Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: Mike Johnson’s Good House Service

WASHINGTON — Read today’s editorial from the Wall Street Journal highlighting Speaker Johnson’s record: “Mike Johnson’s Good House Service.” “The country owes a debt to the Congressman from Louisiana for taking on a nearly impossible job, and the country is the better for his influence,” the Editorial Board wrote. Read the full WSJ Editorial here or below: Mike Johnson’s Good House Service The Editorial Board Wall Street Journal November 6, 2026 House Speaker Mike Johnson says he won’t run for Minority Leader after the Republican defeat this week, and Washington would be better if more politicians stepped aside with honor. But the country owes a debt to the Congressman from Louisiana for taking on a nearly impossible job, and the country is the better for his influence. Mr. Johnson was hardly a household name in 2023 when a faction of House Republicans deposed Speaker Kevin McCarthy with no obvious replacement. The GOP descended into a circular firing squad that lasted weeks. The reserve currency in the panic turned out to be a constitutional lawyer with an aspirational politics and a Ronald Reagan worldview. Mr. Johnson had to navigate an historically small majority and a President who never tried to persuade the public. He deserves particular credit for renewing the 2017 tax cuts, when failure was possible given divisions over state tax deductions and more. The One Big Beautiful Bill made progress on Medicaid sanity, higher education reform, work requirements and more. Mr. Johnson also helped move through the bipartisan bill on TikTok ownership that perhaps someday a President will follow. He also deserves credit for his leadership moving military support for Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel, even over heckling from his own party. His speech at the Hudson Institute in the summer of 2024 should be required reading for Republicans trying to pick up the pieces after Mr. Trump. “Today, we are threatened again by Chinese Communists, by Russian oligarchs, and Islamic terrorists,” he said. “We can choose to ignore them, we can try to appease them. We can listen to the naysayers who say our values aren’t worth defending and that there can be no victory. Or we can choose another course… We can rearm, rebuild, reinvigorate, restore, and reinstate fear in our enemies.” The GOP Congress wasn’t as productive as we’d hoped, but Mr. Johnson wasn’t the problem. He had to navigate between a President with mercurial and often unrealistic demands and a backbench with too many podcasters and social-media trolls. The Speaker is taking hits for predicting that Republicans would keep the House, but electoral optimism is a requirement of the job. The defeat wasn’t his fault. He raised record funds for candidates. The Speaker from Louisiana understood, as he likes to say quoting John Quincy Adams, that “duty is ours; results are God’s.” ###