Frank Bruni, New York Times Columnist with a huge endorsement of the work of GOP Speaker of The House Mike Johnson.
I strongly support the aid package while understanding the qualms about it, but its merits are not my focus here
The principled course of Speaker Johnson is.
He made common cause with political adversaries. He potentially put his speakership in greater jeopardy than if he had taken a different tack (though these matters are tricky and time will tell).
What impresses and encourages me most, though, are accounts of how he arrived at his backing of the bill
He educated himself.
As Catie Edmondson reported in an article in The Times on Sunday, Johnson attributed his turnabout in part to the intelligence briefings he received, a striking assertion from a leader of a party that has embraced former President Donald J. Trump s deep mistrust of the intelligence community.
Seeking more information.
Not dismissing it out of hand because of its provenance.
Humbly conceding that your prior understanding was faulty or incomplete.
Encouraging others to look beyond their stubbornness to the possibility of enlightenment.
None of that should be exceptional.
All of it is.
May it be a model for the lawmakers around him, for all politicians, for the rest of us.
And may we take another lesson from this that All is not lost.
What Johnson did and how this episode ultimately played out constitute another instance of the government pulling through, a budget passes at the final hour, a debt ceiling is finally raised after terrifying signs that it might not. That does not redeem all the wasted time and what it cost. But it is an important counter to the very worst of our pessimism, a reminder not to let our premonitions of doom utterly consume us and become self fulfilling prophecies.
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