Politics

The Terrifying Learning Curve Facing Mike Johnson – POLITICO

Published

11 months ago

October 26, 2023

When Republicans drafted Paul Ryan into the speakership eight years ago, it was head-spinning. The magnitude of the task and sheer volume of responsibilities were jarring, even for someone with more than 15 years of legislative experience.

Experience, it seems, is no longer an attractive attribute for a Republican speaker. It was perhaps Mike Johnson’s short tenure in the House that allowed him to win the gavel. But now he faces a terrifyingly steep learning curve and almost no margin for error.

Each speaker is different, and Johnson will come to develop his own way of running the House. In the short term, however, a neophyte speaker will naturally create a leadership void simply by nature of being new to the job. That might mean Steve Scalise, a fellow Louisianan who was just passed over for the top job, becomes the most powerful majority leader in decades — perhaps since Tom DeLay.

I’ve seen firsthand how difficult it is to be thrust into the speakership, serving as an aide at Ryan’s side after he took over from my former boss John Boehner.

At the time of his ascension, Ryan was arguably the most famous member of the House of Representatives. He had recently served as Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate. He had engaged in high-level negotiations within his own party and with Democrats, and he successfully moved difficult legislation through the House and into law. He understood the media and knew how to drive a message. He had relationships with major donors. He was also as aligned with leadership as anyone outside of it.

What he quickly learned was that none of it mattered much. Nothing can fully prepare you for the speakership.

Ryan leaned heavily on Kevin McCarthy, then majority leader and someone who had also just seen his own speakership hopes dashed, for institutional knowledge and to guide the decisions needed to keep the House moving forward during a period of major disruption. We simply could not have gotten through the first year without him.

While Johnson goes through some on-the-job training, Scalise may be the person best positioned to shape and drive legislative outcomes. If he’s willing to wield power, Scalise could have enormous influence on the ultimate success of the Johnson speakership. Because for Mike Johnson, the job ahead is daunting, and the early weeks and months will be an exercise in learning all he never knew he didn’t know.

Johnson is aware that he needs to set an agenda for the House, but he will quickly realize this is a more sprawling undertaking than meets the eye. There are the big things — keeping the government open, passing a supplemental appropriations bill to support Ukraine and Israel — but also countless other legislative priorities of members and committees in various stages of readiness. It’s his job to make sense of all of it and demonstrate to members that they are making progress.

Indeed, two words will come to define life for Johnson: member management. Anyone outside of the top levels of leadership simply has no idea the volume of member priorities, problems, rivalries and interpersonal dynamics that you must appreciate and navigate. Being armed with this background alone makes Scalise invaluable. Johnson is likely already hearing from an endless parade of members seeking this and that — promises he often can’t keep and many in conflict with others. Success or failure in the job can simply come down to keeping members happy, busy and focused.

In short order he will need to learn the mechanics of operating the floor. The speaker’s authority, particularly over the Rules Committee, is critical to maintaining order in the chamber and avoiding the humiliation of failed votes.

Johnson will also need to develop relationships that are fundamental to lawmaking. He will serve as the chief negotiator between the House and Senate, and must quickly gain the trust of Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. Similarly, the speaker is the House’s point person for dealing with the White House. While he doesn’t need to make friends, he does need to establish a relationship with President Joe Biden.

The speakership comes with enormous institutional responsibilities, from keeping the Capitol and the people who work there safe, to the upkeep of the building, to presiding over countless ceremonial events. He now has national security responsibilities that will regularly keep him in classified briefings.

The speaker is also the face of the House GOP, and Johnson must be prepared to meet the press. He will be the chief communicator for the conference, required to consistently drive messages and rally support for the House’s agenda.

The speaker must stand up a large-scale political operation, develop relationships with donors and set a political strategy for protecting a thin majority. For all the things he must quickly learn, the new speaker’s schedule will constantly be crushed by basic obligations of the job.

Above all, the job of speaker is a problem-solving one. The discord in the House GOP is well documented, and it is the job of the speaker to break through the pettiness and inspire members to set their sights on a higher purpose. The most difficult decisions land in the lap of the speaker. Even once you’ve gotten down the basics, you spend much of the day figuring your way around detours and out of cul-de-sacs.

In the best of times, all of this would be impossible for Johnson to master immediately. Of course, these are not the best of times, and pressing priorities with short timelines are staring him in the face.

Many members of the House will say it is not the job of the speaker to drive outcomes, but rather to simply oversee a fair process. Indeed, Johnson, like his challengers, ran on a pledge to decentralize power.

While they may not say it this way, Republicans seem intent on wanting a weak speaker, and they are likely to get their wish, at least in the short term. Members have increasingly bought into the fallacy that it is the heavy hand of past speakers to blame for a failure to deliver spending cuts or other priorities, rather than a result of the realities of divided government.

