If you’ve ever read anything by biographer Robert Caro, you get the feeling that he could wring 100 pages out of what he had for breakfast. His books on New York City planner Robert Moses and President Lyndon B. Johnson function as both biography and challenge, their hefty page counts daring readers to dive in. It’s unlikely that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson will ever get the “Master of the Senate” treatment, and the reason for this is clear: You don’t need a doorstop to dissect the nuances of his legislative strategy. His favorite trick can be summed up in the language of an infant’s board book: See Mike run.
Johnson was in the middle of his fourth term as a congressman from Louisiana’s fourth district when disgraced Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz led a revolt against Kevin McCarthy, whose speakership didn’t even last nine months. The fractured Republican caucus struggled to agree on who should replace the relatively moderate McCarthy, with the Trumpist wing ultimately winning out and pushing Johnson, a 2020 denier, into the top slot.
