Brooks and Capehart on Johnson’s successful fight to remain House speaker

Amna Nawaz:

Mike Johnson's reelection as House speaker revealed a small, but loud minority in his conference that could threaten Republican priorities.

On that and the other political stories shaping the start of the new year, we turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. That is New York Times columnist David Brooks, and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post.

Great to see you both.

Jonathan Capehart:

Hi, Amna.

David Brooks:

Good to see you.

Amna Nawaz:

Busy day on Capitol Hill.

Let's talk about Mike Johnson. David, he manages to hang on to the speaker's gavel, but not without a fight, those few members who did choose not to back him before they ultimately did back him on the first ballot. What does all of this say to you about the stability of their majority and his speakership?

David Brooks:

Well, first, on his speakership, last week, I happened to read Susan Page's biography of Nancy Pelosi, because that's the kind of wild New Year's Eve I had.

(Laughter)

David Brooks:

And one of the things Pelosi says to Susan is that being a mom of five young children was the best preparation for speaker, because you had to pay attention to five childish people with self-interest.

And being speaker is kind of like that. And I have to say he was sort of an accidental speaker. He came in when Kevin McCarthy was deposed after a long hellish ordeal.

Amna Nawaz:

Right.

David Brooks:

And I think he's done way better than I ever expected him to do. He's managed the caucus pretty well. He's managed Trump pretty well, no small feat. He's managed the Democrats OK. He did some bipartisan deals on budget and other things.

I think he's been, policy, more serious than I would have anticipated, supporting aid for Ukraine and other — his own independent views on this. And so I think people looked at him and thought, not so bad, even — and so there was a rump rebellion of three people for like 45 minutes.

But that's tiny compared to what Kevin McCarthy was facing. And so my hope is that they have got a pretty decent speaker, all things considered, and the Republican Party is in less of a nihilistic mood now that Donald Trump's going to be in the White House they may actually want to govern something.

And for that, you need a speaker, you need a coalition. My final Pelosi quote is she would say in — strength is in our diversity, but power is in our unity. And that's a good Pelosi line. And if they can get some unity, they will have a little bit of power.

Amna Nawaz:

Jonathan, how do you look at it?

Jonathan Capehart:

Good luck with that.

(Laughter)

Jonathan Capehart:

I mean, I do have to agree with David that Speaker Johnson is way better than I thought he would be a year ago. I thought his move to not gavel out the vote, but to hold it open and twist the arms and win the speakership still on one ballot was a very smart move.

But this idea that they are serious about governing, I'm not so sure, given what we saw last month, well, just a couple of weeks ago, when it came to the budget. And they just punt — great job in punting the — whatever the sports metaphor is, down to March, punting everything to March.

(Laughter)

Jonathan Capehart:

But it's one thing to heed the commands of Donald Trump when he's not president. It's another when he's president and you're trying to govern, and you're trying to govern with a caucus that doesn't want to, say, eliminate the debt ceiling, but the president does.

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

Jonathan Capehart:

Those are going to be some of the frictions that Mike Johnson — that are going to put Mike Johnson's skills to the test with a President Trump in the White House.

Amna Nawaz:

And, David, to that point, you mentioned it's three people or so, but three people really matter with this very, very slim majority.

Most Americans don't care about the speaker battle, right? They care about how this body is going to govern. How do you see them being able to govern when they do have to eventually pass a budget in the months ahead?

David Brooks:

Yes, that's going to be tough. The phrase, by the way, is punting to the batter's box. That's what they know.

(Laughter)

Jonathan Capehart:

Even I know that's not true.

(Laughter)

David Brooks:

But so, for example, Chip Roy was one of the — he actually voted for the speaker, but he's a rebel leader.

And he was on Steve Bannon's show today or some time this week saying he wants everything they do to be — and not add to the deficit.

Amna Nawaz:

Right.

David Brooks:

And so if there are going to be tax cuts, A, they will do this thing called dynamic scoring, where they pretend the tax cuts pay themselves. But you still can't get close to not adding to the deficit when you cut taxes.

So will they really insist on that? And Chip Roy was talking about Medicare cuts, Medicare cuts. Like, that's like political, not — third rail doesn't begin to cover what that is. And so how serious are they about this kind of stuff? They claim they're serious, but there's no way to get from here to there and do this — any of the things Trump wants to do and not add to the deficit.

Amna Nawaz:

Jonathan, should Democrats step in to help Republicans get the votes they need to pass some of this legislation?

Jonathan Capehart:

Only if it makes sense, only if it's — if it helps the American people, only if it's something that they can argue to — within the caucus into the American people that, yes, we're going to help Speaker Johnson, we're going to help the Republicans because this is in the best interest of the country.

They're the ones who are very interested in governing. And so with Mike Johnson, with Speaker Johnson's right now one-vote, one-seat majority, he's going to need Democrats. So I think it's incumbent upon Speaker Johnson to come to Democrats with legislation they can actually support.

