America is Baaack!

Amidst all the endless repetition, baseless speculation, psychobabble and tips on “life hacks” that fill our “news” these days, something really important almost got lost last weekend. Yes, our media reported it. But few, if any, grasped its full significance.

The event, of course, was the House’s passage of the aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The first-order effect—pulling Ukraine’s rapidly melting irons out of the fire—got well discussed. But almost lost in the shuffle was an equally vital question: what does it mean for us? What does it mean for our democracy and our global leadership?

Maybe the whiplash was too severe. For at least six months, our GOP-led Congress had made the word “dysfunctional” a euphemism. Nothing got done but inexperienced, unpatriotic and untutored newbies strutting and fretting their hours before the cameras. Some Freedom Caucus members acted as if they mistook the current session of Congress for a season of “The Apprentice.”

The primary culprits—Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz and the inimitably dislikable Marjorie Taylor Greene—had plenty of ambition. But they were (and are) so far from any semblance of expertise, competence or merit as to warrant editorial rejection as caricature. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy alone could have won a Nobel Prize for clueless blundering.

Then, slowly and imperceptibly, the clown show started to close. An utterly unknown, devout Christian and extreme conservative from Louisiana named Mike Johnson got elected Speaker. He rose to that post when it seemed no one else wanted it or could possibly garner the votes. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries even came within six votes of the job, but the tiny GOP majority held.

Slowly, gradually, Johnson began to distinguish himself from the clowns. For me, the first hints of something new came from a deep dive into his personal history published in the New Yorker, hardly a right-wing rag.

Yes, Johnson had had a lust for political power from an early age. Don’t they all? But Johnson tried to slake his lust by making friends, not enemies. Whether speaking with supporters or opponents, he sought to find common ground. He tried never to burn bridges. In contrast, most of the Freedom Caucus seems to regard the recent Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster in Baltimore Harbor with envy.

The next step came from the Biden Administration. Apparently informed of Johnson’s undeveloped potential, it gave him even more access to classified intelligence than he had a right to as a new Speaker. It followed up with a parade of visits from US military leaders and leaders from the EU, all stressing the geopolitical catastrophe that would ensue if Russia crushed and occupied Ukraine.

Apparently, this information fire hose did the trick. Unlike the spoilers in the GOP Freedom Caucus, Johnson genuinely wanted to do right by our country. Here’s what he said [click on “Transcript” and scroll down] in bringing the Ukraine and other aid bills up for a vote:

“I think providing lethal aid to Ukraine right now is critically important. I really do. I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten.”

“I believe Xi and Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil. I think they’re in coordination on this. I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys.”

“My son is going to begin in the Naval Academy this fall. This is a live fire exercise for me, as it is so many American families.”

“This is not a game. It’s not a joke. We can’t play politics with this. And I’m willing to take personal risk for that, because we have to do the right thing, and history will judge us.”

Who would have guessed? After a seemingly endless parade of clueless clowns, a GOP Speaker, no less, who credits facts, explores their consequences, and seeks to make his mark on real life, not conspiracy theories.

It gets better. The “personal risk” Johnson spoke of was the risk that Greene or another Freedom-Caucus bomb thrower would “pull the trigger” on a motion to vacate the Speaker’s post and throw Johnson out of his job. That risk was and is real.

So who stepped up to relieve Johnson of that risk and make his decision to support Ukraine easy? The Democratic Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, that’s who. Jeffries reportedly assured Johnson of enough Democratic votes to keep his seat as Speaker in the event of a GOP motion to vacate.

Think about that. Here was a Black leader, a Democrat, assuring a white Republican, from Louisiana no less, of assistance in retaining his post as Speaker, in order to encourage that white Republican not to let us to do with Putin what Neville Chamberlain had done with Hitler. The poetic beauty is so touching that no editor would let it pass as fiction. It had to be fact.

Will Jeffries honor his promise? I think so. He’s a good, experienced, honest and intelligent man, the personal choice of former Speaker Pelosi. Like the rest of us, he’s seen full well how Mitch McConnell destroyed our domestic politics by what he did: denying Merrick Garland a hearing, and then rushing through Justice Barrett’s appointment at the very end of Trump’s term. You can’t pull that kind of stunt and then expect to make deals with its victims. Calling it “hardball” doesn’t excuse it; it just rubs salt in the wound.

Democracy works when opposing pols make deals for the common good. When pols break their word, democracy fails. Jeffries will no more let that happen than he would have refused the Speaker’s post if he had gotten the extra six votes, or than he will if the Dems get the votes in November.

As for Putin, he sees and knows. He knows what the oft-docile Russians do with leaders who drag them into brutal losing wars. He knows that the “arsenal of democracy” that once helped save his nation from the Nazis will now be supplying the hapless nation he brutally invaded without provocation. He knows that his only talents—deception and assassination—won’t help him now. He must see the inevitable denouement.

As for us Americans, we’re on the mend. Our Demagogue is falling asleep in his first of four trials on felony counts. Speaker Johnson ignored his advice regarding Ukraine and got away with it. The Russian propaganda that the “invasion” of thousands of hapless migrant females, families, children (and a few males) at our Southern borders outweighs Putin’s brutally sustained armed invasion of Ukraine lies rejected in the dust. The bipartisan rejection—by a 72% vote of the whole House—limns Trump’s chances for becoming president again, even should he escape criminal conviction.

It may be too early to say for sure. It usually is. As the famous baseball catcher Yogi Berra once said, “The future is one thing that is hard to predict.” But after a long, hard winter, the odds finally favor the notion that America is baaack.

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