Editorial: Congratulations to House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana - NOLA.com

Editorial: Our congratulations to Speaker Mike Johnson | Our Views | nola.com

Under extraordinary circumstances and stress, Mike Johnson of Benton, Louisiana, now faces the challenge of unifying a fractured Republican Party as speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

We wish him luck and are pleased to see one of Louisiana’s delegation tapped for the job.

For our parochial reasons, that’s good for our state. The days when speakers, or even influential members like Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Jefferson Parish, could drive big bucks to their constituencies have faded, but a speakership is a remarkable augmentation of Louisiana’s power in national government.

We backed Scalise earlier as the wisest choice to get past the dissension that has engulfed the chamber's majority party. Then, more senior members than Johnson toppled during unprecedented rounds of infighting.

Is Johnson a speaker of exhaustion?

Having seen the north Louisiana lawyer and politician in action, in the state House before he moved up to Congress in 2016, we recognize his sheer political acumen. Where you stand depends on where you sit, and in the speaker’s chair he is likely to look for constructive ways to navigate a divided party and a divided nation.

That we don’t agree with him on a number of things is not news.

As a lawyer-strategist for overturning the legitimate and incontestable results of the 2020 presidential election — one of the reasons that former President Donald Trump is a fan — Johnson indulged in legal sophistry for political ends. That his arguments were ultimately dismissed was good for the country, but they’re still an ugly chapter in the history books.

We cannot help but note, though, that Johnson has played a more pragmatic hand in recent weeks. He voted for Scalise as speaker, although we thought the Louisiana delegation should have been more enthusiastic about promoting Kevin McCarthy's obvious successor. In these days of breaking precedent, we have a speaker-majority leader tag team from Louisiana, a stunning development for our state.

Johnson was typically with the party majority, and not the barn-burners on the extreme right, during the party’s period of chaos. That doesn’t mean his views are less conservative — after all, he also backed Jim Jordan of Ohio, the right’s star — but it does suggest he recognizes that not every vote should be an all-or-nothing war.

As a vocal social conservative, Johnson has street cred to urge like-minded members to put down the pitchforks on fiscal issues and to rethink his reservations about continuing to support Ukrainians battling invaders from Putin's Russia.

We hope that's what he'll do.

As a promoter of greater civility — and in fact, an easygoing personal presence in the House — Johnson represents something of a victory for demeanor over the mean streak shown during recent party debates.

A nice guy has finished first. Now, he must bring his party along in achieving progress for the country.