Amna Nawaz:

There's also this context in which they are working, which is in a country that doesn't even unite in the wake of a terrorist attack on American community the way it used to.

We saw the attack in New Orleans. We saw President Biden's response, which is what you would expect from a leader. And then you saw president-elect Trump, who came out and immediately blamed President Biden, blamed the law enforcement agencies, blamed the immigration system, which makes no sense because the suspect is not an immigrant.

But it's a different context entirely to the last Congress they were working in, David. What do you make of that response?

David Brooks:

Well, I think this is a long national nightmare, with the rise of conspiratorial thinking and the overpoliticization of everything.

The guy in New Orleans seems to have been a self-radicalizing radical terrorist. And that doesn't mean there's some conspiracy. That doesn't mean he actually had contact with ISIS. That doesn't mean the FBI could have done anything. People who are self-radicalizing are sitting in their basements for self-radicalizing. They're very just very hard to catch.

The case of the guy in Las Vegas is just completely perplexing. He was apparently very pro-Trump. He was a munitions expert, active military. So there's just — people are weird and they — troubled people do troubled things. That doesn't mean there's any political meaning to this at all. That doesn't mean there's any conspiracy.

It's just we have got 330 million U.N. beings in this country and they're going to do some weird stuff. And Trump has the tendency to politicize everything and to conspiracize everything, is a malady of worry.

Jonathan Capehart:

Great. I'm glad you stuck the landing there, because I was going to say we cannot have this conversation without talking about the impact of a former president and incoming president, the same person, who jumps in with no facts, who, because he's the president, former president, incoming president, people listen to him.

And so it's incumbent upon our leaders to be responsible, to not get out ahead of the facts, to bring some calm to a situation that is very scary and very harmful and hurtful to people.

We're going to go through four more years of this with a president who pops off in the middle of the night, early hours of the morning, with no facts whatsoever. That's how we got — that's — this is how we got here.

Amna Nawaz:

There's another headline, David, I want to get your take on, which is the news today that President Biden announced that he would block the sale, the $14 billion acquisition of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel by Japan's Nippon Steel. Both U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel have blasted that decision.

But was this the right move in these final days in office for him?

David Brooks:

Yes, I think really no. We need a strong — some sort of industry, remnant of a steel industry in this country.

Nippon Steel is a powerful acquirer who was going to spend nearly $3 billion reinvesting in plants in the Mon Valley and places in Western Pennsylvania and around the country. Japan is one of our firm allies we need to be close with creating alliances against China.

And, to me, what's happened is two things. One, the union leadership is not where the union members are. The members often wanted the deal. The union membership leadership in Washington did not. Second, there's just been a rising tide of xenophobia and nationalism in our economic policy. And that carries — started with Trump, but carries over to Biden. And I just think it's a big mistake.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, next week, meanwhile, I need to ask you both about this moment we will be marking as a nation, which is the passing of former President Jimmy Carter.

Our politics, our nation obviously very different right now to the times that he was living and leading in. But I just want to ask each of you — Jonathan, you first — what are you in this moment taking away from the legacy of President Carter?

Jonathan Capehart:

Well, I was a little kid when Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and I actually wrote him a letter during the Iranian hostage crisis, because I couldn't understand why everyone was so mean to the president. He was doing everything he could to get them out.

I wrote this in the letter, and I got a response, not from the president, but from someone in the White House. I do have it somewhere, in a box somewhere. But I tell that story only to say this is the first time I wrote — I have ever written to a president.

But in looking at his life, he spent, if my math is right, 10 times longer out of the White House than he did inside. And I remember, as a kid, I knew people were yelling at him. People didn't like him. People hated him when he was in the White House. And yet, 40 years after the fact, the glow around him, because of all the work he did in the post-presidency, is something to see, where you have Democrats and Republicans praising him for what he did, especially outside of the White House.

I can't imagine we would — we will see that again.

Amna Nawaz:

David?

David Brooks:

Jonathan is such a nicer person than I am. I wrote him a letter saying, why can't you deregulate the trucking industry, you weakling?

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz:

Different letter. Different kind of letter.

David Brooks:

No, I didn't write that.

No, I mean, he — the stuff on Habitat for Humanity, he brought faith into politics in a very admirable way, I thought. I think it influenced the way he thought about human rights. It certainly influenced his post-presidency but, he was not overbearing with it.

But he was from a time when you go back and read those essays. I would read a bunch of columns at the time of his presidency. It was just so long ago. It was such a different culture, where people were really — it was a much better time. I hate to think of decline, but we have had such a political decline.

I also read from a sports columnist that Babe Ruth hit more home runs in Jimmy Carter's lifetime than any active player today. So that's a long time ago, when Jimmy Carter was born and lived.

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz:

The sports references leave Jonathan confounded, I know. I know.

(Laughter)

(Crosstalk)

Jonathan Capehart:

… batter's box.

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz:

We have covered a lot of ground.

We will have much more remembrances next week as well.

David Brooks, Jonathan Capehart, thank you so much.

Jonathan Capehart:

Happy new year.