Nonetheless, they believe the solution is giving committees and individual members more say on how the House functions. This is fine, so much as members are willing to accept the power and use it constructively. There is little evidence though that all members of the House are interested in the trade-offs associated with governing. The reality is that the House does not function on its own, and most of the major policymaking that falls on leadership to execute is the result of the failure of members to do the hard work of policymaking and creating governing coalitions.

Members want both a hands-off speaker and big legislative progress. This is where Scalise can assert himself and shape the success of the Johnson speakership, much like DeLay once did to corral the House GOP. Indeed, maybe a weak speaker and a strong majority leader is what the conference actually needs.

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Politics

NDP declares victory in federal Winnipeg byelection, Conservatives concede

Published

7 hours ago

September 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

The New Democrats have declared a federal byelection victory in their Winnipeg stronghold riding of Elmwood—Transcona.

The NDP candidate Leila Dance told supporters in a tearful speech that even though the final results weren’t in, she expected she would see them in Ottawa.

With several polls still to be counted, Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds conceded defeat and told his volunteers that they should be proud of what the Conservatives accomplished in the campaign.

Political watchers had a keen eye on the results to see if the Tories could sway traditionally NDP voters on issues related to labour and affordability.

Meanwhile in the byelection race in the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Québécois remained locked in an extremely tight three-way race as the results trickled in slowly.

The Liberal stronghold riding had a record 91 names on the ballot, and the results aren’t expected until the early hours of the morning.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

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Politics

Another incumbent BC United MLA to run as Independent as Kirkpatrick re-enters race

Published

8 hours ago

September 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

VANCOUVER – An incumbent BC United legislative member has reversed her decision not to seek re-election and has announced she’ll run as an Independent in the riding of West Vancouver-Capilano in the upcoming British Columbia election.

Karin Kirkpatrick has been a vocal critic of BC United Leader Kevin Falcon’s decision last month to suspend the party’s campaign and throw support behind the B.C. Conservatives under John Rustad.

Kirkpatrick announced her retirement this year, but said Monday that her decision to re-enter the race comes as a direct result of Falcon’s actions, which would force middle-of-the-road voters to “swing to the left” to the NDP or to move further right to the Conservatives.

“I did hear from a lot of constituents and a lot of people who were emailing me from across B.C. … that they didn’t have anybody to vote for,” she said. “And so, I looked even at myself, and I looked at my riding, and I said, ‘Well, I no longer have anybody to vote for in my own riding.’ It was clearly an issue of this missing middle for the more moderate voter.”

She said voters who reached out “don’t want to vote for an NDP government but felt deeply uncomfortable” supporting the provincial Conservatives, citing Rustad’s tolerance of what she calls “extreme views and conspiracy theorists.”

Kirkpatrick joins four other incumbent Opposition MLAs running as Independents, including Peace River South’s Mike Bernier, Peace River North’s Dan Davies, Prince George-Cariboo’s Coralee Oakes and Tom Shypitka in Kootenay-Rockies.

“To be honest, we talk just about every day,” Kirkpatrick said about her fellow BC United incumbents now running as Independents. “We’re all feeling the same way. We all need to kind of hold each other up and make sure we’re doing the right thing.”

She added that a number of first-time candidates formerly on the BC United ticket are contacting the group of incumbents running for election, and the group is working together “as good moderates who respect each other and lift each other up.”

But Kirkpatrick said it’s also too early to talk about the future of BC United or the possibility of forming a new party.

“The first thing we need to do is to get these Independent MLAs elected into the legislature,” she said, noting a strong group could play a power-broker role if a minority government is elected. “Once we’re there then we’re all going to come together and we’re going to figure out, is there something left in BC United, BC Liberals that we can resurrect, or do we need to start a new party that’s in the centre?”

She said there’s a big gap left in the political spectrum in the province.

“So, we just have to do it in a mindful way, to make sure it’s representing the broadest base of people in B.C.”

Among the supporters at Kirkpatrick’s announcement Monday was former longtime MLA Ralph Sultan, who held West Vancouver-Capilano for almost two decades before retiring in 2020.

The Metro Vancouver riding has been a stronghold for the BC Liberals — the former BC United — since its formation in 1991, with more than half of the votes going to the centre-right party in every contest.

However, Kirkpatrick’s winning margin of 53.6 per cent to the NDP’s 30.1 per cent and the Green’s 15.4 per cent in the 2020 election shows a rising trend for left-leaning voters in the district.

Mike McDonald, chief strategy officer with Kirk and Co. Consulting, and a former campaign director for the BC Liberals and chief of staff under former Premier Christy Clark, said Independent candidates historically face an uphill battle and the biggest impact may be splitting votes in areas where the NDP could emerge victorious.

“It really comes down to, if the NDP are in a position to get 33 per cent of the vote, they might have a chance of winning,” McDonald said of the impact of an Independent vote-split with the Conservatives in certain ridings.

