Channeling ourunknown, yetfamiliar speaker

If new House Speaker Mike Johnson hadn’t existed, Stephen Colbert would have had to make him up.

But of course the possibility that there could ever be a Speaker Johnson wasn’t even a gleam in young lawyer Mike Johnson’s own eye way back in 2005, when Comedy Central TV network asked Colbert to come up with something different and funny. So the liberal Colbert invented a political right-winger who would look just astonishingly like — and think astonishingly like — the fellow who would become the genuine 2023 House Speaker Mike Johnson.

He would be the always straight-faced satirical host of a show called “The Colbert Report.” He would look just like the guy the real Colbert saw in his bathroom mirror every day: white guy; dark hair, neatly parted; dark-rimmed glasses; and a tight, thin-lipped smile that seemed to be sharing an inside joke with his audience. Colbert was playing himself as a right-wing Bill O’Reilly-type host. And when the camera’s red light was on, Colbert never broke character — until he left the show and became his liberal self as the host of CBS’s “Late Show.”

Fast-forward. On Oct. 25, 2023, as Americans stared at their news screens, they may not have recognized why the new House speaker looked so familiar. But there he was: The Full Colbert, same hair, same glasses, same complexion — and same right-wing politics they’d watched for years on Comedy Central.

But not the same cocky, confident right-wing swagger. Not at all. New Speaker Johnson has worked hard to lose that domineering pose Colbert worked so hard to perfect. Johnson, who grew up learning the art of his craft from The Great Communicator, is all about giving us the smooth soft-spoken collegiality, ceremonial eloquence and even an occasional self-effacing “aw shucks” way of escaping an inconvenient question. Quite the opposite of the Houseful of loud, hard-right Jim Jordans and Matt Gaetzes who love to hate the opposition.

Indeed, the new far-right Republican speaker with the familiar faux-right Republican face began his historic first speech by actually thanking a Democrat, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who’d just handed him his new gavel.

“I want to thank Leader Jeffries. I do look forward to working with you on behalf of the American people. I know we see things from very different points of view. But I know that in your heart, you care about this country and you want to do what’s right. And so, we’re going to find common ground there, all right?”

Today America is wondering: Will this new speaker lead us to something new? Or are we just falling for the old political head fake? Will we only get the same old right-wing roadblock to governance in this perilous time when the world is falling apart?

So as we watch and wait, we must also make sure we understand the real politics of the new speaker who became a leader before we’d ever even heard of him. Mike Johnson is a most likable, quiet-speaking, faith-promoting Christian conservative from Shreveport, Louisiana. He only got to the U.S. House in the same 2016 election that brought Donald Trump into the White House. But the No Longer Grand Old Party is so discombobulated he ended up running the House, leading the louder but policy-lite conservatives in developing policy issues and political schemes.

Johnson led his colleagues in promoting Donald Trump’s big lie that he really won in 2020. He led them in signing on to a scheme to promote a lawsuit’s claim that votes in four states Joe Biden won shouldn’t be certified — a claim Trump’s Supreme Court quickly refused to even consider. And on a Nov. 17, 2020, radio show, Johnson supported Trump’s wacko conspiracy con that the election was “rigged” when voting machines were tampered with.

So we hope the new speaker’s leadership commitment will get us to a better place. Indeed, the full House stood and cheered after he declared his commitment in Wednesday’s speech: “I want to make this commitment to you, to my colleagues here and on the other side of the aisle as well. My office will be known for trust and transparency and accountability. … The people’s House is back in business.”

To no one’s surprise, a reporter later asked the new speaker if he believed the 2020 election was stolen. And the new, committed speaker reflexively replied with the same old duck-and-dodge: “We’re not talking about any issues today. My position is very well-known.”

Transparency shmamparency. America’s brand-new speaker flubbed his first opportunity to even perform one of his Great Communicating hero’s Hollywood-worthy “aw shucks” escapes. Poor Mike Johnson couldn’t even muster a Comedy Central Full Colbert.

Looks like we’re in for a long, grueling year of the same-old same-old.