the salvation of the budget process and the ability of the House to govern.

Unfortunately, it will take months and maybe years before we know definitively what the impact is, socially, economically, and politically. The national debt is a prime case in point. Those who say huge tax cuts will take care of the debt are engaging in wishful thinking. Those who are critical of the lack of debt reduction in the process are way ahead of themselves. Senate action, the impact of economic and fiscal events, and I dare say the impact of the ready, fire, aim DOGE barrage will presumably have profound effect on it to.

The dangerously bloated public debt is, as Winston Churchill prophetically described Russia, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” It is very hard to fathom.

Back to the Speaker. What strikes me about Johnson’s short time in the Speaker’s chair is what a transformative Speaker he is becoming and what that portends for the future, if he can withstand the infernal heat in the kitchen. I wrote about that a year ago this month, just prior to Memorial Day recess on 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 judgment 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 who 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 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 was possible.

Johnson’s accomplishments obviously have not been all of his own making. He has a skilled leadership team and a large contingent of Republican members who understand the vital need for compromise, common sense, and more than an ounce of courage to keep the government running. He had help, too, from President Trump, who did some muscular arm twisting. Maybe Trump will grudgingly accept the necessity for the Executive Branch to work with the Legislative.

Johnson seems to know the difference between producing and posturing. He knows there is a time for discourse and a time for decision and accommodates both. He knows the dire consequences of failing to get the job done. The bar of public trust can’t be set any lower without digging a trench for it. And there is good reason. The high degree of distrust in government and those chosen to govern is a national disgrace.

Johnson seems to be guided by solid values, honesty, forthrightness, pragmatism, and humility. He also appreciates the limitations of power and that leadership requires patience and mastering the true communicative art of listening. He has character, the embodiment of those attributes that remain at the core of a successful democratic Republic and vital to a functioning Congress.

Johnson is getting to know one of the truisms of congressional leadership. It demands that you give more than you get and, as this lesser Mike Johnson learned 40 years ago under the tutelage of a similar leader, leaders can’t rest on their laurels. They can’t sustain the power of political crosswinds that often turn victory into defeat.

Adulation in politics often comes from those who may be your friend one day and your adversary the next. In politics there isn’t a lot of distance between being famous and infamous. You must be driven, not by adulation but that inner conviction that you are doing what is right.

The Speaker seems to get that.

The country needs good leaders, men and women who can serve as the face and voice of good governance and honorable politics. They must survive the daily grind but also champion the reform and a restoration of political values, especially civility, and foster national unity. Leaders who are committed to and skilled at legislating, making Congress productive. Much is needed and much is required. Congress is the first branch of government, the institution closest to the people and the protector of the Constitutional principle of separate but equal branches of government. The Speaker is in a convenient job to provide that leadership, especially among the ranks of Americans who care about the preservation of our democratic way of life.

And care we must. Politicians cannot solve our core problems by themselves, unless they are prodded to do so by an enlightened electorate, a subject my colleague Jerry Climer and I discuss in detail in our book, Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People, which focuses on citizen education, action, and solutions.

Citizens must contribute. Voting isn’t enough. Our political process is sadly lacking in civics education, civics engagement, civil discourse, and unity of purpose and mutual respect. Power must ultimately rest in the hands of the people, as has been the cornerstone of our system. It requires a serious attitude adjustment, a change in behavior, and a willingness to meet the responsibilities of citizenship. We all need to wind down before we get more wound up.

To borrow from Paul McCartney’s wonderful song there is a long and winding road ahead, why leave us standing here? Let us know the way. Together with the right leadership we can make it through. Mikey can do it.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a new book, Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People and an earlier book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is co-founder and former Board chair of the Congressional Institute. Johnson is retired. He is married to Thalia Assuras and has five children and four grandchildren.