He said B.C. history shows it’s very hard for an Independent to win an election and has been done only a handful of times.

“So, the odds do not favour Independents winning the seats unless there is a very unique combination of circumstances, and more likely that they play a role as a spoiler, frankly.”

The B.C. Conservatives list West Vancouver School District Trustee Lynne Block as its candidate in West Vancouver-Capilano, while the BC NDP is represented by health care professional Sara Eftekhar.

Kirkpatrick said she is confident that her re-entry to the race will not result in a vote split that allows the NDP to win the seat because the party has always had a poor showing in the riding.

“So, even if there is competition between myself and the Conservative candidate, it is highly unlikely that anything would swing over to the NDP here. And I believe that I have the ability to actually attract those NDP voters to me, as well as the Conservatives and Liberals who are feeling just lost right now.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

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News

Blinken is heading back to the Middle East, this time without fanfare or a visit to Israel

Published

8 hours ago

September 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to Egypt on Tuesday for his 10th trip to the Middle East since the war in Gaza began nearly a year ago, this one aimed partly at refining a proposal to present to Israel and Hamas for a cease-fire deal and release of hostages.

Unlike in recent mediating missions, America’s top diplomat this time is traveling without optimistic projections from the Biden administration of an expected breakthrough in the troubled negotiations.

Also unlike the earlier missions, Blinken has no public plans to go to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on this trip. The Israeli leader’s fiery public statements — like his declaration that Israel would accept only “total victory” when Blinken was in the region in June — and some other unbudgeable demands have complicated earlier diplomacy.

Blinken is going to Egypt for talks Wednesday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and others, in a trip billed as focused both on American-Egyptian relations and Gaza consultations with Egypt.

The tamped-down public approach follows months in which President Joe Biden and his officials publicly talked up an agreement to end the war in Gaza as being just within reach, hoping to build pressure on Netanyahu’s far-right government and Hamas to seal a deal.

The Biden administration now says it is working with fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar to come up with a revised final proposal to try to at least get Israel and Hamas into a six-week cease-fire that would free some of the hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Americans believe public attention on details of the talks now would only hurt that effort.

American, Qatari and Egyptian officials still are consulting “about what that proposal will contain, and …. we’re trying to see that it’s a proposal that can get the parties to an ultimate agreement,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday.

The State Department pointed to Egypt’s important role in Gaza peace efforts in announcing last week that the Biden administration planned to give the country its full $1.3 billion in military aid, overriding congressional requirements that the U.S. hold back some of the funding if Egypt fails to show adequate progress on human rights. Blinken told Congress that Egypt has made progress on human rights, including in freeing political prisoners.

Blinken’s trip comes amid the risk of a full-on new front in the Middle East, with Israel threatening increasing military action against the Hezbollah militant organization in Lebanon. Biden envoy Amos Hochstein was in Israel on Monday to try to calm tensions after a stop in Lebanon.

Hezbollah has one of the strongest militaries in the Middle East, and like Hamas and smaller groups in Syria and Iraq it is allied with Iran.

Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged strikes across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas started the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it will ease those strikes — which have uprooted tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border — only when there’s a cease-fire in Gaza.

Hochstein told Netanyahu and other Israeli officials that intensifying the conflict with Hezbollah would not help get Israelis back in their homes, according to a U.S. official. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks, said Hochstein stressed to Netanyahu that he risked sparking a broad and protracted regional conflict if he moved forward with a full-scale war in Lebanon.

Hochstein also underscored to Israeli officials that the Biden administration remained committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the tensions on Israel’s northern border in conjunction with a Gaza deal or on its own, the official said.

Netanyahu told Hochstein that it would “not be possible to return our residents without a fundamental change in the security situation in the north.” The prime minister said Israel “appreciates and respects” U.S. support but “will do what is necessary to maintain its security and return the residents of the north to their homes safely.”

Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, meanwhile, warned in his meeting with Hochstein that “the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action,” his office said.

In Gaza, the U.S. says Israel and Hamas have agreed to a deal in principle and that the biggest obstacles now include a disagreement on details of the hostage and prisoner swap and control over a buffer zone on the border between Gaza and Egypt. Netanyahu has demanded in recent weeks that the Israeli military be allowed to keep a presence in the Philadelphi corridor. Egypt and Hamas have rejected that demand.

The Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 killed about 1,200 people. Militants also abducted 250 people and are still holding around 100 hostages. About a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, said Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count. The war has caused widespread destruction, displaced a majority of Gaza’s people and created a humanitarian crisis.

Netanyahu says he is working to bring home the hostages. His critics accuse him of slow-rolling a deal because it could bring down his hardline coalition government, which includes members opposed to a truce with the Palestinians.

Asked earlier this month if Netanyahu was doing enough for a cease-fire deal, Biden said, simply, “no.” But he added that he still believed a deal was close.

___

Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.

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